Capturing Cerberus alive was the twelfth and final labour of Heracles. In the Aeneid Cerberus was put to sleep after being tricked into eating drugged cakes and Orpheus put the creature to sleep with his music. Cerberus in the Greek and Roman LiteratureĬerberus has been featured in many prominent works of the Roman literature, most famously in Virgil’s Aeneid, and the story of Orpheus in Plato’s Symposium, and in Homer’s Iliad, which is the only known reference to one of Heracles’ labours which first appeared in a literary source. The common theme was constant, with a dragon tail and snakes writhing from Cerberus’ body and its untamed savagery who only obeyed the voice of Hades or Persephone. The most notable difference is the number of Cerberus’ heads: most sources describe or depict three heads others show it with two or even just one a smaller number of sources show a variable number, sometimes as many as fifty. Cerberus in Greek MythologyĬerberus featured in many works of ancient Greek mythology and Roman literature and in works of both ancient and modern art and architecture, although, the depiction and background surrounding Cerberus often differed across various works by different authors of the era. ![]() The mythologists have speculated that the association of the monster with a dog was first made in the city of Trikarenos in Phliasia. The name “Cerberus” is a Latinised version of the Greek Kerberos (pronounced as Kerveros, Κέρβερος), which could be related to the Sanskrit word sarvara, used as an epithet of one of the dogs of Yama, from a Proto-Indo-European word *ḱerberos, meaning “spotted”. Brothers: The Lernaean Hydra and Orthrus (double headed dog).* In some myths, Cerberus was also associated with Hydra and Sphinx. According to other Greek myths, Cerberus was associated with Hydra.įeatured in both the Greek and the Roman mythology, Cerberus was a multi-headed hound (usually three-headed), which guarded the gates of Hades, to prevent those who had crossed the river Styx from escaping.Ĭerberus fawned on the dead as they entered, but would savagely eat anyone trying to pass back through the gates and return to the land of the living. Cerberus was the monstrous dog, guardian of the Hades.Ĭerberus was the offspring of Echidna and the snake-bodied Typhon. ![]() Cerberus was one of the most known monsters in Greek Mythology.
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