Cerberus: the myth of the three-headed dog guarding the underworld

Part 1

Who Cerberus was in Greek myth

In Greek mythology, Cerberus was the offspring of the monsters Typhon and Echidna. That made him kin to other famous monsters, since his siblings included the many-headed Lernaean Hydra, the two-headed dog Orthrus who guarded the Cattle of Geryon, and the Chimera. His job was to guard the gates of the underworld, the realm of Hades, and stop the dead from escaping back to the living world. You find the earliest reference to this dog in Homer, where he is simply called the hound of Hades, without a name. Hesiod's Theogony, written around the eighth or seventh century BC, is the first source to give him the name Cerberus and to describe his parentage.

Part 2

How many heads did Cerberus really have

The number of heads is not as fixed as you might expect. In Hesiod's Theogony, the earliest account, Cerberus is described as fifty-headed. The poet Pindar later gave him one hundred heads, and the Roman poet Horace described a single dog head paired with a hundred snake heads. Later writers almost universally settled on three heads, and Pindar is credited as one of the first to fix that number as the one used in the story of Heracles' labour. The mythographer Apollodorus gives him three dog heads with the heads of all kinds of snakes running along his back, which may be an attempt to reconcile the different traditions.

Part 3

Cerberus in the myth of Heracles' twelfth labour

You might wonder why anyone would be sent to fetch a monster like this. King Eurystheus ordered Heracles to go to the underworld and bring back Cerberus as his twelfth and final labour. Before descending, Heracles went to Eleusis and was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, rites that were believed to bring happiness in the underworld to those who learned their secrets. He then travelled to an entrance to the underworld at Taenarum in Laconia and made his way down through a deep cave.

According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Heracles asked Hades for permission to take Cerberus and was told he could do so only if he overpowered the dog without using any weapons. He found Cerberus at the gates of the river Acheron and threw his arms around the dog's head, holding on despite bites from the serpent tail until the animal gave in. Once Cerberus was subdued, Heracles brought him to Eurystheus. Eurystheus was so frightened at the sight of the dog that he hid inside a storage jar. Afterward, Heracles returned Cerberus to the underworld, where the dog resumed his post as guardian of the gates.

Part 4

Cerberus in ancient art and pottery

You can trace the changing image of Cerberus through surviving Greek pottery. On a Corinthian cup from around 590 to 580 BC, Cerberus was shown as a normal, single-headed dog, with snakes protruding from his body instead. A mid-sixth-century BC Laconian cup gives the first known appearance of a three-headed Cerberus, shown with a mane of coiled serpents and a serpentine tail. In art generally, Cerberus is most often shown with two visible dog heads, never more than three, and occasionally with only one. A well-known Caeretan black-figure hydria from around 530 BC shows Heracles presenting a three-headed, snake-maned Cerberus to a frightened Eurystheus hiding inside a large jar. Later Roman mosaics also depicted the twelve labours.

Part 5

Cerberus beyond Greece: Roman and later retellings

The story kept traveling well after the Greek world, and you can still see its shape in later writers. In Virgil's Aeneid, Cerberus guards the underworld with his three throats baying, and the Sibyl who guides Aeneas throws him a cake drugged with honey and soporific grain to put him to sleep. Ovid's Metamorphoses gives Cerberus a venomous mouth and snake-covered neck, and describes him standing motionless, charmed by Orpheus's music as the musician searched for his wife Eurydice. In Dante's Inferno, Cerberus guards the gluttons in the third circle of Hell. The Roman playwright Seneca also retold the labour in his play Hercules Furens, where Hercules fights Cerberus with his club rather than his bare hands.

Part 6

Why a dog guards the underworld

It is worth asking why the ancient Greeks chose a dog, of all animals, for this role. Cerberus's job was specific: he let the dead in but would not let them leave, fawning on those entering and devouring any who tried to go back through the gates. That makes him a guardian of a boundary, standing at the line between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Heracles's task meant crossing into a realm from which no living person had returned before. Afterward, Heracles returned Cerberus to the underworld.