Eurystheus had grown weary of heracles and
his victories.
He was out of ideas on how to get rid of him,
except one, to send him to the depths of hades.
No one who entered hades, ever returned, therefore,
he was certain that even the son Zeus would
not return.
So the 12th and most dangerous labor of heracles,
was to travel to the underworld and bring
back Cerberus.
Cerberus was the famed three-headed.
fire-breathing, serpent tailed offspring of
echidna and typhon, that guarded the realm
of hades, preventing the souls of the dead
and visitors who dared enter, from ever leaving.
Prior to his journey, Athena and hermes guided
Heracles on how to travel to the underworld
while still alive, by preparing and versing
him in the Eleusinian Mysteries, while hestia
implored the undead ferryman Charon, to ferry
him across the acheron river.
When heracles got the underworld, he met Theseus
and his friend Pirithous, both of whom had
been enslaved by hades for attempting to abduct
Persephone.
He freed Theseus from the chair of forgetfulness
he was bound.
But when he tried to free Pirithous, the earth
trembled so violently that heracles was force
to leave him behind.
Pirithous desired persephone, so he was doomed
to remain in the underworld for eternity.
Thereafter, heracles reached the throne of
hades, where he humbly asked the grim god
to allow him temporaily take cerberus to the
surface world.
Hades calmly responded that he could do as
he wished, only if he could overpower the
giant hound with his raw strength, doing no
harm to it in the process.
When heracles found cerberus, the two engaged
in a terrible fight.
And after quite a while of struggling and
grunting and growling, the hero managed to
subdue the hound.
Lifting the massive cerberus on his shoulders,
heracles headed out of the underworld, into
the land of the living, straight to palace
of Eurystheus.
Now when Eurystheus saw the hound of hades,
he fled into his large jar, terrified to death,
begging heracles to take it away and promising
to release him from any other labors.
Thus, Cerberus returned to hades, and heracles
was released by eurystheus.
He had served his penance, free to start a
new life.
It is claimed that he joined the Argonauts
for a short while, in their quest for the
golden fleece thereafter.
Heracles would go on to have many other great
adventures, and by the time of his death,
he would be rewarded with immortality as promised,
and reside on olympus, where hera would forgive
him, granting him the hand of Hebe in marriage.
