Cerberus Cerberus In Greek mythology, Cerberus (; "Kerberos" ), often called the "hound of Hades", is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. Cerberus was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and usually is described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from parts of his body. Cerberus is primarily known for his capture by Heracles, one of Heracles' twelve labours. Descriptions of Cerberus vary, including the number of his heads. Cerberus was usually three-headed, though not always. Cerberus had several multi-headed relatives. His father
The Dog It Was That Died be seen as the mad dog of the poem. Stoppard may have borrowed the idea to use this quotation from British novelist W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 "The Painted Veil", in which the protagonist's husband, bitter at her infidelity, brought her to cholera-stricken China in hopes that she would take ill and die. When he catches cholera instead, he dies with the quotation "The dog it was that died" on his lips. The words also occur in a speech by Wormold, the lead character in Graham Greene's 1958 novel "Our Man in Havana" – also an entertaining tale of Cold War