page_title: Cerberus
section_title: Cerberus allegorized
hierarchical_section_title: Cerberus / Cerberus allegorized
context_page_description: In Greek mythology, Cerberus, often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. Cerberus was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and is usually described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from multiple parts of his body. Cerberus is primarily known for his capture by Heracles, one of Heracles' twelve labours.
context_section_description: Servius, a medieval commentator on Virgil's Aeneid, derived Cerberus' name from the Greek word creoboros meaning "flesh-devouring" (see above), and held that Cerberus symbolized the corpse-consuming earth, with Heracles' triumph over Cerberus representing his victory over earthly desires. Later the mythographer Fulgentius, allegorizes Cerberus' three heads as representing the three origins of human strife: "nature, cause, and accident", and (drawing on the same flesh-devouring etymology as Servius) as symbolizing "the three ages—infancy, youth, old age, at which death enters the world." The Byzantine historian and bishop Eusebius wrote that Cerberus was represented with three heads, because the positions of the sun above the earth are three — rising, midday, and setting.
  The later Vatican Mythographers repeat and expand upon the traditions of Servius and Fulgentius. All three Vatican Mythographers repeat Servius' derivation of Cerberus' name from creoboros. The Second Vatican Mythographer repeats (nearly word for word) what Fulgentius had to say about Cerberus, while the Third Vatican Mythographer, in another very similar passage to Fugentius', says (more specifically than Fugentius), that for "the philosophers" Cerberus represented hatred, his three heads symbolizing the three kinds of human hatred: natural, causal, and casual (i.e. accidental).
  The Second and Third Vatican Mythographers, note that the three brothers Zeus, Poseidon and Hades each have tripartite insignia, associating Hades' three headed Cerberus, with Zeus' three-forked thunderbolt, and Poseidon's three-pronged trident, while the Third Vatican Mythographer adds that "some philosophers think of Cerberus as the tripartite earth: Asia, Africa, and Europe. This earth, swallowing up bodies, sends souls to Tartarus."
  Virgil described Cerberus as "ravenous" (fame rabida), and a rapacious Cerberus became proverbial. Thus Cerberus came to symbolize avarice, and so, for example, in Dante's Inferno, Cerberus is placed in the Third Circle of Hell, guarding over the gluttons, where he "rends the spirits, flays and quarters them," and Dante (perhaps echoing Servius' association of Cerbeus with earth) has his guide Virgil take up handfuls of earth and throw them into Cerberus' "rapacious gullets."
caption: Virgil feeding Cerberus earth, in the Third Circle of Hell. Illustration from Dante's Inferno by Gustave Doré.
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