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.
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