Cerberus, the dog of Hades

While Greece tourist places They are enough attraction to go to visit it, it also has other factors that make it interesting and attract hundreds of fans and professionals of the history and mythology. Mythology is part of a large portion of the history and origin of Greece, one of the countries that hosted the oldest civilizations on the planet, that is why today I bring you one of these mythological wonders, Cerberus, the dog of the god Hades.

Cerberus (pit demon in Greek), it was a dog with three heads and a snake for a tail, was the "pet" of Hades and the guardian of the tartarus gate (the Greek underworld), was in charge of making sure that the dead did not leave or escape from hell, and living humans did not enter without permission. It was located on the banks of the river Acheron in the company of boatman Charon, leading the dead to the underworld.

Its origin is associated on several occasions with the constellation Cetus, in which you can see the gates of the underworld closed and a cerberus-like beast in the center guarding it jealously. Throughout history its appearance was changed several times, sometimes it is said that it had snakes on its back, or that it had 50 or 100 heads instead of 3, but the most traditional way of representing it is with 3 heads and a snake per tail.

While several heroes challenged his courage and managed to elude him, Orpheus (who put him to sleep with his sweet music), or Hermes (who put him to sleep with water from the lethe river), several suffered from his fierceness. Until one day Hercules (Heracles) in one of his twelve jobs managed to beat it. There are several versions about this fact, some say that Hercules kindly asked the dog to let him in and this one ran and gave entrance to the hero, while in other versions Heracles dragged Cerberus out of the underworld, or failing that killed him so he could enter Tartarus.