Cerberus
Hound of Hades
SUR-buh-rus
The three-headed dog at the gate of the underworld, friendly to everyone entering, implacable to anyone trying to leave.
The Story
Cerberus lets the dead in and never lets them out, which is the whole of his job description and the reason he is more a mechanism than a character. Heracles took him for the twelfth labour on the condition that he use no weapons, wrestled him down bare-handed, hauled him up to be gawked at, and returned him.
The other way past him is music. Orpheus put all three heads to sleep with the lyre; the Sibyl who guides Aeneas simply throws a drugged honeycake. For a guardian of the absolute boundary, he is remarkably often got round.
Did You Know?
- The Greeks buried honey cakes with their dead. One reading is that they were fare for the ferryman; another is that they were for the dog.
- The number of heads is not fixed. Hesiod gives him fifty, Pindar a hundred, and the familiar three only settles in later.
- His name may come from a word meaning spotted, which would make the guardian of the underworld a dog called Spot.