The Source
I don’t know about other dogs, but my dad’s chocolate labrador has enough drool to create a modest stream and he’s just a normal sized dog with a single head. Hades’ own companion with his size and three heads must take an entire janitorial staff to clean up after. That is, unless this mighty river of saliva were diverted to other causes…say, creating a river no one can cross without the help of a certain ferryman?
Ugh, that job just got a little less appealing…
Cerberus, the monstrous offpsring of the serpent-woman Echidna and Typhon, the fire breathing giant locked away by the Greek gods, was the terrifying guardian of the gates of the underworld. Having a taste for living flesh, the beast was said to allow only the dead to pass, choosing to devour any would-be trespassers into the realm of Hades, save a few notable exceptions. While descriptions of the beast differ, the most famous version is the one shown in the comic, a fairly normal dog with three heads and an impressive size. Some images and texts describe him as having as many as fifty heads or even include a mane of snakes, but that seems a little excessive to me. A monstrous guard dog with three heads is scary enough.
Cerberus was such an effective guard dog that only a few heroes managed to make their way past him and into the underworld on various errands. All of them, save one, did so through trickery. Aeneas, with the help of a sibyl who drugged Cerberus managed to sneak past, Odysseus managed to get into the underworld seemingly by avoiding the front gates, and Orpheus, using his unearthly talent with music charmed this hellish guardian with his lyre. Hence the saying, music soothes even the savage beast!
Only Heracles was able to overcome Cerberus with strength in direct combat, taking the dog and choking it in his arms until it passed out. This was his Twelfth and final labor, to conquer Hades’ guard dog and drag it to the surface, which he accomplished in spectacular fashion.
Throughout the thousands of years that Cerberus spent keeping a watchful eye on the entrance to the underworld, only these four living men made it by him. That’s a pretty impressive record, though one has to imagine there couldn’t have been many people dying to get in.
Or maybe there were?
Well if they weren’t dying when they came in, they certainly were when they got to the gates.
On an Unrelated Note:
We’re back with more comics! For those of you that haven’t joined the facebook page or follow me on twitter, I sold my old macbook pro last week and used the proceeds to build a brand new desktop computer! It’s wonderful having all this hard disk space and the ability to work at decent resolutions without slowdown. I do apologize for the lack of comics last week, I didn’t get my parts until Wednesday and then had to spend the next couple of days setting up programs and shortcuts and brushes as well as getting all my files from external hard drives. Anyway, we’re all set now so the comic train continues! There will be a comic on Friday!
Thanks to Liz for helping me get back in the swing of writing and helping to come up with this strip!
Discussion (20) ¬
Psyche drugged the good dog too.
Didn’t Dionysus also manage to get into Hades by avoiding the front entrance and swimming across the Alcyonian lake with the help of shepherd Prosymnus ?
Tragically, if you want a real flood, when an older, large dog becomes incontinent…
Nah, that gets piped to the Overworld…
I believe the outlet is somewhere in the Amazon rainforest…
if I recall correctly, the outlet is called the “Fountain of Youth”.
I had to re-read the first sentence to parse it properly. When I first read “chocolate lab” I started thinking Willy Wonka, and it took a while to work out that it meant something else. I mean, I can imagine there’d be lots of drool at a chocolate laboratory too.
hahah Good point! I changed it over to “chocolate Labrador”. Hopefully that’s a little more clear and a little less Wonka. 🙂
Great!
Now I want some chocolate!
I am curious though, with your knowledge of Mythology, K…
Could Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory could be based off an older Myth?
Well in a sense one could compare it to the book of Job (in the basic sense of the test of faith, Charlie is ‘blessed’ by being welcomed into Wonka’s factory, and seems to lose it all due to Wonka’s caprice, but in passing the test receives the even greater blessing of the factory itself, just as Job, in keeping faith to God, is blessed with even greater prosperity than before the test). There might be a better example, but that one struck me as rather apt. And of course it well may be coincidence (or at least unconcious, since no doubt the author was knew the book of Job, at least in passing).
I’ve always felt sorry for Cerberus,
I mean, I really doubt they feed him nearly enough, after all why else would he attack living folks?
I also doubt they take him out for walks or even give him time off that chain. Makes me really want to go and cut the chain for the poor thing, and let him go free.
Seriously, you’d think that the least they would do would be to thank him, but no they thank him too stupid. To top it off, when he was tricked, they beat him! They were really mad when Orpheus, lulled him to sleep.
Which brings up another point, do they ever let him sleep or at least rest?
No! Hell, maybe well hellish, but that doesn’t give them the right to mistreat Cerberus!
/me end rant
Of course they tried not to feed him, he’s a giant three headed dog. Would you want to scoop up after one of those?
Incidentally, in some myths, the heads would take turns sleeping. So at least two of them were on guard at any time.
Actually,
I think that must be the where the stuff politicians spew forth comes from!
Hades has a deal to pipe Cerberus’s wastes to the Overworld, where it is spewed forth by those full of themselves. (Not just politicians!)
Where do you think bigotry and hatred comes from?
They are just the “odours” if you will of all that waste.
O-oh no.. poor Achilles!
GEEZ, Scott, you’re so irresponsible. You just left us all hanging here, with bated breath (I passed out four times.) while you were off in HAPPY COMPUTER LAND building your new computer.
It sure would have been friggin’ FANTASTIC if there was some humorous mythology themed comic I could have read to stave off boredom yesterday. I thought “Oh! It’s tuesday, let’s see what haberdashery lil’ K is up to!” BUT NOOOOOO, you were off, selfishly building a computer with absolutely no consideration to those of us wanting to see lil’ K and his hat making hijinks on TUESDAY, like you SAID.
Nah, not really, it’s cool.
D’awwwww, Cerby is sucha cutey patootie
I love these comics more than anything! Might I suggest some H.P. Lovecraft if you’re doing mythology, it’s interesting, but otherwise I’m loving the cerberus lol, reminds me of my friend’s old dog
There we go, back in the RRS-folder you go Happle Tea 🙂 Great that you got a new computer K, upgraded my own with a new motherboard and a Geforce 670 card recently. Looking forward to more awesome strips stemming from your new hardware. Wait that came out a bit wrong.. oh well.
So if the poison river is the drool of cerberus, what are the other 4 rivers made of?
First: I found your comics last night, and I’ve been binging.
Second: As a side note “Kerberos” actually means “spotted”. So… Hades named his ferocious guard dog that everyone is scared of “Spot”.
Ew…