The Twelfth Labor: Hercules and Cerberus

Author: Seneca

Time Period: 1 CE–500 CE

Country or Culture: Rome

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

Hercules is a warrior of legendary might, the son of the great god Jupiter and a mortal woman. At the bidding of Jupiter’s jealous wife, the goddess Juno, Hercules is ordered by Eurystheus, king of Argos, to perform twelve daunting tasks.

Having completed eleven labors, each one seemingly impossible, Hercules now faces his final task. This labor is perhaps the most frightening of all: Hercules is ordered to enter the underworld, defeat the fearsome demon dog Cerberus, and bring the creature back to Eurystheus in submission. This three-headed beast waits inside the land of the dead, guarding the only exit so that the souls of the deceased cannot escape back into the world of the living and wandering mortals are likewise kept at bay.

Hercules descends into the underworld via a chasm located where Sparta meets the sea. He reaches Tartarus, the home of Pluto, god of the underworld, and approaches the river Styx, where Charon, the ferryman, is carrying shades across the water. Hercules pushes through the crowd of waiting shades and demands that Charon carry him across. When Charon objects, Hercules subdues him and steals his boat.

On the other side of the river is the home of Pluto, where Cerberus stands guard. Upon seeing Hercules, Cerberus bays so loudly that even the ghosts are frightened by him, and as he growls, Hercules sees the snakes and vipers that twirl around the dog’s shaggy head and entwine themselves within his tail. As Hercules lunges toward the beast, however, even Cerberus experiences a moment of fear, realizing the mortal’s strength. Wearing the head and hide of the Nemean lion, which he slew in his first labor, Hercules begins to pound Cerberus viciously with his club, sparing none of his great strength in the onslaught. After a long while, Cerberus is eventually so exhausted that he yields, lowering all three of his menacing heads onto the ground in surrender.

As Pluto and his wife, Proserpine, look on and shiver, Hercules demands a gift, and they give him the hero Theseus, whom they previously trapped in the underworld. Hercules then binds Cerberus in chains and, accompanied by Theseus, leads the shamed beast away from the underworld. While at first Cerberus is calm, exhausted and beaten from the long battle, as soon as Hercules crosses into the light of the sun, the beast is roused again, having never seen such intense light. The dog kicks up his legs and struggles to drag Hercules back to Pluto with him, but Hercules summons the last of his strength and, with Theseus’s help, overcomes the beast yet again. Hercules leads the defeated animal to Eurystheus, completing his twelfth labor.

SIGNIFICANCE

Hercules is perhaps the most famous hero of Greek and Roman mythology, and the tales of his labors continue to inspire literature and theater in the modern day. As the final labor in his long quest, his battle with Cerberus intensifies the struggle between mortality and godliness that so often defines the hero. The first-century CE Roman playwright Seneca tells this story in his play Hercules Furens. Unlike earlier versions of the story, in which Hercules (known in Greek as Heracles) kills his family in a fit of madness and is sentenced to perform his twelve labors as penance, Seneca’s retelling has Hercules succumb to insanity and commit his murders immediately after completing his last labor. In Seneca’s version, both the labors and Hercules’s ensuing madness are orchestrated by Juno as a result of her hatred for her husband’s son.

Although his father is Jupiter, the most powerful god in the Roman pantheon, Hercules also has a mortal mother, which makes him a mortal rather than an undying deity. He is, however, an incredibly powerful and gifted warrior, which puts him in a somewhat unusual liminal space between immortality and humanity. Because of his hybrid nature, Hercules manages to represent the highest aspirations of humanity as well as its limitations, both of which are brought into extreme tension when he battles Cerberus. While Hercules fights an incredible number of fierce and deadly beasts during his labors, gods among them, the battle with Cerberus is significant because of the dog’s role in mythology. Guarding the border between the underworld and the land of the living, Cerberus literally protects the line between life and death. He is also a creature that only desires living meat, a feature that emphasizes his role as an enemy of mortals and a friend to the dead. For Hercules to overcome the beast is for him to overpower the force that would keep him dead were his physical life to end.

Even though Hercules does manage to defeat the beast, he does not change the order of the Roman universe as a whole. Cerberus is terrified and upset by his voyage into the living world, and the very sight of sunlight seems to be even more upsetting to him than his defeat by the hero. However, in most versions of the story (though not Seneca’s), as soon as Hercules shows the defeated animal to Eurystheus, he returns Cerberus to the underworld, allowing him once again to protect the barrier between life and death. These concessions speak both to the strength of Hercules and to the importance of the order of the world. Hercules is a legendary hero, the greatest in all mythology, and as such, he reluctantly wins the respect of the gods and an immortal position among them; in later antiquity, cults worshipping Hercules as a god became somewhat popular. However, the forces he overcomes rise again to power, with Cerberus continuing to stand guard beside the god Pluto for all time. Hercules is a folk hero, a mortal man who rises to greatness, and his myth stands as testament to the possibility of godliness in all mortals as well as to the incredible losses and suffering that await on the path to deification.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Lutz, R. C. “Seneca the Younger.” Magill’s Survey of World Literature. Ed. Steven G. Kellman. Rev. ed. Vol. 5. Pasadena: Salem, 2009. 2325–30. Print.

Morgan, Pauline. “Hercules and His Twelve Labors.” Cyclopedia of Literary Places. Ed. R. Baird Shuman and R. Kent Rasmussen. Vol. 2. Pasadena: Salem, 2003. 517–18. Print.

Seneca. Hercules Furens. Seneca’s Tragedies. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. Vol. 1. London: Heinemann, 1917. 1–119. Print.