Mythographia

    Cerberus

    Three-headed guard dog of the underworld.

    Cerberus is the monstrous three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the Greek underworld.

    By Mythographia Editorial Team Reviewed by Mythographia Editorial Team

    Quick Answer

    Cerberus is the fearsome multi-headed hound of Hades, stationed at the gates of the underworld. He prevents the living from entering and the dead from leaving, and was captured alive by Heracles as one of his twelve labors.

    Core Myth

    Cerberus was the offspring of the monsters Typhon and Echidna, making him a sibling of the Hydra, the Chimera, and the Nemean Lion. He was described as having three heads (though some sources give him fifty or even a hundred), a serpent for a tail, and snakes along his back. Cerberus stood guard at the gates of the underworld, allowing the dead to enter but preventing anyone from leaving. Only a few mortals ever passed him: Orpheus charmed him with music, the Sibyl drugged him with a honey cake, and Heracles wrestled and subdued him barehanded as his final labor — the only time Cerberus left the underworld.

    Later Traditions

    In Dante's Inferno, Cerberus guards the third circle of Hell. The creature has remained a standard symbol of impassable barriers and the finality of death in Western culture.

    Related Entities

    Sources

    1. Hesiod, Theogony— primary
    2. Apollodorus, Bibliotheca— primary
    3. Virgil, Aeneid— primary
    4. Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)— secondary