Tartarus

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This article is about deity and the place in Greek mythology. For other uses, see Tartarus (disambiguation).

In Greek mythology, below heaven, earth, and hades is Tartarus, or Tartaros. It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering. While almost all the dead were said to go to Hades, the gods cast the very worst mortal sinners and immortal enemies into Tartarus for endless punishment. As a place of punishment, it is similar to the Christian Hell, Judaic Gehenna, pagan Netherworld, Hindu Naraka, Chinese Di Yu, Islamic Jahannam, and Roman Paradise. Hades, on the other hand, is more similar to Old Testament Sheol.

The New Testament mentions Tartarus by name once, where it is used to mean a dark dungeon where the rebellious angles are imprisoned.

Like other primal entities (such as the earth and time), Tartarus is also a deity.

1 Tartarus in Greek Mythology
2 Roman Mythology's Tartarus
3 New Testament
4 See also
5 Notes and References
6 External links

[edit] Tartarus in Greek Mythology

The Greek Underworld
Residents:
Persephone Hades Minos Aeacus	Rhadamanthys Charon Cerberus
Geography:
Acheron Cocytus Tartarus Lethe Elysion	Styx Phlegethon Asphodel Meadows Erebus
Famous inmates:
Ixion Sisyphus	Tantalus The Titans
Related:
Greek mythology	Greek religion

In Greek mythology, Tartarus is both a deity and a place in the underworld even lower than Hades. In ancient orphic sources and in the mystery schools Tartaros is also the unbounded first-existing "thing" from which the Light and the cosmos is born.

In Hesiod's Theogony, c. 700 BCE, the deity Tartarus was the son of Aether and Gaia, and father of Typhon and Echidna.

As for the place, the Greek poet Hesiod asserts that a bronze anvil falling from heaven would fall 9 days before it reached the Earth. The anvil would take nine more days to fall from Earth to Tartarus. In The Iliad, Zeus asserts that Tartarus is "as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth." As a place so far from the sun and so deep in the earth, Tartarus is hemmed in by three layers of night, which surround a bronze wall which in turn encompasses Tartarus. It is a dank and wretched pit engulfed in murky gloom. It is one of the primordial objects which sprung from Chaos, the Abyss. Along with Tartarus, Gaia (Earth), and Eros, emerged into the universe.

While, according to Greek mythology, Hades is the place of the dead, Tartarus also has a number of inhabitants. When Cronus, the ruling Titan, came to power he imprisoned the Cyclopes in Tartarus. Zeus released them to aid in his conflict with the Titan giants. The gods of Olympus eventually defeated the Titans. Many, but not all of the Titans, were cast into Tartarus. Atlas, Cronus, Epimetheus, Metis, Menoetius, and Prometheus are some Titans who were not banished to Tartarus. In Tartarus, prisoners were guarded by giants, each with 50 enormous heads and 100 strong arms, who were called Hecatonchires. Later, when Zeus overcame the monster Typhon, the offspring of Tartarus and Gaia, he threw it, too, into the same pit.

Originally, Tartarus was used only to confine dangers to the gods of Olympus. In later mythologies, Tartarus became the place where the punishment fits the crime. For example Sisyphus, who was both a thief and murderer, was condemned for eternity to push a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down at the top. Also found there was Ixion, the first human to spill the blood of a relative. He caused his father in-law to fall into a pit of burning coals to avoid paying the bride-price. The fitting punishment was to spend eternity on a flaming wheel. Tantalus, who enjoyed the confidence of the gods by conversing and dining with them, shared the food and the secrets of the gods with his friends. The fitting punishment was to be immersed up to his neck in cool water, which disappeared whenever he attempted to quench his thirst, and luscious grapes above him that leapt up when he tried to take a hold.

Rhadamanthus, Aeacus and Minos were the judges of the dead and chose who went to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus judged Asian souls; Aeacus judged European souls and Minos was the deciding vote and judge of the Greek. Zeus also sealed Cronus with special doors.

The concept that sinners were cast under the ground to be punished in accordance with their sins appears in Plato's Myth of Er, written c. 300 BCE.

[edit] Roman Mythology's Tartarus

In Roman mythology, Tartarus is the place where sinners are sent. Virgil describes it in the Aeneid as a gigantic place, surrounded by the flaming river Phlegethon and triple walls to prevent sinners from escaping from it. It is guarded by a hydra with fifty black gaping jaws, which sits at a screeching gate protected by columns of solid adamantine, a substance akin to diamond - so hard that nothing will cut through it. Inside, there is a castle with wide walls, and a tall iron turret. Tisiphone, one of the Erinyes who represents revenge, stands guard sleepless at the top of this turret lashing a whip. There is a pit inside which is said to extend down into the earth twice as far as the distance from the lands of the living to Olympus. At the bottom of this pit lie the Titans, the twin sons of Aloeus and many other sinners. Still more sinners are contained inside Tartarus, with punishments similar to those of Greek myth.

[edit] New Testament

The term "Tartarus" is found only once in the Bible, at 2 Peter 2:4: "God did not hold back from punishing the angels that sinned, but, by throwing them into Tartarus, delivered them into pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgement."

In most Bibles, the word is simply translated as "hell," even though early Christian writers usually used the term Gehenna, the fiery pit, to mean hell. In addition, this dark place matches the term's traditional meaning, a dark pit in which the supreme god has cast his divine enemies. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that, according to a proper reading of the text, Tartarus is a condition rather than a particular location. They say that Tartarus is a prisonlike abased condition into which God cast disobedient angels in Noah's day.

The term "Hades" appears in the religious texts of New Testament times as a translation of the Old Testament Sheol.