THE DESCRIPTION OF
TARTARUS
Tartarus is the lowest region of the
world, as far below earth as earth is from heaven.
According to the Greek poet Hesiod, a bronze anvil
falling from heaven would take nine days and nights to
reach earth, and an object would take the same amount of
time to fall from earth into Tartarus. Tartarus is
described as a dank, gloomy pit, surrounded by a wall of
bronze, and beyond that a three-fold layer of night.
Along with Chaos, Earth, and Eros, it is one of the first
entities to exist in the universe.
While Hades is the main realm of the
dead in Greek mythology, Tartarus also contains a number
of characters. In early stories, it is primarily the
prison for defeated gods; the Titans were condemned to
Tartarus after losing their battle against the Olympian
gods, and the hecatoncheires stood over them as guards at
the bronze gates. When Zeus overcomes the monster Typhus,
born from Tartarus and Gaia, he hurls it too into the
same abyss. However, in later myths Tartarus becomes a
place of punishment for sinners. It resembles Hell and is
the opposite of Elysium, the afterlife for the blessed.
When the hero Aeneas visits the underworld, he looks into
Tartarus and sees the torments inflicted on characters
such as the Titans, Tityos, Otus and Ephialtes, and the
Lapiths. Rhadymanthus (and, in some versions, his brother
Minos) judges the dead and assigns punishment.
Tartarus is the lowest abyss beneath
the earth where all waters originate; all rivers flow
into the chasm of Tartarus and flow out of it again.
Tartarus is, they say, a gloomy place as far distant from
earth as earth is from the sky. For, it is said, a brazen
anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would
reach the earth upon the tenth: and again, a brazen anvil
falling from earth nine nights and days would reach
Tartarus upon the tenth. Still others say that Tartarus
yawns deep under the shades, extending down twice as far
as the view upward to Heaven. Tartarus and the Underworld
are the realm of Erebus, which is pure Darkness. Tartarus
is also a place of punishment. Round it runs a fence of
bronze, and night spreads in triple line all about it.
Some say that the gates are of iron and the threshold of
bronze, and others that there is a threefold wall around
it. Around this triple wall flows Pyriphlegethon with its
flames and its clashing rocks. The entrance, in which
there is an enormous portal has pillars of solid adamant
that not even the gods could break. At the top of its
tower of Iron sits the Erinye Tisiphone 1, with her
bloody robe, and sleepless day and night, guards the
entrance.
