Cerberus- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster"Hound of Hades"

Guardian of the Dead

Cerberus was born to Typhon and Echidna, the same pairing that produced the Hydra and the Chimaera. Of their brood, only Cerberus served the gods.

Hesiod called him the "brazen-voiced hound of Hades" and gave him fifty heads. By Apollodorus's time the number had settled to three, but the serpent tail and the snakes bristling from his back stayed. Virgil places him in a cave on the far side of the river, three throats baying at once, the sound filling the caverns of Erebus. Homer never names him. In the Odyssey, he is simply "the hound."

Hades stationed him at the entrance to the underworld, beyond the river where Charon ferried the dead, and gave him one duty: let the dead in, let nothing out. His behavior toward the incoming shades was gentle. The tail wagged. The ears flattened. He let them pass. They would not come back. Mourners buried their dead with honey cakes for the hound, offerings to ease the one passage that mattered. Any shade that turned toward the light, any living mortal who approached without divine leave, met three sets of jaws.

The Twelfth Labor

The capture of Cerberus was the twelfth and final labor of Heracles, the only one set entirely in the realm of the dead. Eurystheus, who assigned these labors expecting each to be Heracles's last, believed this time he had found the one from which there was no return.

Heracles prepared carefully. He traveled to Eleusis and was initiated into the Mysteries, purifying himself of old blood-guilt and learning the sacred knowledge he would need to survive below. He descended through a cave at Taenarum, the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese, where a temple of Poseidon stood above one of the traditional entrances to the underworld.

The journey through the dead was itself an ordeal. Heracles met the ghost of Meleager, who asked him to marry his sister Deianira when he returned to the world above. It was a promise that would, years later, lead to Heracles's own death on Mount Oeta. He found Theseus and Pirithous, both imprisoned for their attempt to abduct Persephone: Theseus he wrenched free from the stone where he sat fused to it, but when he reached for Pirithous the earth shook, and he understood that one must stay. Pirithous remained on his chair of forgetfulness.

At last Heracles stood before Hades and Persephone and asked for the hound. Hades agreed, on one condition: overpower the beast without weapons. At the gates, Heracles found Cerberus waiting. He wore nothing but the Nemean lion's skin and carried no blade, no club. The serpent-tail coiled and struck, but the pelt that no weapon could pierce held against the venom. Three jaws snapped at his arms and throat; he caught the central head in the crook of his arm and bore the creature down through strength alone, as Hades had required. He dragged the subdued hound up through Taenarum and into daylight, the first time Cerberus had ever seen the sun.

The Aconite

In the blinding light of the upper world, foam flew from Cerberus's three mouths. Where it struck the earth, aconite sprang up. Wolfsbane. Ovid says the plant took root in hard rock near the cave mouth and spread from there.

Heracles brought the beast before Eurystheus at Tiryns. The sight of three snarling heads sent the king diving headfirst into the bronze storage jar where he hid whenever the labors came home. He ordered the creature returned at once. It was the only time he wanted a labor undone. Heracles took Cerberus back to his post at the gates of the dead. When his shade later met Odysseus in the underworld, Heracles named this as the hardest thing Eurystheus ever demanded of him.

Those Who Passed

Heracles overpowered Cerberus by force. Others found subtler ways past.

Orpheus descended to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice and charmed the hound to sleep with his lyre. The music that moved trees and stones above ground settled Cerberus below it. In the Georgics, Virgil describes all three mouths falling open mid-bark, the serpent-mane going still. Orpheus played his way past the guardian twice: once on his way down to plead with Persephone, once on his way back up. The second time he came alone.

Cerberus lay in his cave when the Sibyl of Cumae brought Aeneas to the river's edge in the Aeneid. He heard them coming and raised all three heads. The Sibyl tossed a honey cake laced with soporific herbs. He caught it with three mouths, and his body went slack across the cave floor while they stepped past into the dark. Psyche, descending at Aphrodite's command for a box of Persephone's beauty, carried two honey cakes. A prophetic tower in Apuleius's tale had told her the trick: one for the way down, one for the way back.