Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

The twelfth labor was to bring Cerberus from Hades. That hound had three dogs’ heads, a dragon’s tail, and on his back the heads of all sorts of snakes. Before setting out, Heracles went to Eumolpus at Eleusis to be initiated. Foreigners were not then eligible, so he was adopted as son of Pylius; still uncleansed of the slaughter of the centaurs, he could not yet see the mysteries until Eumolpus purified him and then initiated him. He descended by the mouth of Hades at Taenarum in Laconia. The souls fled at his sight—all but Meleager and the Gorgon Medusa. He drew his sword on the Gorgon as if she lived; Hermes taught him she was an empty phantom. Near the gates he found Theseus and Pirithous. Pirithous was bound for having sought Persephone in marriage; both stretched out their hands to be raised. Heracles took Theseus by the hand and brought him up; when he tried to raise Pirithous, the earth quaked and he let go. He rolled away the stone of Ascalaphus. Wanting to give the souls blood, he slaughtered one of Hades’s cattle. Menoetes son of Ceuthonymus, the herdsman, challenged him to wrestle; Heracles crushed his ribs but released him at Persephone’s request. Asking Pluto for Cerberus, he was told he might take the beast if he mastered it without the weapons he carried. At the gates of Acheron, armored and wrapped in the lion’s skin, he locked his arms about the hound’s head; though the dragon of the tail bit him, he held on until the animal yielded. He carried Cerberus up through Troezen, showed him to Eurystheus, and brought him back to Hades. Demeter, for her part, turned Ascalaphus into a short-eared owl. The labor is thus both a katabasis and a rescue story: Eleusinian preparation, confrontation with death’s emptiness (Medusa’s shade), partial salvation of the Attic pair (Theseus freed, Pirithous retained), and a weaponless mastery of the underworld’s watchdog before the temporary display at Mycenae.