The three-headed (or, according to Hesiod's Theogony, fifty-headed) dog who guarded the gates to the Underworld. A child of Typhon and Echidna, Cerberus is described as a hellhound with a mane of snakes, the claws of a lion, and the tail of a deadly snake. As Heracles' twelfth and final labor, he had to bring Cerberus back from the Underworld, which he did following an intense wrestling match. Prior to the task, Heracles was instructed in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and freed Theseus from being stuck on a chair in Hades. In Virgil's Aeneid, the Cumaean Sibyl gives Cerberus three drugged honey cakes so that she and Aeneas can enter the Underworld.

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1. The three-headed (or, according to Hesiod's Theogony, fifty-headed) dog who guarded the gates to the Underworld. A child of Typhon and Echidna, Cerberus is described as a hellhound with a mane of snakes, the claws of a lion, and the tail of a deadly snake. As Heracles' twelfth and final labor, he had to bring Cerberus back from the Underworld, which he did following an intense wrestling match. Prior to the task, Heracles was instructed in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and freed Theseus from being stuck on a chair in Hades. In Virgil's Aeneid, the Cumaean Sibyl gives Cerberus three drugged honey cakes so that she and Aeneas can enter the Underworld.