цербер и керберос

"Once, they say, the gate-wrecking, unconquerable son [Herakles] of thunder-flashing Zeus went down to the house of slender-ankled Persephone to fetch up to the light from Hades the jagged-toothed dog [Kerberos, Cerberus], son of unapproachable Ekhidna. There he perceived the spirits of wretched mortals by the waters of Kokytos, like the leaves buffeted by the wind over the bright sheep-grazed headlands of Ida."

Bacchylides, Fragment 5 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) :

"And before them [the halls of Haides and Persephone] a dreaded hound (deinos kunos) [Kerberos, Cerberus], on watch, who has no pity, but a vile stratagem: as people go in he fawns on all, with actions of his tail and both ears, but he will not let them go back out, but lies in wait for them and eats them up, when he catches any going back through the gates."

"Typhaon . . . was joined in love to her [Ekhidna] . . . And next again she bore the unspeakable, unmanageable Kerberos (Cerberus), the savage, the bronze-barking dog of Haides, fifty-headed, and powerful, and without pity."

Hesiod, Theogony 310 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :

"[The ghost of Herakles addresses Odysseus in Hades:] ‘He [Eurystheus] once sent me even here [to Haides] to fetch away the hound of Haides, for he thought no task could be more fearsome for me than that. But I brought the hound out of Haides' house and up to earth, because Hermes helped me on my way, and gleaming-eyed Athene.’"

Homer, Odyssey 11. 623 ff (trans. Shewring) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :

"If in the wiliness of my heart I [Athene] had had thoughts like his, when Herakles was sent down to Haides of the Gates, to hale back from Erebos (the Dark) the hound of the grisly death god (Haides Stygeros), never would he have got clear of the steep-dripping water Styx." [N.B. In Homer the dog is only named as the "the hound of Haides." Hesiod is the first author to call it Kerberos (Cerberus).]

Homer, Iliad 8. 366 ff (trans. Lattimore) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :

Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

CE′RBERUS (Kerberos), the many-headed dog that guarded the entrance of Hades, is mentioned as early as the Homeric poems, but simply as "the dog," and without the name of Cerberus. (Il. viii. 368, Od. xi. 623.) Hesiod, who is the first that gives his name and origin, calls him (Theog. 311) fifty-headed and a son of Typhaon and Echidna. Later writers describe him as a monster with only three heads, with the tail of a serpent and a mane consisting of the heads of various snakes. (Apollod. ii. 5. § 12; Eurip. Here. fur. 24, 611; Virg. Aen. vi. 417; Ov. Met. iv. 449.) Some poets again call him many-headed or hundred-headed. (Horat. Carm. ii. 13. 34; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 678; Senec. Here. fur. 784.) The place where Cerberus kept watch was according to some at the mouth of the Acheron, and according to others at the gates of Hades, into which he admitted the shades, but never let them out again.

[1.2] (Bacchylides Frag 5, Ovid Metamorphoses 7.412)

[1.1] & (Hesiod Theogony 310, Quintus Smyrnaeus 6.260, Hyginus Pref & Fab 30)

Herakles was sent to fetch Kerberos forth from the underworld as one of his twelve labours, a task which he accomplished through the grace of .

KERBEROS (or Cerberus) was the gigantic hound which guarded the gates of . He was posted to prevent ghosts of the dead from leaving the underworld. Kerberos was described as a three-headed dog with a serpent's tail, a mane of snakes, and a lion's claws. Some say he had fifty heads, though this number might have included the heads of his serpentine mane.

C6th B.C., Musée du Louvre

Heracles & Cerberus, Caeretan black-figure

Κυνα του Αιδου

Κερβερος

CERBERUS : Three-headed guard dog of Hades, labor Heracles ; Greek mythology ; pictures : KERBEROS