Cerberus by Jorge Luis Borges — Read

If Hell is a house, the house of Hades, it is natural that it have its watchdog; it is also natural that this dog be fearful. Hesiod's Theogony gives it fifty heads; to make things easier for the plastic arts, this number has been reduced and Cerberus' three heads are now a matter of public record. Virgil speaks of its three throats; Ovid of its threefold bark; Butler compares the triple-crowned tiara of the Pope, who is Heaven's doorman, with the three heads of the dog who is the doorman of Hell (Hudibras, IV, 2). Dante lends it human characteristics which increase its infernal nature: a filthy black beard, clawed hands that in the lashing rain rip at the souls of the damned. It bites, barks, and bares its teeth.

Bringing Cerberus up into the light of day was the last of Hercules' tasks. (‘He drow out Cerberus, the hound of helle,' writes Chaucer in ‘The Monke's Tale'.) Zachary Grey, an English writer of the eighteenth century, in his commentary on Hudibras interprets the adventure in this way: