Greek PantheonUnderworld
Tartarus
The deepest abyss of the underworld, a dungeon of torment where the Titans were imprisoned and the wicked punished for eternity.
About Tartarus
Pit under the pit
In the Iliad Zeus threatens to hurl gods as far below Hades as heaven is above earth. Hesiod makes Tartarus a bronze-fenced well where the Titans sit after defeat, with a day-long anvil-drop to measure the depth. It is a prison for defeated immortals before it is a rack for wicked humans. Plato and later moralists fill it with famous sinners; Homer does not. No cult of Tartarus is attested. The name is a cosmic distance, not a temple.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Hesiod, Theogony
About this entry
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.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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