7/15/2023 0 Comments Cerberus hades download freeAccording to Hesiod, Cerberus had “a cruel trick” to help him with this task: Rather than preventing people from coming in, like most guard dogs, Cerberus’ job was to ensure that nobody left. Hades, the god of the dead, posted Cerberus at the gates of the Underworld. Cerberus was usually represented with only one body, but according to the Athenian tragedian Euripides and the Roman poet Virgil, he had multiple bodies in addition to multiple heads. John Tzetzes, an eleventh-century CE Byzantine poet and scholar, sought to reconcile these conflicting versions by giving Cerberus fifty heads-three of them dog heads, and the rest heads of various other beasts. One notable exception is the Roman poet Horace (65–8 BCE), who gave Cerberus a single head with three tongues, ringed by one hundred snakes. Almost all later sources, however, limited him to just three heads, with snakes along his mane and back, and a snake tail. Pindar, writing in the fifth century BCE, gave Cerberus one hundred heads. According to Hesiod, the earliest author to give a description of him (in the eighth or seventh century BCE), Cerberus had fifty heads. Attributes Appearance and AbilitiesĪncient sources offered conflicting accounts of Cerberus’ appearance. ![]() The epithet trikranos, “three-headed,” was sometimes used for Cerberus. Other sources called him “the hound of Hades.” Titles and Epithets In Homer, Cerberus was called simply “the hound” ( kyōn). Whatever the origins of Cerberus’ name, it is most likely pre-Greek. ![]() Such Indo-European etymologies have been met with skepticism, however. According to Lincoln, both names may have been derived from the Proto-Indo-European root * ger-, meaning “to growl.” Bruce Lincoln, a professor of religion at the University of Chicago, has suggested a connection with Garmr, one of Hel’s guard dogs in Norse mythology. Some have attempted to trace the name to an Indo-European origin through the Sanskrit sarvarā (“spotted”), the epithet of one of the dogs of Yama (the god of death). Modern scholars mostly dismiss this etymology, but they agree on little else. Some ancient sources believed that the name “Cerberus” was derived from the Greek word kreōboros, meaning “flesh-devouring.” ![]() The etymology of Cerberus’ name is uncertain.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |