Cerberus, The Dog of Hades

The Dog of Hades, by Maurice
Bloomfield

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Title: Cerberus, The Dog of Hades The History of an Idea
Author: Maurice Bloomfield
Release Date: August 25, 2006 [EBook #19119]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration]
Explanation of Frontispiece
The picture is reproduced from Baumeister's Denkmäler des klassichen
Alterthums, volume I., figure 730 (text on p. 663). It is on a vase and
describes one of the twelve heroic deeds of Herakles. The latter,
holding aloft his club, drags two-headed Cerberus out of Hades by a
chain drawn through the jaw of one of his heads. He is just about to
pass Cerberus through a portal indicated by an Ionic pillar. To the right
Persephone, stepping out of her palace, seems to forbid the rape.
Herakles in his turn seems to threaten the goddess, while Hermes, to
the left, holds a protecting or restraining arm over him. Athene, with
averted face, ready to depart with her protégé, stands in front of four
horses hitched to her chariot. Upon her shield the eagle augurs the
success of the entire undertaking.

CERBERUS,
THE DOG OF HADES
The History of an Idea
BY
MAURICE BLOOMFIELD Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative
Philology Johns Hopkins University
CHICAGO The Open Court Publishing Company
LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD 1905

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
CHICAGO

To the Memory of F. Max Müller

CERBERUS, THE DOG OF HADES
Hermes, the guide of the dead, brings to Pluto's kingdom their psyches,
"that gibber like bats, as they fare down the dank ways, past the streams
of Okeanos, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, to the
meadow of asphodel in the dark realm of Hades, where dwell the souls,
the phantoms of men outworn." So begins the twenty-fourth book of
the Odyssey. Later poets have Charon, a grim boatsman, receive the
dead at the River of Woe; he ferries them across, provided the passage
money has been placed in their mouths, and their bodies have been
duly buried in the world above. Otherwise they are left to gibber on the
hither bank. Pluto's house, wide-gated, thronged with guests, has a
janitor Kerberos, sometimes friendly, sometimes snarling when new
guests arrive, but always hostile to those who would depart. Honey
cakes are provided for them that are about to go to Hades--the sop to
Cerberus. This dog, nameless and undescribed, Homer mentions simply
as the dog of Hades, whom Herakles, as the last and chief test of his
strength, snatched from the horrible house of Hades.[1] First Hesiod
and next Stesichorus discover his name to be Kerberos. The latter
seems to have composed a poem on the dog. Hesiod[2] mentions not
only the name but also the genealogy of Kerberos. Of Typhaon and
Echidna he was born, the irresistible and ineffable flesh-devourer, the
voracious, brazen-voiced, fifty-headed dog of hell.
Plato in the Republic refers to the composite nature of Kerberos.[3] Not
until Apollodorus (2. 5. 12. 1. ff.), in the second century B. C., comes
the familiar description: Kerberos now has three dog heads, a dragon
tail, and his back is covered with the heads of serpents. But his plural

heads must have been familiarly assumed by the Greeks; this will
appear from the evidence of their sculptures and vase-paintings.
CERBERUS IN CLASSIC ART.
Classic art has taken up Cerberus very generously; his treatment,
however, is far from being as definite as that of the Greek and Roman
poets. Statues, sarcophagi, and vase paintings whose theme is Hades, or
scenes laid in Hades, represent him as a ferocious Greek collie, often
encircled with serpents, and with a serpent for a tail, but there is no
certainty as to the number of his heads. Often he is three-headed in art
as in literature, as may be seen conveniently in the reproductions in
Baumeister's Denkmäler