Tartarus — The Deepest Abyss
⚡ Quick Facts
The Abyss
Tartarus was both a place and a primordial deity — one of the first beings to emerge from Chaos at the creation of the universe. As a location, it was the deepest region of existence, as far beneath the Underworld as the earth is beneath the sky. Hesiod wrote that a bronze anvil would fall from the surface of the earth for nine days and nine nights before reaching Tartarus.
Surrounded by walls of bronze and wrapped in triple layers of night, Tartarus was the ultimate prison. After the Titanomachy, Zeus hurled the defeated Titans into Tartarus, where the Hecatoncheires stood guard at its bronze gates.
Famous Punishments
Tartarus was the destination for those who committed the gravest offenses against the gods:
Sisyphus was condemned to roll a massive boulder up a hill for eternity. Each time he neared the summit, the stone rolled back to the bottom.
Tantalus stood in a pool of water beneath fruit trees. When he reached for fruit, the branches pulled away. When he bent to drink, the water receded. He suffered eternal hunger and thirst — the origin of the word "tantalize."
Ixion was bound to a spinning wheel of fire for eternity, punished for attempting to seduce Hera.
The Danaïdes — the fifty daughters of Danaus — were condemned to fill a bottomless jar with water, endlessly carrying and pouring to no effect, as punishment for murdering their husbands on their wedding night.
Hesiod's map of the abyss
The Theogony gives the most detailed early description of Tartarus. It lies as far below the earth as the earth lies below the sky. A bronze fence runs around it, and Night is poured around its neck in three layers. Above it grow the roots of the earth and of the barren sea. Poseidon fitted it with bronze gates, and the Hundred-Handers Cottus and Gyges stand guard on behalf of Zeus. Briareus, the third, has been given Poseidon's daughter Cymopoleia as his wife. Near the entrance stand the house of Night, where Night and Day greet each other as they cross the bronze threshold, and the houses of Sleep and Death. Atlas stands there holding up the sky. Hesiod also calls Tartarus a vast chasm. Even a god, he says, would not reach its floor within a year once through the gates, but would be tossed about by terrible storms. Even the gods shudder at it.
Homer agrees on the depth. In Iliad 8 Zeus threatens any god who disobeys him: he will throw them down into murky Tartarus, deep below the earth, with iron gates and a bronze threshold, as far beneath Hades as heaven is above the earth. Later in the same book he tells Hera that Iapetus and Cronus sit there with no sunlight and no breeze.
Tartarus the god
Hesiod lists Tartarus among the very first beings, after Chaos and Gaia, as "misty Tartarus in the depths of the broad-pathed earth," followed by Eros. He is a personified power as well as a place. With Gaia he fathers Typhon, the last and greatest challenger to Zeus. Apollodorus also makes him the father of the serpent-woman Echidna, though Hesiod gives her different parents. In the parody theogony sung by the chorus of Aristophanes' Birds, Eros mates with winged Chaos in broad Tartarus and hatches the race of birds before the gods exist.
Who was imprisoned there, and by whom
Tartarus was used as a prison long before the Titanomachy. Apollodorus says Uranus first threw the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers into Tartarus. Cronus freed them to help overthrow his father, then locked them up again. Zeus released them on Gaia's advice, killing their jailer, a monstrous female named Campe. After the war the defeated Titans took their place, with the Hundred-Handers now as guards. Cronus was not always left there. Pindar and a passage added to Hesiod's Works and Days say Zeus released him to rule the Isles of the Blessed.
Ancient writers did not agree on who else belonged there, and much depends on the period. In Homer's Odyssey 11, Tityos, Tantalus and Sisyphus are seen in the realm of the dead generally, which Odysseus reaches at the edge of the world. The poem never says they are in Tartarus. The idea of Tartarus as a section of the underworld set aside for human sinners is mainly later. Plato's myths in the Gorgias and Phaedo send incurable souls to Tartarus forever. Souls that can be cured are thrown in, then washed out after a year by the rivers to beg forgiveness from those they wronged. Virgil's Aeneid 6 offers the fullest Roman picture: a fortress ringed by the fiery river Phlegethon, with the Fury Tisiphone at the gate and Rhadamanthus judging inside. Its prisoners include the Titans, the Aloadae, Salmoneus, who imitated Zeus's thunder, and Tityos.
Some famous punishments shift location from source to source. Pindar has Ixion bound to a winged four-spoked wheel that spins through the air, not under the earth. The Danaids and their leaking jars do not appear in Homer or Hesiod at all and become standard only in later writers. Not every daughter of Danaus was punished: Hypermnestra spared her husband Lynceus, and their descendants included Perseus and Heracles. Readers sometimes also confuse Tartarus with the underworld as a whole, or treat it as the opposite of Elysium in Homer. In the earliest poets it is a separate pit far below Hades. It was meant for the enemies of the gods, not for ordinary wrongdoers.
The name survives in an unexpected place. The Second Epistle of Peter (2:4) uses the Greek verb tartaroō, "to cast into Tartarus," for God's imprisonment of the angels who sinned.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 116–119 and 720–819 — Tartarus among the first beings, and the full description of the abyss, its gates, its guards and the houses of Night, Sleep and Death.
- Homer, Iliad 8.13–16 and 8.478–481 — Zeus's threat to hurl disobedient gods into Tartarus, and Iapetus and Cronus imprisoned there.
- Apollodorus, Library 1.1.2–1.2.1 — Uranus imprisons the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers, and Zeus kills Campe and frees them.
- Plato, Phaedo 111e–114c — Tartarus as the great chasm into which all rivers flow, and the fate of curable and incurable souls.
- Virgil, Aeneid 6.548–627 — the Sibyl describes Tartarus's walls, Phlegethon, Tisiphone and its prisoners to Aeneas.
- Pindar, Pythian 2 — Ixion's punishment on the winged wheel.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tartarus the same as Hades?
No. Hades (the realm) is where the ordinary dead go. Tartarus lies far beneath it. Early poets describe it as a prison for defeated gods and monsters, and only later sources make it the punishment zone for wicked humans.
How deep is Tartarus?
Hesiod says a bronze anvil would fall nine days and nights from heaven to earth, and another nine from earth to Tartarus. In other words, it lies as far below the earth as the sky is above it.
Who guards Tartarus?
In Hesiod, the Hundred-Handers Cottus and Gyges. In Apollodorus's account of the earlier imprisonment, the jailer was Campe. Virgil gives the job to the Fury Tisiphone.
Are Tartarus and Gaia the parents of Typhon?
Yes, in Hesiod's Theogony. One alternative tradition, in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, makes Typhon the son of Hera alone.