The real craving is
expressed in numberless passages: "May we live a hundred autumns,
surrounded by lusty sons." Homer's Hades has wiped out this
inconsistency, only to substitute another. Odysseus, on returning from
his visit to Hades, exclaims baldly: "Better a swineherd on the surface
of the earth in the light of the sun than king of the shades in Hades."
It is almost adding insult to injury to have the road to such a Hades
barred by Cerberus. This latter paradox must be removed in order that
the myth shall become intelligible.
The eleventh of the _Rig-Veda_ stanzas presents the two dogs as guides
of the soul [Greek: psychopompoi] to heaven: "To thy two four-eyed,
road-guarding, man-beholding watch-dogs entrust him, O King Yama, and
bestow on him prosperity and health."
THE TWO DOGS IN HEAVEN.
With the change of the abode of the dead from inferno to heaven the two
Cerberi are _eo ipso_ also evicted. That follows of itself, even if we
had not explicit testimony. A legend of the Br[=a]hmana-texts, the Hindu
equivalent of the Talmud, tells repeatedly that there are two dogs _in
heaven_, and that these two dogs are Yama's dogs.
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