CLASSICAL EXPLANATIONS OF CERBERUS.
Such classical explanations of Cerberus' shape as I have seen are feeble and foolishly reasonable. Heraclitus, Περὶ ἀπίστων 331, states that Kerberos had two pups. They always attended their father, and therefore he appeared to be three-headed. The mythographer Palaephatos(39) states that Kerberos was considered three-headed from his name Τρικάρηνος which he obtained from the city Trikarenos in Phliasia. And a late Roman rationalistic mythographer by the name of Fulgentius[11] tells us that Petronius defined Cerberus as the lawyer of Hades, apparently because of his three jaws, or the cumulative glibness of three tongues. Fulgentius himself has a fabula in which he says that Cerberus means Creaboros, that is, "flesh-eating," and that the three heads of Cerberus are respectively, infancy, youth, and old age, through which death has entered the circle of the earth—per quas introivit mors in orbem terrarum.[12]