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Cerberus
The Underworld (Gates)
Danger Level: 8/10
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Abilities
Multi-headed AwarenessImmortalitySerpent Mane
Lore & Legend
Hound of the Gate
Kerberos is the many-headed dog of Hades, set to keep the dead inside. Hesiod gives him fifty heads; later vase-painters and poets settle on three, with a serpent tail and a mane of snakes. Heracles' last labor is to haul him to the sunlit world and return him unharmed.
Virgil's Aeneas drugs the beast with honeyed cake. The job is architectural, not decorative: the underworld needs a lock, and the lock has teeth.
Primary Sources
“A fearful hound... with brazen voice, watches before the gates of Hades, pitiless, and of evil name.”