Mr Caws:
>Then again, maybe Cerberus is a dog-snake hybrid in order to evoke
>the characteristics of two animals.
This is what I think too. The serpent would be the most ancient and primary
animal of the underworld while the canine, being an earthly animal, would
only have been associated later with the underworld and death via the story
of the ordeals of the Mortal Hero.
How? By the very tripartition concept that puts the serpent in the
underworld. By having three labours in the original story, one for each
realm, we see the association between each realm animal (bird=overworld,
serpent=underworld, wolf=earth) and their corresponding gods (*Dye:us,
*PerkWnos, *Yemos). The last god *Yemos is certainly of the earthly realm
(Ymir, Yama) but is also the doorway to the underworld as well. When *Manus
gives *Yemos the vicious wolf (Heracles & Cerberus), the wolf becomes more
than just earthly and is connected with death and the underworld.
See? Everything is nicely structured. So, in all, the canine is not strictly
an underworld character like serpents but the connection is still very much
there. (Maybe the wolf and Ares thing isn't saying much, I admit)
>The placement of Cerberus near a river could betray its serpentine
>origins, or maybe the river is used to represent the barrier between
>the land of the living and the dead, and Cerberus is there to re-
>enforce it.
Well, if the underworld is watery and certainly Cerberus is a resident of
this world, then it's hard to say whether his placement by a river means
anything at all.
- gLeN
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