Cerberus, the Dog of Hades: The History of an Idea

Or Shakespeare, Love’s Labor’s Lost; Act 5, Scene 2:

“Great Hercules is presented by this imp whose club killed Cerberus, the three-headed dog original Latin: canis.”

CLASSICAL EXPLANATIONS OF CERBERUS.

Such classical explanations of Cerberus’ shape as I have seen are feeble and foolishly reasonable. Heraclitus, in his work On Unbelievable Tales original Greek: Περὶ ἀπίστων (33 I), states that Cerberus had two pups. They always attended their father, and therefore he appeared to be three-headed. The mythographer A collector or writer of myths Palaephatos (39) states that Cerberus was considered three-headed because of his name Trikarenos original Greek: Τρικάρηνος, meaning "three-headed", which he obtained from the city Trikarenos in Phliasia. And a late Roman rationalistic mythographer by the name of Fulgentius¹ 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 story original Latin: fabula in which he says that Cerberus means Creaboros, that is, flesh-devouring original: Creaboros is a Latinization of the Greek kreoboros—

¹ See p. 99 of the Teubner edition A famous series of Greek and Latin texts of his writings.