Cerberus

Summary

Cerberus is the hound of Hades in Greek myth, who guards the door of the house of the dead. Hesiod says in the Theogony that Echidna, half nymph and half snake, lay with Typhon and bore him Orthus, the hound of Geryon, then Cerberus, "who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong", then the Hydra of Lerna. Then he describes the hound's work: it stands before the house of Hades and Persephone and has a cruel trick; it fawns with its tail and both its ears on those who go in, but lets no one go out, watching the gates and devouring whomever it catches going out.

His best-known story is the last of the twelve labours of Heracles. Eurystheus ordered him to bring Cerberus from the house of Hades. Apollodorus describes the hound with three heads of dogs, the tail of a dragon, and the heads of all sorts of snakes on his back. Heracles went first to Eleusis to be initiated; Eumolpus cleansed him of the blood of the centaurs and then initiated him, as told under the Eleusinian Mysteries. Then he went down through the mouth of the descent at Taenarum in Laconia. The souls fled from him, all but Meleager and Medusa; near the gates of Hades he found Theseus and Pirithous bound fast, took Theseus by the hand and raised him, but when he tried to raise Pirithous the earth quaked and he let go. He slaughtered one of the cattle of Hades to give the souls blood, and their herdsman Menoetes wrestled him and had his ribs broken. Then he asked Pluto for the hound and was told he might take it if he mastered it without the weapons he carried. He found it at the gates of Acheron, and, in his cuirass and the lion's skin, flung his arms round its head; the dragon in its tail bit him, but he never relaxed his grip until it yielded. He carried it up through Troezen, showed it to Eurystheus, and took it back to Hades.

The story is older than Apollodorus. In the Iliad Athena says that Eurystheus sent Heracles "to the house of Hades the Warder, to bring from out of Erebus the hound of loathed Hades", and that she helped him. In the Odyssey Odysseus meets the shade of Heracles in the underworld, who tells him: he sent me here to fetch the hound, for he could devise no harder task for me; I carried it off and led it out of the house of Hades, and Hermes and Athena were my guides.

The idea his story turns on is that the house of the dead is open inward and shut outward. The hound welcomes whoever enters and eats whoever tries to leave. The one who comes out alive is a hero who masters him bare-handed and then returns him to his place, so the gate is guarded afterwards as before.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Κέρβερος, Kerberos, leaves kerber- once the case ending -ος is removed, and it begins with k-r-b. The Greek essay reads it as kalb, dog, with l become r, and in Lane kalb is the dog, and kaliba al-kalbu is said of a dog seized with madness from eating human flesh; Hesiod calls Cerberus "the eater of raw flesh". The essay also reads it from qaruba, to draw near, and these three letters stand in the name in their order with no change: q is k, r is r, b is b. In Lane qaruba is to be near, the contrary of being far, and qurbān is what one offers to draw near. In Hesiod the hound fawns on whoever comes near and enters, and in Virgil no one passes him until food is thrown to him. So the two readings join: the dog in the meaning, drawing near in the letters.

Linguistic Root

LSJ gives Κέρβερος as the many-headed dog of Hades, citing Theogony 311, and as the name of a bird in Antoninus Liberalis. Homer does not name him; he says "the hound of Hades".

Cerberus and kalb

The Greek essay reads the name as kalb, with l become r, together with barr, the wild: the dog of the wilderness. In Lane kaliba al-kalbu is said of a dog seized with madness from eating human flesh, kaliba of a man bitten by a mad dog and seized with the same madness, and kaliba ʿalayhi, he was angry with him. Hesiod calls Cerberus ὠμηστής, the eater of raw flesh, and says he devours whomever he catches going out. The sense is very close. As for the letters, k is k and b is b, but l must become r, a change for which the Greek name itself gives no witness. It is worth noting that Yama's two dogs in the Ṛgveda are called śabala, brindled, and Monier-Williams lists the same word as śarvara, with r for l, so l and r alternate in the very word that describes the dogs of death in Sanskrit.

Cerberus and qaruba

The essay also reads the name from qaraba, to guard and draw near. Q, r and b stand at the start of the name in their order, and q becomes k in Greek, which has no q, as the Juthoor tables give it. In Lane qaruba is to be near, qurb nearness in place, qurba nearness in rank, and qurbān what one offers to draw near, including a slaughtered offering. The Greek story makes drawing near the hound's work: he fawns on whoever comes near and enters, and lets no one go far away out of the gate. Virgil makes it the visitor's work as well: when the Sibyl and Aeneas reach Cerberus's cave she throws him a morsel of honey and drugged meal; he opens his three throats in hunger, swallows it and sleeps, and Aeneas passes.

The limit of both readings is that the second r and the ending -ερος remain unread, that kalb needs l to become r, and that qaruba does not itself mean dog.

Symbolic Reading

The project's Greek rereading essay reads the whole underworld as knowledge of the earth put in symbols: Hades is the inside of the earth, the Styx the groundwater, and three-headed Cerberus the three stages of decay, or the three layers of soil that protect what lies below, or simply the dogs that guarded cemeteries.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Ṛgveda the hymn tells the dead man: run past the two dogs, Saramā's offspring, brindled and four-eyed, on your happy path, and join the Fathers who rejoice with Yama. Then it tells Yama: your two dogs, the four-eyed watchers who look on men and guard the road, entrust this man to them. The hound of Hades stands at the door and the dogs of Yama on the road; the difference is that the hymn asks the dogs to deliver the dead man, while Cerberus prevents the way out.

In Iran two dogs guard the Chinvat bridge in the Vendidad, and the soul is met by a maiden with two dogs who takes the righteous across. There the dog stands on the crossing between this world and the next, as Cerberus stands at the door of the house of Hades.

In the North Völuspá says again and again: Garmr barks loudly before Gnipahellir, the fetter will break and the ravenous one run free. Grímnismál calls Garmr the best of hounds, and at Ragnarök he fights Týr and each kills the other. In Baldrs draumar Odin, riding to the house of Hel, meets a dog with a bloodied breast.

The project's Babylonian essay compares Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Forest, with Cerberus, the guardian of the gate. In Egypt Ammit sits by the balance and eats the heart of one found wanting, while Cerberus eats those who try to flee: in both stories the eater stands at the border of the house of the dead. Heracles's journey to the house of Hades is one of the witnesses of the descent to the underworld.