Tartarus in Greek Mythology: The Pit Below Hades

Tartarus is the deepest place in the Greek cosmos: a dark pit far beneath the earth, below even the realm of Hades, where Zeus locked away the defeated Titans. The name also belongs to a god. In Hesiod's Theogony, Tartarus is one of the first beings to exist, after Chaos and Gaia, and he later fathers the monster Typhon with Gaia. Hesiod measures the depth with a falling bronze anvil: nine days and nights down from the earth, landing on the tenth.

Tartarus quick facts

What is Tartarus in Greek mythology?

In the oldest poems, Tartarus is a prison for gods, not for dead humans. Mortal souls go to the house of Hades. Tartarus is where Zeus puts immortals who threaten his order, because a god cannot be killed, only put away.

In Iliad Book 8, Zeus warns the other gods that anyone who disobeys him will be hurled into murky Tartarus, the deepest pit beneath the earth, with gates of iron and a threshold of bronze. In Book 14, Hera swears by the gods beneath Tartarus who are called Titans.

Hesiod gives the fullest picture. A bronze fence runs around it, night is poured around its neck in three layers, and above it grow the roots of the earth and the sea. A man who passed its gates would not reach the floor in a whole year, but would be swept to and fro by terrible storms. In the same dark region Hesiod places the house of Night, in front of which Atlas holds up the sky, and the halls of Hades and Persephone with their watchdog, Cerberus. Even Hesiod does not keep Tartarus and Hades cleanly apart.

How far below Hades is Tartarus?

Very far, but the sources do not agree on the number:

Hesiod's cosmos is a mirror, with Tartarus as far below the earth as the sky is above it. Homer adds a floor between: his realm of Hades lies under the earth, and Tartarus lies under that.

Is Tartarus a god or a place?

Both, but mostly a place. Hesiod's first beings are Chaos, then Gaia, then misty Tartarus in the depths of the earth, then Eros. As a person, Tartarus does one thing. After Zeus drives the Titans out of heaven, Gaia lies with Tartarus, with the help of golden Aphrodite, and bears her youngest child, Typhon, a monster with a hundred snake heads. Apollodorus keeps the parentage but changes the timing: Gaia bears Typhon in anger after the gods defeat the Giants.

Hades was a god whose name came to mean a place; Tartarus is a place that also acts as a father. His fellow first beings, Chaos and Gaia, open the Greek gods family tree.

Who is imprisoned in Tartarus?

The Titans. After the war between the gods and the Titans, the Hundred-Handers bury the Titans under the earth in chains. In Iliad Book 8, Zeus tells Hera that Iapetus and Cronus sit at the lowest limits of earth and sea, with deep Tartarus all around them. In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Prometheus says his own advice is why Tartarus now hides Cronus and his allies.

Typhon. In Hesiod, Zeus defeats Typhon with thunderbolts and hurls him into wide Tartarus.

The famous sinners, later. Popular summaries put Sisyphus and Tantalus in Tartarus. Homer does not:

The shift comes with Plato. In his Gorgias, Socrates says the souls of the unjust go to a prison of punishment called Tartarus, while the just go to the Isles of the Blessed. In the Phaedo, souls judged incurable are thrown into Tartarus and never come out. Virgil then fills it: in Aeneid Book 6 the Sibyl lists the Titans, the giant twins Otus and Ephialtes, Salmoneus, who faked Zeus' thunder, Tityos, Ixion and Pirithous.

Who guards Tartarus?

In Hesiod, the Hundred-Handers: Cottus, Briareus and Gyes, sons of Uranus and Gaia, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads. Their father hid them away; Zeus freed them on Gaia's advice, and in the war they hurled volleys of three hundred rocks at the Titans. Afterwards they live at Tartarus as the trusty guards of Zeus, behind the bronze gates that Poseidon fixed in place.

Virgil changes the staff. In the Aeneid, the Fury Tisiphone watches the gate, a triple wall and the fiery river Phlegethon surround the fortress, and Rhadamanthus judges inside.

Tartarus vs Hades vs Elysium: what is the difference?

In Odyssey Book 4, Proteus tells Menelaus he will not die but will be sent to the Elysian plain, because he is Helen's husband and so Zeus' son-in-law. It is family privilege, not a reward for virtue. Virgil turns it into a map: in Aeneid Book 6 the road divides, right to Elysium and left to Tartarus. Before that fork, on the far side of the river where Charon ferries the dead, Virgil places those who died before their time.

Is Tartarus the same as hell?

Not originally. The Tartarus of Homer and Hesiod holds defeated gods, not sinners. It became a place of moral punishment in Plato and the Roman poets, and from there the word passed into Christian Greek: the Second Letter of Peter uses a verb built on it for God casting down the angels who sinned, and English Bibles usually translate it as "hell."

In the sources

This article draws on Hesiod's Theogony; Homer's Iliad (Books 8 and 14) and Odyssey (Books 4 and 11); Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound; Pindar's odes; Plato's Gorgias and Phaedo; the Library of Apollodorus; Virgil's Aeneid; and Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The sources disagree on several points:

• How deep is it? As far below the earth as the sky is above it in Hesiod and Apollodorus; that far below Hades in Homer; twice as far in Virgil.
• Where did Uranus hide his sons? Inside the earth, in Hesiod. In Tartarus, in Apollodorus, who has Uranus throw the Hundred-Handers and the Cyclopes there.
• Does Cronus stay there? Yes, in the Theogony, the Iliad and Prometheus Bound. No, in Pindar: Olympian 2 puts the tower of Cronus on the Isle of the Blessed, with Cronus presiding, and Pythian 4 says Zeus freed the Titans.
• Where is Typhon? Hurled into Tartarus, in Hesiod. Buried under Mount Etna, in Apollodorus. Pindar's Pythian 1 has it both ways: Typhon lies in Tartarus, yet Sicily and snowy Etna press down on him.
• Do the guards stay? Hesiod first says the Hundred-Handers live at Tartarus. Later in the same poem, Cottus and Gyes live on the foundations of Ocean and Briareus marries Poseidon's daughter Cymopoleia.

In popular culture

• Hades (2020). In Supergiant's game, Tartarus is the first region the hero Zagreus fights through as he escapes his father's house. The ancient Tartarus is a sealed prison for Titans; the layout is the game's invention.
• Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus. At the end of The Mark of Athena (2012), Percy and Annabeth fall into Tartarus, and The House of Hades (2013) follows them across it. Riordan treats Tartarus as both a place and a living god, which echoes Hesiod, but the journey is modern.

Keep exploring

Tartarus only makes sense next to the war that filled it. Meet its prisoners in the Titans in Greek mythology and Cronus, the realm above it in Hades in Greek mythology, and the god who fixed its bronze gates in Poseidon in Greek mythology. Then test what you know with the Greek mythology quiz.