Extract

Cerberus (Κέρβερος), monstrous hound who guards the entrance to the Underworld, often called simply ‘the dog of Hades’, ‘the dog’. Hesiod makes him a child of *Echidna and *Typhon, ‘brass-voiced and fifty-headed’ (Theog. 311 f.); three heads are more normal in literary descriptions and in art, while Attic vase-painters usually make do with two. A shaggy mane runs down his back, and he may sprout writhing snakes. Despite his impressive appearance, however, he failed to keep out *Orpheus, who lulled him to sleep with music; while *Heracles (with Athena's help) even managed to chain him up and drag him away to the upper world, where in a rerun of the conclusion to the labour of the Erymanthian boar he terrified *Eurystheus with the captive beast. The scene was already depicted in Archaic art on the so-called ‘Throne of *Amyclae’ (Paus. 3. 18. 13); a Caeretan hydria in the Louvre handles the theme with magnificent exuberance.