CERBERUS
Pluto again conspired, and it was arranged that Persephone should spend four months of the year in Hades and the other eight with the gods. This meant that she had to pass and repass Cerberus constantly.
The second case is that of Orpheus. His wife Eurydice died of a serpent's bite, and her shade was ferried across the Styx by Charon and passed into Hades without challenge from Cerberus. But Orpheus bewailed her loss, saying, as in Glück's wonderful opera, 'Eurydice':
'She is gone, and gone for ever';
and finally resolved to journey to Hades and bring his wife back. With the lute to which he had sung the praises of the gods, and so passed the Sirens in safety,—whereas Ulysses had to order his sailors to bind him to the mast,—he charmed the fierce dog into a deep slumber, and so entered Hades.
He found Eurydice, and Pluto agreed to let her go, provided that Orpheus did not look back before he passed Cerberus. But, when he came to the monster, Eurydice following, he looked back to reassure her, when lo, she vanished again to her place among the shades. Orpheus, in despair, sang again to his lute:
'She is gone, and gone for ever!'
and so, having charmed Cerberus to sleep, passed to the middle world where, like Bacchus, he was torn to pieces by his fellow-mortals.
The third case is that of Æneas, the Trojan prince, who made the journey to Hades to find his lost love. Dido, and to consult his father, Anchises. He repaired to a sibyl dwelling among the mountains, and she conducted him to the gates of the lower regions.
There, over a crag that marked his den, rose the monstrous three-headed dog, his crested snakes bristling, his eyes shooting fire, his jaws greedy for prey. But the sibyl had provided herself with a cake steeped in honey and tinctured with an opiate drug derived from India and now called Cerbera. This she flung to the monster, who
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