Cerberus, The Dog of Hades | Page 2

married couple, who have died at the same time, crossing in Charon's ferry. As they are approaching the other bank of the Styx, where a three-headed Cerberus is awaiting them, the girl seems afright and is upheld by her male companion.[5] On the other hand, a bronze in Naples shows the smiling boy Herakles engaged in strangling two serpents, one with each hand. The figure rests on a cylindrical base upon which are depicted eight of the wonderful deeds which Herakles performs later on. By a rope he leads a two-headed Cerberus from Hades.[6]
This last of the wonderful deeds of Herakles is a favorite theme of vase pictures. Herakles is regularly accompanied by Hermes and Athena; the dog, whose marvelous shape Homer fails to reveal, is generally two-headed. Such a vase may be seen in Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, ii. 131.[7] Or still more conveniently, Professor Norton has reproduced[8] an amphora in the Louvre with a picture of the dicephalous Kerberos. Upon the forehead of each of the two heads rises a serpent. Herakles in tunic and lion's skin, armed with bow, quiver, and sword, stoops towards the dog. He holds a chain in his left hand, while he stretches out his right with a petting gesture. Between the two is a tree, against which leans the club of Herakles. Behind him stands Athena.
CERBERUS IN ROMAN AND MODERN LITERATURE.
Neither Greek literature, nor Greek art, however, really seems to fix either the shape or nature of Kerberos; it was left to the Roman poets to say the last word about him. They finally settle the number of his heads, or the number of his bodies fused in one. He is triceps "three-headed," triplex or tergeminus "threefold," triformis "of three bodies," or simply Tricerberus. Tibullus says explicitly that he has both three heads and three tongues: cui tres sint lingu? tergeminumque caput. Virgil, in the ?neid, vi. 417, has huge Cerberus barking with triple jaws; his neck bristles with serpents. Ovid in his Metamorphoses, x. 21, makes Orpheus, looking for dear Eurydice in Tartarus, declare that he did not go down in order that he might chain the three necks, shaggy with serpents, of the monster begotten of Medusa. His business also is settled for all time; he is the terrible, fearless, and watchful janitor, or guardian (janitor or custos) of Orcus, the Styx, Lethe, or the black Kingdom.[9] And so he remains for modern poets, as when Dante, reproducing Virgil, describes him:[10]
"When Cerberus, that great worm, had seen us His mouth he opened and his fangs were shown, And then my leader with his folded palms Took of the earth, and filling full his hand, Into those hungry gullets flung it down."
Or Shakespeare, Love's Labor Lost, v. ii: "Great Hercules is presented by this imp whose club killed Cerberus, the three-headed canis."
CLASSICAL EXPLANATIONS OF CERBERUS.
Such classical explanations of Cerberus' shape as I have seen are feeble and foolishly reasonable. Heraclitus, [Greek: Peri apist?n] 331, states that Kerberos had two pups. They always attended their father, and therefore he appeared to be three-headed. The mythographer Palaephatos(39) states that Kerberos was considered three-headed from his name [Greek: Trikarênos] which he obtained from the city Trikarenos in Phliasia. And a late Roman rationalistic mythographer by the name of Fulgentius[11] tells us that Petronius defined Cerberus as the lawyer of Hades, apparently because of his three jaws, or the cumulative glibness of three tongues. Fulgentius himself has a fabula in which he says that Cerberus means Creaboros, that is, "flesh-eating," and that the three heads of Cerberus are respectively, infancy, youth, and old age, through which death has entered the circle of the earth--per quas introivit mors in orbem terrarum.[12]
A MODERN VIEW.
"Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate"
Can we bid this "schwankende Gestalt," this monstrous vision, floating about upon the filmy photographs of murky Hades, stand still, emerge into light, and assume clear and reasonable outlines?
"Hence loathed melancholy of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born."
An American humorist, John Kendrick Bangs, who likes to place his skits in Hades, steps in "where angels fear to tread," and launches with a light heart the discussion as to whether Cerberus is one or more dogs. The city of Cimmeria in Hades, having tried asphalt pavement, which was found too sloppy for that climate, and Nicholson wood pavement, which kept taking fire, decides on Belgian blocks. In order to meet the new expense a dog-tax is imposed. Since Cerberus belongs to Hades as a whole, the state must pay his tax, and is willing enough to do so--on Cerberus as one dog. The city, however, endeavors to collect on three dogs--one license for each head. Two infernal coppers, sent to impound Cerberus, fare not well, one of them being badly chewed up by Cerberus, the other nabbed bodily and thrown into the