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Horace's many snake-headed Cerberus followed a long tradition of Cerberus being part snake.

The first appearance of a three-headed Cerberus occurs on a mid-sixth-century BC Laconian cup (see below). 590–580 BC), a Corinthian cup from Argos (see below), now lost, Cerberus was shown as a normal single-headed dog. On one of the two earliest depictions (c. In art Cerberus is most commonly depicted with two dog heads (visible), never more than three, but occasionally with only one. On the far left, Athena stands, left arm extended. Between them, a tree represents the sacred grove of Hades' wife Persephone. Cerberus is emerging from a portico, which represents the palace of Hades in the underworld. Heracles, chain in left hand, his club laid aside, calms a two-headed Cerberus, which has a snake protruding from each of his heads, a mane down his necks and back, and a snake tail. Perhaps trying to reconcile these competing traditions, Apollodorus's Cerberus has three dog heads and the heads of "all sorts of snakes" along his back, while the Byzantine poet John Tzetzes (who probably based his account on Apollodorus) gives Cerberus fifty heads, three of which were dog heads, the rest being the "heads of other beasts of all sorts". An exception is the Latin poet Horace's Cerberus which has a single dog head, and one hundred snake heads. However, later writers almost universally give Cerberus three heads. 8th – 7th century BC), Cerberus has fifty heads, while Pindar (c. In the earliest description of Cerberus, Hesiod's Theogony (c. And, like these close relatives, Cerberus was, with only the rare iconographic exception, multi-headed. His father was the multi snake-headed Typhon, and Cerberus was the brother of three other multi-headed monsters, the multi-snake-headed Lernaean Hydra Orthrus, the two-headed dog who guarded the Cattle of Geryon and the Chimera, who had three heads: that of a lion, a goat, and a snake. Cerberus had several multi-headed relatives. Cerberus was usually three-headed, though not always. 2.4 Presented to Eurystheus, returned to Hadesĭescriptions of Cerberus vary, including the number of his heads.