us
barking with triple jaws; his neck bristles with serpents. Ovid in his
_Metamorphoses_, x. 21, makes Orpheus, looking for dear Eurydice in
Tartarus, declare that he did not go down in order that he might chain
the three necks, shaggy with serpents, of the monster begotten of
Medusa. His business also is settled for all time; he is the terrible,
fearless, and watchful janitor, or guardian (_janitor_ or _custos_) of
Orcus, the Styx, Lethe, or the black Kingdom.[9] And so he remains for
modern poets, as when Dante, reproducing Virgil, describes him:[10]

"When Cerberus, that great worm, had seen us
His mouth he opened and his fangs were shown,
And then my leader with his folded palms
Took of the earth, and filling full his hand,
Into those hungry gullets flung it down."

Or Shakespeare, _Love's Labor Lost_, v. ii: "Great Hercules is presented
by this imp whose club killed Cerberus, the three-headed _canis_."

CLASSICAL EXPLANATIONS OF CERBERUS.

Such classical explanations of Cerberus' shape as I have seen are feeble
and foolishly reasonable. Heraclitus, [Greek: Peri apiston] 331, states
that Kerberos had two pups. They always attended their father, and
therefore he appeared to be three-headed. The mythographer
Palaephatos(39) states that Kerberos was considered three-headed from
his name [Greek: Trikarenos] which he obtained from the city Trikarenos
in Phliasia. And a late Roman rationalistic mythographer by the name of
Fulgentius[11] tells us that Petronius defined Cerberus as the lawyer of
Hades, apparently because of his three jaws, or the cumulative glibness
of three tongues. Fulgentius himself has a _fabula_ in which he says
that Cerberus means _Creaboros_, that is, "flesh-eating," and that the
three heads of Cerberus are respectively, infancy, youth, and old age,
through which death has entered the circle of the earth--_per quas
introivit mors in orbem terrarum_.[12]

A MODERN VIEW.

"_Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate_"

Can we bid this "_schwankende Gestalt_," this monstrous vision, floating
about upon the filmy photographs of murky Hades, stand still, emerge
into light, and assume clear and reasonable outlines?

"Hence loathed melancholy of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born."

An American humorist, John Kendrick Bangs, who likes to place his skits
in Hades, steps in "where angels fear to tread," and launches with a
light heart the discussion as to whether Cerberus is one or