Cerberus

The hound and the last labour

Cerberus is the hound that guards Hades, the realm of the dead. His task is to make sure the dead never leave. Heracles, the hero of the twelve labours, must bring him up alive. It is the last task that Eurystheus, the mortal ruler who sets the labours, demands of him.

Before he goes down, Apollodorus, an ancient writer whose Library retells the Greek myths, has Heracles prepare. He goes to Eleusis to be initiated, which means admitted into its secret religious rites. He is also purified, or ritually cleansed, for killing Centaurs. Then he travels to Tainaron in Laconia. Apollodorus places the mouth of Hades there.

The journey below

As Heracles enters the underworld, the dead flee from him. He sees Medusa and starts to draw his sword against her. The god Hermes reminds him that she is only a shade, a ghost of the dead. Further on, Heracles finds the heroes Theseus and Pirithous, held fast below.

At last Heracles asks the god Hades for the dog. Hades agrees on one condition: Heracles must master Cerberus without his weapons, the ones that carried him through the other labours. Heracles wraps his arms around the animal’s heads. The snake on the dog’s tail bites him, but he holds on until Cerberus gives in. He carries the hound up into daylight and shows him to Eurystheus. Then he takes him back below.

Heracles captures Cerberus and does not kill him. The dog belongs at the border, because the dead must not leave Hades. The labour takes him away only long enough for one mortal ruler to see him. Heracles can overpower the guard. He cannot keep him out of the underworld without breaking the order the dog protects.

How many heads

The ancient poets never agreed on the number of heads. The early Greek poet Hesiod makes Cerberus a child of Echidna and Typhaon and gives him fifty heads. He is brazen-voiced, which means loud as bronze, relentless and impossible to defeat. Apollodorus cuts the count to three dog heads. He adds a dragon’s tail and snakes rising along the dog’s back. A note to his text keeps the count given by the poet Pindar: 100.

The familiar three-headed dog is therefore one ancient version, and not the earliest one. What stays the same is his job. Cerberus is the hound of Hades, and he is frightening enough that bringing him back alive ends the series of tasks set for Heracles.

Tainaron, cape of Poseidon

Tainaron ties the labour to the end of the Mani peninsula. The cape was also sacred to Poseidon, god of the sea. Pausanias, an ancient Greek travel writer, describes two harbours on either side of the headland. He also describes a temple shaped like a cave, with a statue of Poseidon in front of it.

The same ground carries two things. One is the road to the dead from the myth. The other is a sanctuary, a holy place, of the sea god that visitors could see. The two share the cape, but they do not become one form of worship.

Why Pausanias doubted the cave

Pausanias reports what the poets claim and then rejects it. He says no road leads underground through the building at Tainaron. He also finds it hard to believe that the gods keep a home under the earth where the souls of the dead gather. His visit records a building like a cave. He does not accept it as proof of a real entrance to Hades.

He prefers an explanation from an earlier writer, Hecataeus of Miletus. A deadly snake lived on the cape. People called it the hound of Hades because its poison killed anyone it bit. Heracles brought that snake to Eurystheus. Hecataeus keeps the dangerous animal and the place, but he drops the journey to the underworld.

The two writers treat the cape in different ways. Apollodorus needs Tainaron as the place where a living man crosses into the land of the dead. Pausanias trusts what the building and the ground let him see. He keeps the older explanation without accepting it. His doubt does not remove Cerberus from the place. It records why one ancient visitor thought another animal might lie behind the name. The cave can still be seen, but no road leads down from it.