Hercules And Cerberus Research Paper

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Recommended: Essay question about Hercules and his 12 labors

Mariah Gwin
December 11, 2015
The Art of Myth: Sacred Stories Brought to Life
Hercules and Cerberus
Introduction
Cerberus: the three-headed hellhound who guards the entrance of the Underworld, preventing the living to enter and the dead to leave. Hercules was tasked with twelve labors, his twelfth labor being the most difficult of all, and that labor was comprised of traveling to the Underworld and capturing the hellhound that guards the gate. “[Jove] once sent me here to fetch the hell-hound- for he did not think he could find anything harder for me than this, but I got the hound out of Hades and brought him to him” (Homer). Zeus (Jove) sent Hercules to the Underworld on his twelfth and final labor to retrieve Cerberus, for that was the hardest …show more content…

The hydria shows that on each of Cerberus’ heads and front-feet is a serpent, and down one head’s neck are a row of serpents. It is also quite obvious how large Cerberus is compared to King Eurystheus and Hercules. Since Homer does not describe Cerberus other than saying that Cerberus is a hellhound, it is not possible to compare the size of the Cerberus on the hydria with the size of the Cerberus in The Odyssey. Even so, it is possible to compare Cerberus on the hydria to Cerberus in the film Hercules. The most obvious difference between the film and the hydria would be that the film represents Cerberus as three wolves and the hydria shows Cerberus with three heads. Additionally, the hydria shows Cerberus as quite large next to Hercules and King Eurystheus, while the wolves in the film are about the size of an average wolf, which compared to Hercules and Eurystheus in the film, is much smaller than the hydria …show more content…

Hercules’ twelfth labor was his final and most challenging task. From The Odyssey to the film Hercules to the Caeretan black-figure hydria, the god that sends Hercules on that most difficult labor, or even if he is sent on the labor varies. Additionally, in most cases, Cerberus is captured, but in some interpretations—likely for entertainment purposes—Cerberus is instead slain. In The Odyssey, Zeus (Jove) sent Hercules to the Underworld to capture and bring back Cerberus. Therefore, in The Odyssey, Zeus was the one who sent Hercules, and he sent Hercules not to kill, but to capture

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