Tartarus

This article is about the deity and the place in Greek mythology. For other uses, see Tartarus (disambiguation).
Persephone supervising Sisyphus in the Underworld, Attic black-figure amphora, c. 530 BC.

Tartarus (/ˈtɑːrtərəs/; Greek: Τάρταρος Tartaros),[1] in ancient Greek mythology, is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans.[2] As far below Hades as the earth is below the heavens,[2] Tartarus is the place where, according to Plato in Gorgias (c. 400 BC), souls were judged after death and where the wicked received divine punishment. Like other primal entities (such as the Earth, Night and Time), Tartarus was also considered to be a primordial force or deity.

Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Tartarus is both a deity and a place in the underworld. In ancient Orphic sources and in the mystery schools, Tartarus is also the unbounded first-existing entity from which the Light and the cosmos are born.

In the Greek poet Hesiod's Theogony, c. 700 BC, Tartarus was the third of the primordial deities, following after Chaos and Gaia (Earth), and preceding Eros,[3] and was the father, by Gaia, of his only son, the monstrous giant Typhon.[4] According to Hyginus, Tartarus was the offspring of Aether and Gaia.[5]

As for the place, Hesiod asserts that a bronze anvil falling from heaven would fall nine days before it reached the earth. The anvil would take nine more days to fall from earth to Tartarus.[6] In The Iliad (c. 700 BC), Zeus asserts that Tartarus is "as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth."

While according to Greek mythology the realm of Hades is the place of the dead, Tartarus also has a number of inhabitants. When Cronus came to power as the King of the Titans, he imprisoned the one-eyed Cyclopes and the hundred-armed Hecatonchires in Tartarus and set the monster Campe as its guard. Zeus killed Campe and released these imprisoned giants to aid in his conflict with the Titans. The gods of Olympus eventually triumphed. Cronus and many of the other Titans were banished to Tartarus, though Prometheus, Epimetheus, Metis and most of the female Titans were spared (according to Pindar, Cronus somehow later earned Zeus' forgiveness and was released from Tartarus to become ruler of Elysium). Another Titan, Atlas, was sentenced to hold the sky on his shoulders to prevent it from resuming its primordial embrace with the Earth. Other gods could be sentenced to Tartarus as well. Apollo is a prime example, although Zeus freed him. The Hecatonchires became guards of Tartarus' prisoners. Later, when Zeus overcame the monster Typhon, he threw him into "wide Tartarus".[7]

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:

According to Plato (c. 427 BC), 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.

Plato also proposes the concept that sinners were cast under the ground to be punished in accordance with their sins in the Myth of Er. Cronus, the ruler of the Titans, was thrown down into the pits of Tartarus by his children.

There were a number of entrances to Tartarus in Greek mythology. One was in Aornum.[9]

Roman mythology

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.

Biblical Pseudepigrapha

Tartarus is only known in Hellenistic Jewish literature from the Greek text of 1 Enoch, dated to 400–200 BC. This states that God placed the archangel Uriel "in charge of the world and of Tartarus" (20:2). Tartarus is generally understood to be the place where 200 fallen Watchers (angels) are imprisoned.[10]

Tartarus also appears in sections of the Jewish Sibylline Oracles. E.g. Sib. Or. 4:186.

New Testament

In the New Testament, the noun Tartarus does not occur but tartaroo (ταρταρόω, "throw to Tartarus"), a shortened form of the classical Greek verb kata-tartaroo ("throw down to Tartarus"), does appear in 2 Peter 2:4. Liddell Scott provides other sources for the shortened form of this verb, including Acusilaus (5th century BC), Joannes Laurentius Lydus (4th century AD) and the Scholiast on Aeschylus' Eumenides, who cites Pindar relating how the earth tried to tartaro "cast down" Apollo after he overcame the Python.[11] In classical texts, the longer form kata-tartaroo is often related to the throwing of the Titans down to Tartarus.[12]

The ESV is one of several English versions that gives the Greek reading Tartarus as a footnote:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [1] and committed them to chains [2] of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;"
Footnotes [1] 2:4 Greek Tartarus

Adam Clarke reasoned that Peter's use of language relating to the Titans was an indication that the ancient Greeks had heard of a Biblical punishment of fallen angels.[13] Some Evangelical Christian commentaries distinguish Tartarus as a place for wicked angels and Gehenna as a place for wicked humans on the basis of this verse.[14] Other Evangelical commentaries, in reconciling that some fallen angels are chained in Tartarus, yet some not, attempt to distinguish between one type of fallen angel and another.[15]

In popular culture

Tartarus is featured in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus novel series, where it serves its mythological role as a location in the Underworld. It is further noted as the place where the spirits of defeated monsters travel and undergo regeneration, allowing them to eventually return to Earth. As with the ancient Greeks, Riordan also personifies Tartarus as a sentient being; in this case as the husband of Gaea and father of the Giants. The rivers of the Underworld are revealed to be his circulatory system, and his actual form is the realm from Greek myth. He also displays the ability to "project" a humanoid form of considerable power. During the Mark of Athena, Nico di Angelo gets trapped in Tartarus and nearly goes insane. Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase end up trapped there at the end of the book and spend the House of Hades wandering Tartarus to find a way out. They succeed with the help of the Titan Iapeteus and the Giant Damasen, but both sacrifice themselves to save them from Tartarus himself.

Tartarus is one of the major locations in Persona 3 but instead of an underground place, it is a high tower that only emerges in the middle of the night, known as the Dark Hour, where the main characters' school should be. It is the main location where you engage in combat, as well as being the place where many main story moments take place. Throughout the game you are climbing up the floors and fighting Shadows, the main monsters you fight in the game. Tartarus is also the location in which many main story segments take place, such as various fights with Strega (major antagonists of the game), and the final boss battle. It is the background for most of the story's plot. It also makes in appearance in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax as one of the main backgrounds of the game, emerging where the school the Persona 4 cast goes to is supposed to be, in a time similar to the Dark Hour.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Of uncertain origin ("Tartarus". Online Etymological Dictionary).
  2. 1 2 GeorAutenrieth. "Τάρταρος". A Homeric Dictionary. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
  3. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 116–119.
  4. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 820–822.
  5. ↑ Hyginus, Fabulae Preface.
  6. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 720–725.
  7. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 868.
  8. ↑ The Danish government's third world aid agency's name was changed from DANAID to DANIDA in the last minute when this unfortunate connotation was discovered.
  9. ↑ The Greek Myths (Volume 1) by Robert Graves (1990), page 112: "... He used the passage which opens at Aornum in Thesprotis and, on his arrival, not only charmed the ferryman Charon..."
  10. ↑ Kelley Coblentz Bautch A Study of the Geography of 1 Enoch 17–19: "no One Has Seen what I Have Seen" p134
  11. ↑ A. cast into Tartarus or hell, Acus.8 J., 2 Ep.Pet.2.4, Lyd.Mens.4.158 (Pass.), Sch.T Il.14.296. Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.
  12. ↑ Apollodorus of Athens, in Didymus' Scholia on Homer; Plutarch Concerning rivers
  13. ↑ Clarke Commentary "The ancient Greeks appear to have received, by tradition, an account of the punishment of the 'fallen angels,' and of bad men after death; and their poets did, in conformity I presume with that account, make Tartarus the place where the giants who rebelled against Jupiter, and the souls of the wicked, were confined. 'Here,' saith Hesiod, Theogon., lin. 720, 1, 'the rebellious Titans were bound in penal chains.'"
  14. ↑ Paul V. Harrison, Robert E. Picirilli James, 1, 2 Peter, Jude Randall House Commentaries 1992 p267 "We do not need to say, then, that Peter was reflecting or approving the Book of Enoch (20:2) when it names Tartarus as a place for wicked angels in distinction from Gehenna as the place for wicked humans."
  15. ↑ Vince Garcia The Resurrection Life Study Bible 2007 p412 "If so, we have a problem: Satan and his angels are not locked up in Tartarus! Satan and his angels were alive and active in the time of Christ, and still are today! Yet Peter specifically (2 Peter 2:4) states that at least one group of angelic beings have literally been cast down to Tartarus and bound in chains until the Last Judgment. So if Satan and his angels are not currently bound in Tartarus—who is? The answer goes back~again~to the angels who interbred with humans. So then— is it impossible that Azazel is somehow another name for Satan? There may be a chance he is, but there is no way of knowing for sure. ..."

References

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