The Fifth Head of Cerberus The Fifth Head of Cerberus The Fifth Head of Cerberus is the title of both a novella and a single-volume collection of three novellas, written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gene Wolfe, both published in 1972. The novella was included in the anthology "Nebula Award Stories Eight". The title of this collection of novellas is a play on words which refers to Cerberus a three-headed dog from Greek mythology which guarded the gate to the Greek underworld, Hades. In the first novella the protagonist explains that Cerberus represents his own family, its three heads being his father, aunt
The Dog in the Manger the grain, but who nevertheless prevented the horse from being able to eat anything either." The story was first glossed in the 1st century CE lexicon of Diogenianus as "The dog in the manger, concerning those who neither themselves use nor allow others to use: Insofar as the dog neither itself eats the barleycorns, nor allows the horse to". It was twice used in the following century by Greek writer Lucian: in "Remarks addressed to an illiterate book-fancier" and in his play "Timon the Misanthrope". One other contemporary poetic source is a paederastic epigram by Straton of Sardis in the