Tartarus
place · 11 works · 12 mentions · 19 anchored passages
misty Tartarus · deep Tartarus · dim Tartarus · dread Tartarus · dusky Tartarus · the abyss of Tartarus, the black · the great chasm · the lowest abyss beneath the earth · wide Tartarus
in the texts
Theogony
A dim, cavernous region in the depths of the earth, named among the primordial entities and later described in detail as the prison of the defeated Titans.
And there, all in their order, are the sources and ends of gloomy earth and misty Tartarus and the unfruitful sea and starry heaven, loathsome and dank, which even the gods abhor.
In front of it the son of Iapetus stands immovably upholding the wide heaven upon his head and unwearying hands, where Night and Day draw near and greet one another as they pass the great threshold of bronze:
In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.
Birds
The primordial abyss described in the Chorus's cosmogony as one of the four things that existed before Earth, air, and heaven.
At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus, and deep Tartarus.
He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.
Clouds
The mythic underworld realm, cited as the subject of the disciples' subterranean investigations.
These are groping about in darkness under Tartarus.
Stromata
The nether realm into which, per the quoted Platonic teaching, good souls descend when taking on bodies.
For they suppose, according to Plato, that good souls, leaving the place above the heaven, have endured to come into this tartarus, and, taking on a body, to share in all the evils of generation, caring for the race of men — souls that have laid down laws and proclaimed philosophy, "than which no greater good ever came, or will come, to the race of men from the gods.
Orestes
The underworld pit of punishment which the deluded Orestes fears being hurled into by a Fury.
you are one of my Furies, and are gripping me by the waist to hurl me into Tartarus!
Hymn 4 to Hermes
Tartarus is the dark underworld place Apollo threatens to cast Hermes into during the dispute.
He brought no witnesses with him nor any of the blessed gods who had seen the theft, but with great violence ordered me to confess, threatening much to throw me into wide Tartarus.
For I will take and cast you into dusky Tartarus and awful hopeless darkness, and neither your mother nor your father shall free you or bring you up again to the light, but you will wander under the earth and be the leader amongst little folk.
Barlaam and Josaphat
The underworld pit into which Zeus casts his bound father Kronos.
So Zeus bound his own father and threw him into Tartarus.
De Rerum Natura
The mythological deepest region of the underworld, denied literal existence twice in the passage.
Of Tartarus, the black.
Nor no man is consigned to the abyss
Of horrible heat- the which are nowhere, nor
Pythian
The deep underworld pit where Typhon lies imprisoned.
among them is he who lies in dread Tartarus, that enemy of the gods, Typhon with his hundred heads.
Phaedo
The vast chasm at the center of the earth into which all subterranean rivers flow, and the place of punishment for the wicked dead.
Then, after winding about many times underground, it flows into Tartarus at a lower level.
One of the chasms of the earth is greater than the rest, and is bored right through the whole earth;
For all the rivers flow together into this chasm and flow out of it again, and they have each the nature of the earth through which they flow.
Republic
The place of ultimate punishment to which the incurably wicked, like Ardiaeus, are cast.
But Ardiaeus and others they bound hand and foot and head and flung down and flayed them and dragged them by the wayside, carding them on thorns and signifying to those who from time to time passed by for what cause they were borne away, and that they were to be hurled into Tartarus.