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Cerberus

In Greek mythology, Cerberus ( or ; Κέρβερος Kérberos ), often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and was usually described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from his body. Cerberus is primarily known for his capture by Heracles, the last of Heracles' twelve labours.

Etymology

The etymology of Cerberus' name is uncertain. Ogden refers to attempts to establish an Indo-European etymology as "not yet successful". It has been claimed to be related to the Sanskrit word सर्वरा sarvarā, used as an epithet of one of the dogs of Yama, from a Proto-Indo-European word *k̑érberos, meaning "spotted". Lincoln (1991), among others, critiques this etymology. This etymology was also rejected by Manfred Mayrhofer, who proposed an Austro-Asiatic origin for the word, and Beekes. Lincoln notes a similarity between Cerberus and the Norse mythological dog Garmr, relating both names to a Proto-Indo-European root *ger- "to growl" (perhaps with the suffixes -*m/*b and -*r). However, as Ogden observes, this analysis actually requires Kerberos and Garmr to be derived from two different Indo-European roots (*ker- and *gher- respectively), and so does not actually establish a relationship between the two names.

Though probably not Greek, Greek etymologies for Cerberus have been offered. An etymology given by Servius (the late-fourth-century commentator on Virgil)—but rejected by Ogden—derives Cerberus from the Greek word creoboros meaning "flesh-devouring". Another suggested etymology derives Cerberus from "Ker berethrou", meaning "evil of the pit".

Descriptions
Descriptions of Cerberus vary, including the number of his heads. Cerberus was usually three-headed, though not always. Cerberus had several multi-headed relatives. His father was the multi snake-footed Typhon, and Cerberus was the brother of three other multi-headed monsters, the multi-snake-headed Lernaean Hydra; Orthrus, the two-headed dog that guarded the Cattle of Geryon; and the Chimera, who had three heads: that of a lion, a goat, and a snake. And, like these close relatives, Cerberus was, with only the rare iconographic exception, multi-headed.

In the earliest description of Cerberus, Hesiod's Theogony (c. 8th – 7th century BC), Cerberus has fifty heads, while Pindar (c. 522 – c. 443 BC) gave him one hundred heads. However, later writers almost universally give Cerberus three heads. Ogden 2013a, pp. 105–106, with n. 183; Sophocles, Women of Trachis 22–25 ("three-bodied"), 1097–1099; Euripides, Heracles 610–611, 1276–1278; Virgil, Aeneid 6.417–421 ("triple-throated", "three fierce mouths"), Georgics 4.483 ("triple jaws"); Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.449–451 ("three-visaged mouths", "triple-barking"), 9.185 ("triple form"), 10.21–22 ("three necks"), 10.65–66 ("triple necks"), Heroides [http://www.loebclassics.com/view/ovid-heroides/1914/pb_LCL041.115.xml?result=7&rskey=khGLLX 9.93–94 (pp. 114–115)] ("three-fold"); Seneca, Agamemnon [http://www.loebclassics.com/view/seneca_younger-agamemnon/2004/pb_LCL078.199.xml 859–862 (pp. 198–199)] ("triple chains"), Hercules Furens [http://www.loebclassics.com/view/seneca_younger-hercules/2002/pb_LCL062.53.xml?result=16&rskey=CRLRlQ 60–62 (pp. 52–53)] ("triple necks"), [http://www.loebclassics.com/view/seneca_younger-hercules/2002/pb_LCL062.111.xml?result=16&rskey=CRLRlQ 782–784 (pp. 110–111)]; Statius, Silvae 2.1.183–184 (I pp. 90–91) ("triple jaws"), 3.3.27 (I pp. 168–169) ("threefold"), Thebaid, 2.31 (I pp. 396–397), ("threefold"), 2.53 (I pp. 398–399) ("tri-formed"); Propertius, Elegies [http://www.loebclassics.com/view/propertius-elegies/1990/pb_LCL018.235.xml?result=2&rskey=Iew01V 3.5.44 (pp. 234–237)] ("three throats"), [http://www.loebclassics.com/view/propertius-elegies/1990/pb_LCL018.285.xml?result=2&rskey=Iew01V 3.18.23 (pp. 284–285)] ("three heads") Apollodorus, 2.5.12 ("three heads of dogs"). An exception is the Latin poet Horace's Cerberus which has a single dog head, and one hundred snake heads. Perhaps trying to reconcile these competing traditions, Apollodorus's Cerberus has three dog heads and the heads of "all sorts of snakes" along his back, while the Byzantine poet John Tzetzes (who probably based his account on Apollodorus) gives Cerberus fifty heads, three of which were dog heads, the rest being the "heads of other beasts of all sorts".

In art Cerberus is most commonly depicted with two dog heads (visible), never more than three, but occasionally with only one. On one of the two earliest depictions (c. 590–580 BC), a Corinthian cup from Argos (see below), now lost, Cerberus was shown as a normal single-headed dog. The first appearance of a three-headed Cerberus occurs on a mid-sixth-century BC Laconian cup (see below).

Horace's many snake-headed Cerberus followed a long tradition of Cerberus being part snake. This is perhaps already implied as early as in Hesiod's Theogony, where Cerberus' mother is the half-snake Echidna, and his father the snake-headed Typhon. In art, Cerberus is often shown as being part snake, for example the lost Corinthian cup showed snakes protruding from Cerberus' body, while the mid sixth-century BC Laconian cup gives Cerberus a snake for a tail. In the literary record, the first certain indication of Cerberus' serpentine nature comes from the rationalized account of Hecataeus of Miletus (fl. 500–494 BC), who makes Cerberus a large poisonous snake. Plato refers to Cerberus' composite nature, and Euphorion of Chalcis (3rd century BC) describes Cerberus as having multiple snake tails, and presumably in connection to his serpentine nature, associates Cerberus with the creation of the poisonous aconite plant. Virgil has snakes writhe around Cerberus' neck, Ovid's Cerberus has a venomous mouth, necks "vile with snakes", and "hair inwoven with the threatening snake", while Seneca gives Cerberus a mane consisting of snakes, and a single snake tail.

Cerberus was given various other traits. According to Euripides, Cerberus not only had three heads but three bodies, and according to Virgil he had multiple backs. Cerberus ate raw flesh (according to Hesiod), had eyes which flashed fire (according to Euphorion), a three-tongued mouth (according to Horace), and acute hearing (according to Seneca).

The Twelfth Labour of Heracles

Cerberus' only mythology concerns his capture by Heracles. As early as Homer we learn that Heracles was sent by Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns, to bring back Cerberus from Hades the king of the underworld. According to Apollodorus, this was the twelfth and final labour imposed on Heracles. In a fragment from a lost play Pirithous, (attributed to either Euripides or Critias) Heracles says that, although Eurystheus commanded him to bring back Cerberus, it was not from any desire to see Cerberus, but only because Eurystheus thought that the task was impossible.

Heracles was aided in his mission by his being an initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Euripides has his initiation being "lucky" for Heracles in capturing Cerberus. And both Diodorus Siculus and Apollodorus say that Heracles was initiated into the Mysteries, in preparation for his descent into the underworld. According to Diodorus, Heracles went to Athens, where Musaeus, the son of Orpheus, was in charge of the initiation rites, while according to Apollodorus, he went to Eumolpus at Eleusis.

Heracles also had the help of Hermes, the usual guide of the underworld, as well as Athena. In the Odyssey, Homer has Hermes and Athena as his guides. And Hermes and Athena are often shown with Heracles on vase paintings depicting Cerberus' capture. By most accounts, Heracles made his descent into the underworld through an entrance at Tainaron, the most famous of the various Greek entrances to the underworld. The place is first mentioned in connection with the Cerberus story in the rationalized account of Hecataeus of Miletus (fl. 500–494 BC), and Euripides, Seneca, and Apolodorus, all have Heracles descend into the underworld there. However Xenophon reports that Heracles was said to have descended at the Acherusian Chersonese near Heraclea Pontica, on the Black Sea, a place more usually associated with Heracles' exit from the underworld (see below). Heraclea, founded c. 560 BC, perhaps took its name from the association of its site with Heracles' Cerberian exploit.

Theseus and Pirithous
While in the underworld, Heracles met the heroes Theseus and Pirithous, where the two companions were being held prisoner by Hades for attempting to carry off Hades's wife Persephone. Along with bringing back Cerberus, Heracles also managed (usually) to rescue Theseus, and in some versions Pirithous as well. According to Apollodorus, Heracles found Theseus and Pirithous near the gates of Hades, bound to the "Chair of Forgetfulness, to which they grew and were held fast by coils of serpents", and when they saw Heracles, "they stretched out their hands as if they should be raised from the dead by his might", and Heracles was able to free Theseus, but when he tried to raise up Pirithous, "the earth quaked and he let go."

The earliest evidence for the involvement of Theseus and Pirithous in the Cerberus story, is found on a shield-band relief (c. 560 BC) from Olympia, where Theseus and Pirithous (named) are seated together on a chair, arms held out in supplication, while Heracles approaches, about to draw his sword. The earliest literary mention of the rescue occurs in Euripides, where Heracles saves Theseus (with no mention of Pirithous). In the lost play Pirithous, both heroes are rescued, while in the rationalized account of Philochorus, Heracles was able to rescue Theseus, but not Pirithous. In one place Diodorus says Heracles brought back both Theseus and Pirithous, by the favor of Persephone, while in another he says that Pirithous remained in Hades, or according to "some writers of myth" that neither Theseus, nor Pirithous returned. Both are rescued in Hyginus.

Capture
There are various versions of how Heracles accomplished Cerberus' capture. According to Apollodorus, Heracles asked Hades for Cerberus, and Hades told Heracles he would allow him to take Cerberus only if he "mastered him without the use of the weapons which he carried", and so, using his lion-skin as a shield, Heracles squeezed Cerberus around the head until he submitted.

In some early sources Cerberus' capture seems to involve Heracles fighting Hades. Homer (Iliad 5.395–397) has Hades injured by an arrow shot by Heracles. A scholium to the Iliad passage, explains that Hades had commanded that Heracles "master Cerberus without shield or Iron". Heracles did this, by (as in Apollodorus) using his lion-skin instead of his shield, and making stone points for his arrows, but when Hades still opposed him, Heracles shot Hades in anger. Consistent with the no iron requirement, on an early-sixth-century BC lost Corinthian cup, Heracles is shown attacking Hades with a stone, while the iconographic tradition, from c. 560 BC, often shows Heracles using his wooden club against Cerberus.

Euripides has Amphitryon ask Heracles: "Did you conquer him in fight, or receive him from the goddess [i.e. Persephone]? To which Heracles answers: "In fight", and the Pirithous fragment says that Heracles "overcame the beast by force". However, according to Diodorus, Persephone welcomed Heracles "like a brother" and gave Cerberus "in chains" to Heracles. Aristophanes has Heracles seize Cerberus in a stranglehold and run off, while Seneca has Heracles again use his lion-skin as shield, and his wooden club, to subdue Cerberus, after which a quailing Hades and Persephone allow Heracles to lead a chained and submissive Cerberus away. Cerberus is often shown being chained, and Ovid tells that Heracles dragged the three headed Cerberus with chains of adamant.

Exit from the underworld
There were several locations which were said to be the place where Heracles brought up Cerberus from the underworld. The geographer Strabo (63/64 BC – c. AD 24) reports that "according to the myth writers" Cerberus was brought up at Tainaron, the same place where Euripides has Heracles enter the underworld. Seneca has Heracles enter and exit at Tainaron. Apollodorus, although he has Heracles enter at Tainaron, has him exit at Troezen. The geographer Pausanias tells us that there was a temple at Troezen with "altars to the gods said to rule under the earth", where it was said that, in addition to Cerberus being "dragged" up by Heracles, Semele was supposed to have been brought up out of the underworld by Dionysus.

Another tradition had Cerberus brought up at Heraclea Pontica (the same place which Xenophon had earlier associated with Heracles' descent) and the cause of the poisonous plant aconite which grew there in abundance. Ogden 2013a, pp. 107–108, 112; Ogden 2013b, pp. 68–69; Fowler 2013, pp. 305 ff.; Herodorus fragment 31 Fowler (= Euphorion fragment 41a Lightfoot); Euphorion, fragment 41 Lightfoot (Lightfoot, pp. 272–275); Diodorus Siculus, 14.31.3; Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.406–419; Pomponius Mela, 1.92; Pliny, Natural History 27.4; Schol. Nicander alexipharmaca 13b; Dionysius Periegetes, 788–792; Eustathius, Commentary on Dionysius Periegetes 788–792; First Vatican Mythographer, 1.57 (Ogden 2013b, pp. 73–74; Pepin, p. 36). For aconite in the vicinity of Heraclea, see also Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum 9.16.4 pp. 298–299; Strabo, 12.3.7; Pliny, Natural History 6.4; Arrian, FGrH 156 F76a apud Eustathius of Thessalonica, Commentary on Dionysius Periegetes 788–792. Herodorus of Heraclea and Euphorion said that when Heracles brought Cerberus up from the underworld at Heraclea, Cerberus "vomited bile" from which the aconite plant grew up. Ovid, also makes Cerberus the cause of the poisonous aconite, saying that on the "shores of Scythia", upon leaving the underworld, as Cerberus was being dragged by Heracles from a cave, dazzled by the unaccustomed daylight, Cerberus spewed out a "poison-foam", which made the aconite plants growing there poisonous. Seneca's Cerberus too, like Ovid's, reacts violently to his first sight of daylight. Enraged, the previously submissive Cerberus struggles furiously, and Heracles and Theseus must together drag Cerberus into the light.

Pausanias reports that according to local legend Cerberus was brought up through a chasm in the earth dedicated to Clymenus (Hades) next to the sanctuary of Chthonia at Hermione, and in Euripides' Heracles, though Euripides does not say that Cerberus was brought out there, he has Cerberus kept for a while in the "grove of Chthonia" at Hermione. Pausanias also mentions that at Mount Laphystion in Boeotia, that there was a statue of Heracles Charops ("with bright eyes"), where the Boeotians said Heracles brought up Cerberus. Other locations which perhaps were also associated with Cerberus being brought out of the underworld include, Hierapolis, Thesprotia, and Emeia near Mycenae.

Presented to Eurystheus, returned to Hades
In some accounts, after bringing Cerberus up from the underworld, Heracles paraded the captured Cerberus through Greece. Euphorion has Heracles lead Cerberus through Midea in Argolis, as women and children watch in fear, and Diodorus Siculus says of Cerberus, that Heracles "carried him away to the amazement of all and exhibited him to men." Seneca has Juno complain of Heracles "highhandedly parading the black hound through Argive cities" and Heracles greeted by laurel-wreathed crowds, "singing" his praises.

Then, according to Apollodorus, Heracles showed Cerberus to Eurystheus, as commanded, after which he returned Cerberus to the underworld. However, according to Hesychius of Alexandria, Cerberus escaped, presumably returning to the underworld on his own.

Principal sources
The earliest mentions of Cerberus (c. 8th – 7th century BC) occur in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and Hesiod's Theogony. Homer does not name or describe Cerberus, but simply refers to Heracles being sent by Eurystheus to fetch the "hound of Hades", with Hermes and Athena as his guides, and, in a possible reference to Cerberus' capture, that Heracles shot Hades with an arrow. According to Hesiod, Cerberus was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, was fifty-headed, ate raw flesh, and was the "brazen-voiced hound of Hades", who fawns on those that enter the house of Hades, but eats those who try to leave.

Stesichorus (c. 630 – 555 BC) apparently wrote a poem called Cerberus, of which virtually nothing remains. However the early-sixth-century BC-lost Corinthian cup from Argos, which showed a single head, and snakes growing out from many places on his body, was possibly influenced by Stesichorus' poem. The mid-sixth-century BC cup from Laconia gives Cerberus three heads and a snake tail, which eventually becomes the standard representation.

Pindar (c. 522 – c. 443 BC) apparently gave Cerberus one hundred heads. Bacchylides (5th century BC) also mentions Heracles bringing Cerberus up from the underworld, with no further details. Sophocles (c. 495 – c. 405 BC), in his Women of Trachis, makes Cerberus three-headed, and in his Oedipus at Colonus, the Chorus asks that Oedipus be allowed to pass the gates of the underworld undisturbed by Cerberus, called here the "untamable Watcher of Hades". Euripides (c. 480 – 406 BC) describes Cerberus as three-headed, and three-bodied, says that Heracles entered the underworld at Tainaron, has Heracles say that Cerberus was not given to him by Persephone, but rather he fought and conquered Cerberus, "for I had been lucky enough to witness the rites of the initiated", an apparent reference to his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries, and says that the capture of Cerberus was the last of Heracles' labors. The lost play Pirthous (attributed to either Euripides or his late contemporary Critias) has Heracles say that he came to the underworld at the command of Eurystheus, who had ordered him to bring back Cerberus alive, not because he wanted to see Cerberus, but only because Eurystheus thought Heracles would not be able to accomplish the task, and that Heracles "overcame the beast" and "received favour from the gods".

Plato (c. 425 – 348 BC) refers to Cerberus' composite nature, citing Cerberus, along with Scylla and the Chimera, as an example from "ancient fables" of a creature composed of many animal forms "grown together in one". Euphorion of Chalcis (3rd century BC) describes Cerberus as having multiple snake tails, and eyes that flashed, like sparks from a blacksmith's forge, or the volcanic Mount Etna. From Euphorion, also comes the first mention of a story which told that at Heraclea Pontica, where Cerberus was brought out of the underworld, by Heracles, Cerberus "vomited bile" from which the poisonous aconite plant grew up.

According to Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), the capture of Cerberus was the eleventh of Heracles' labors, the twelfth and last being stealing the Apples of the Hesperides. Diodorus says that Heracles thought it best to first go to Athens to take part in the Eleusinian Mysteries, "Musaeus, the son of Orpheus, being at that time in charge of the initiatory rites", after which, he entered into the underworld "welcomed like a brother by Persephone", and "receiving the dog Cerberus in chains he carried him away to the amazement of all and exhibited him to men."

In Virgil's Aeneid (1st century BC), Aeneas and the Sibyl encounter Cerberus in a cave, where he "lay at vast length", filling the cave "from end to end", blocking the entrance to the underworld. Cerberus is described as "triple-throated", with "three fierce mouths", multiple "large backs", and serpents writhing around his neck. The Sibyl throws Cerberus a loaf laced with honey and herbs to induce sleep, enabling Aeneas to enter the underworld, and so apparently for Virgil—contradicting Hesiod—Cerberus guarded the underworld against entrance. Later Virgil describes Cerberus, in his bloody cave, crouching over half-gnawed bones. In his Georgics, Virgil refers to Cerberus, his "triple jaws agape" being tamed by Orpheus' playing his lyre.

Horace (65 – 8 BC) also refers to Cerberus yielding to Orpheus' lyre, here Cerberus has a single dog head, which "like a Fury's is fortified by a hundred snakes", with a "triple-tongued mouth" oozing "fetid breath and gore".

Ovid (43 BC – AD 17/18) has Cerberus' mouth produce venom, and like Euphorion, makes Cerberus the cause of the poisonous plant aconite. According to Ovid, Heracles dragged Cerberus from the underworld, emerging from a cave "where 'tis fabled, the plant grew / on soil infected by Cerberian teeth", and dazzled by the daylight, Cerberus spewed out a "poison-foam", which made the aconite plants growing there poisonous.

Seneca, in his tragedy Hercules Furens gives a detailed description of Cerberus and his capture. Seneca's Cerberus has three heads, a mane of snakes, and a snake tail, with his three heads being covered in gore, and licked by the many snakes which surround them, and with hearing so acute that he can hear "even ghosts". Seneca has Heracles use his lion-skin as shield, and his wooden club, to beat Cerberus into submission, after which Hades and Persephone, quailing on their thrones, let Heracles lead a chained and submissive Cerberus away. But upon leaving the underworld, at his first sight of daylight, a frightened Cerberus struggles furiously, and Heracles, with the help of Theseus (who had been held captive by Hades, but released, at Heracles' request) drag Cerberus into the light. Seneca, like Diodorus, has Heracles parade the captured Cerberus through Greece.

Apollodorus' Cerberus has three dog-heads, a serpent for a tail, and the heads of many snakes on his back. According to Apollodorus, Heracles' twelfth and final labor was to bring back Cerberus from Hades. Heracles first went to Eumolpus to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Upon his entering the underworld, all the dead flee Heracles except for Meleager and the Gorgon Medusa. Heracles drew his sword against Medusa, but Hermes told Heracles that the dead are mere "empty phantoms". Heracles asked Hades (here called Pluto) for Cerberus, and Hades said that Heracles could take Cerberus provided he was able to subdue him without using weapons. Heracles found Cerberus at the gates of Acheron, and with his arms around Cerberus, though being bitten by Cerberus' serpent tail, Heracles squeezed until Cerberus submitted. Heracles carried Cerberus away, showed him to Eurystheus, then returned Cerberus to the underworld.

In an apparently unique version of the story, related by the sixth-century AD Pseudo-Nonnus, Heracles descended into Hades to abduct Persephone, and killed Cerberus on his way back up.

Iconography

The capture of Cerberus was a popular theme in ancient Greek and Roman art. The earliest depictions date from the beginning of the sixth century BC. One of the two earliest depictions, a Corinthian cup (c. 590–580 BC) from Argos (now lost), shows a naked Heracles, with quiver on his back and bow in his right hand, striding left, accompanied by Hermes. Heracles threatens Hades with a stone, who flees left, while a goddess, perhaps Persephone or possibly Athena, standing in front of Hades' throne, prevents the attack. Cerberus, with a single canine head and snakes rising from his head and body, flees right. On the far right a column indicates the entrance to Hades' palace. Many of the elements of this scene—Hermes, Athena, Hades, Persephone, and a column or portico—are common occurrences in later works. The other earliest depiction, a relief pithos fragment from Crete (c. 590–570 BC), is thought to show a single lion-headed Cerberus with a snake (open-mouthed) over his back being led to the right.

A mid-sixth-century BC Laconian cup by the Hunt Painter adds several new features to the scene which also become common in later works: three heads, a snake tail, Cerberus' chain and Heracles' club. Here Cerberus has three canine heads, is covered by a shaggy coat of snakes, and has a tail which ends in a snake head. He is being held on a chain leash by Heracles who holds his club raised over head.

In Greek art, the vast majority of depictions of Heracles and Cerberus occur on Attic vases. Although the lost Corinthian cup shows Cerberus with a single dog head, and the relief pithos fragment (c. 590–570 BC) apparently shows a single lion-headed Cerberus, in Attic vase painting Cerberus usually has two dog heads. In other art, as in the Laconian cup, Cerberus is usually three-headed. Occasionally in Roman art Cerberus is shown with a large central lion head and two smaller dog heads on either side.

As in the Corinthian and Laconian cups (and possibly the relief pithos fragment), Cerberus is often depicted as part snake. In Attic vase painting, Cerberus is usually shown with a snake for a tail or a tail which ends in the head of a snake. Snakes are also often shown rising from various parts of his body including snout, head, neck, back, ankles, and paws.

Two Attic amphoras from Vulci, one (c. 530–515 BC) by the Bucci Painter (Munich 1493), the other (c. 525–510 BC) by the Andokides painter (Louvre F204), in addition to the usual two heads and snake tail, show Cerberus with a mane down his necks and back, another typical Cerberian feature of Attic vase painting. Andokides' amphora also has a small snake curling up from each of Cerberus' two heads.

Besides this lion-like mane and the occasional lion-head mentioned above, Cerberus was sometimes shown with other leonine features. A pitcher (c. 530–500) shows Cerberus with mane and claws, while a first-century BC sardonyx cameo shows Cerberus with leonine body and paws. In addition, a limestone relief fragment from Taranto (c. 320–300 BC) shows Cerberus with three lion-like heads.

During the second quarter of the 5th century BC the capture of Cerberus disappears from Attic vase painting. After the early third century BC, the subject becomes rare everywhere until the Roman period. In Roman art the capture of Cerberus is usually shown together with other labors. Heracles and Cerberus are usually alone, with Heracles leading Cerberus.

Cerberus rationalized
At least as early as the 6th century BC, some ancient writers attempted to explain away various fantastical features of Greek mythology; included in these are various rationalized accounts of the Cerberus story. The earliest such account (late 6th century BC) is that of Hecataeus of Miletus. In his account Cerberus was not a dog at all, but rather simply a large venomous snake, which lived on Tainaron. The serpent was called the "hound of Hades" only because anyone bitten by it died immediately, and it was this snake that Heracles brought to Eurystheus. The geographer Pausanias (who preserves for us Hecataeus' version of the story) points out that, since Homer does not describe Cerberus, Hecataeus' account does not necessarily conflict with Homer, since Homer's "Hound of Hades" may not in fact refer to an actual dog.

Other rationalized accounts make Cerberus out to be a normal dog. According to Palaephatus (4th century BC) Cerberus was one of the two dogs who guarded the cattle of Geryon, the other being Orthrus. Geryon lived in a city named Tricranium (in Greek Tricarenia, "Three-Heads"), from which name both Cerberus and Geryon came to be called "three-headed". Heracles killed Orthus, and drove away Geryon's cattle, with Cerberus following along behind. Molossus, a Mycenaen, offered to buy Cerberus from Eurystheus (presumably having received the dog, along with the cattle, from Heracles). But when Eurystheus refused, Molossus stole the dog and penned him up in a cave in Tainaron. Eurystheus commanded Heracles to find Cerberus and bring him back. After searching the entire Peloponnesus, Heracles found where it was said Cerberus was being held, went down into the cave, and brought up Cerberus, after which it was said: "Heracles descended through the cave into Hades and brought up Cerberus."

In the rationalized account of Philochorus, in which Heracles rescues Theseus, Perithous is eaten by Cerberus. In this version of the story, Aidoneus (i.e., "Hades") is the mortal king of the Molossians, with a wife named Persephone, a daughter named Kore (another name for the goddess Persephone) and a large mortal dog named Cerberus, with whom all suitors of his daughter were required to fight. After having stolen Helen, to be Theseus' wife, Theseus and Perithous, attempt to abduct Kore, for Perithous, but Aidoneus catches the two heroes, imprisons Theseus, and feeds Perithous to Cerberus. Later, while a guest of Aidoneus, Heracles asks Aidoneus to release Theseus, as a favor, which Aidoneus grants.

A 2nd-century AD Greek known as Heraclitus the paradoxographer (not to be confused with the 5th-century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus)—claimed that Cerberus had two pups that were never away from their father, which made Cerberus appear to be three-headed.

Cerberus allegorized

Servius, a medieval commentator on Virgil's Aeneid, derived Cerberus' name from the Greek word creoboros meaning "flesh-devouring" (see above), and held that Cerberus symbolized the corpse-consuming earth, with Heracles' triumph over Cerberus representing his victory over earthly desires. Later, the mythographer Fulgentius, allegorizes Cerberus' three heads as representing the three origins of human strife: "nature, cause, and accident", and (drawing on the same flesh-devouring etymology as Servius) as symbolizing "the three ages—infancy, youth, old age, at which death enters the world." The Byzantine historian and bishop Eusebius wrote that Cerberus was represented with three heads, because the positions of the sun above the earth are three—rising, midday, and setting.

The later Vatican Mythographers repeat and expand upon the traditions of Servius and Fulgentius. All three Vatican Mythographers repeat Servius' derivation of Cerberus' name from creoboros. The Second Vatican Mythographer repeats (nearly word for word) what Fulgentius had to say about Cerberus, while the Third Vatican Mythographer, in another very similar passage to Fugentius', says (more specifically than Fugentius), that for "the philosophers" Cerberus represented hatred, his three heads symbolizing the three kinds of human hatred: natural, causal, and casual (i.e. accidental).

The Second and Third Vatican Mythographers, note that the three brothers Zeus, Poseidon and Hades each have tripartite insignia, associating Hades' three-headed Cerberus, with Zeus' three-forked thunderbolt, and Poseidon's three-pronged trident, while the Third Vatican Mythographer adds that "some philosophers think of Cerberus as the tripartite earth: Asia, Africa, and Europe. This earth, swallowing up bodies, sends souls to Tartarus."

Virgil described Cerberus as "ravenous" (fame rabida), and a rapacious Cerberus became proverbial. Thus Cerberus came to symbolize avarice, and so, for example, in Dante's Inferno, Cerberus is placed in the Third Circle of Hell, guarding over the gluttons, where he "rends the spirits, flays and quarters them," and Dante (perhaps echoing Servius' association of Cerberus with earth) has his guide Virgil take up handfuls of earth and throw them into Cerberus' "rapacious gullets."

Namesakes

In the constellation Cerberus introduced by Johannes Hevelius in 1687, Cerberus is drawn as a three-headed snake, held in Hercules' hand (previously these stars had been depicted as a branch of the tree on which grew the Apples of the Hesperides).

In 1829, French naturalist Georges Cuvier gave the name Cerberus to a genus of Asian snakes, which are commonly called "dog-faced water snakes" in English.

The Serbian hard rock band Kerber, formed in 1981 by members Goran Šepa, Tomislav Nikolić and Branislav Božinović, is named after Cerberus.

In 1988 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed Kerberos, a computer-network authentication protocol, named after Cerberus.

title: Cerberus


text:
Camel case

Camel case (sometimes stylized autologically as camelCase or CamelCase, also known as camel caps or more formally as medial capitals) is the practice of writing phrases without spaces or punctuation and with capitalized words. The format indicates the first word starting with either case, then the following words having an initial uppercase letter. Common examples include YouTube, PowerPoint, HarperCollins, FedEx, iPhone, eBay, and LaGuardia. Camel case is often used as a naming convention in computer programming. It is also sometimes used in online usernames such as JohnSmith, and to make multi-word domain names more legible, for example in promoting EasyWidgetCompany.com.

The more specific terms Pascal case and upper camel case refer to a joined phrase where the first letter of each word is capitalized, including the initial letter of the first word. Similarly, lower camel case (also known as dromedary case) requires an initial lowercase letter. Some people and organizations, notably Microsoft, use the term camel case only for lower camel case, designating Pascal case for the upper camel case. Some programming styles prefer camel case with the first letter capitalized, others not. For clarity, this article leaves the definition of camel case ambiguous with respect to capitalization, and uses the more specific terms when necessary.

Camel case is distinct from several other styles: title case, which capitalizes all words but retains the spaces between them; Tall Man lettering, which uses capitals to emphasize the differences between similar-looking product names such as predniSONE and predniSOLONE; and snake case, which uses underscores interspersed with lowercase letters (sometimes with the first letter capitalized). A combination of snake and camel case (identifiers Written_Like_This) is recommended in the Ada 95 style guide.

Variations and synonyms
The practice has various names, including:

 * camelBack (or camel-back) notation or CamelCaps
 * camel case or CamelCase
 * CapitalizedWords or CapWords for upper camel case in Python
 * compoundNames
 * Embedded caps (or embedded capitals)
 * HumpBack (or hump-back) notation
 * InterCaps or intercapping (abbreviation of Internal Capitalization )
 * medial capitals, recommended by the Oxford English Dictionary
 * mixedCase for lower camel case in Python
 * PascalCase for upper camel case  (after the Pascal programming language)
 * Smalltalk case
 * WikiWord or WikiCase (especially in older wikis)

The earliest known occurrence of the term "InterCaps" on Usenet is in an April 1990 post to the group alt.folklore.computers by Avi Rappoport. The earliest use of the name "Camel Case" occurs in 1995, in a post by Newton Love. Love has since said, "With the advent of programming languages having these sorts of constructs, the humpiness of the style made me call it HumpyCase at first, before I settled on CamelCase. I had been calling it CamelCase for years. ... The citation above was just the first time I had used the name on USENET."

In word combinations
The use of medial capitals as a convention in the regular spelling of everyday texts is rare, but is used in some languages as a solution to particular problems which arise when two words or segments are combined.

In Italian, pronouns can be suffixed to verbs, and because the honorific form of second-person pronouns is capitalized, this can produce a sentence like non ho trovato il tempo di risponderLe ("I have not found time to answer you" – where Le means "to you").

In German, the medial capital letter I, called Binnen-I, is sometimes used in a word like StudentInnen ("students") to indicate that both Studenten ("male students") and Studentinnen ("female students") are intended simultaneously. However, mid-word capitalization does not conform to German orthography apart from proper names like McDonald; the previous example could be correctly written using parentheses as Student(inn)en, analogous to "congress(wo)men" in English.

In Irish, camel case is used when an inflectional prefix is attached to a proper noun, for example i nGaillimh ("in Galway"), from Gaillimh ("Galway"); an tAlbanach ("the Scottish person"), from Albanach ("Scottish person"); and go hÉirinn ("to Ireland"), from Éire ("Ireland"). In recent Scottish Gaelic orthography, a hyphen has been inserted: an t-Albannach.

This convention is also used by several written Bantu languages (e.g. isiZulu, "Zulu language") and several indigenous languages of Mexico (e.g. Nahuatl, Totonacan, Mixe–Zoque, and some Oto-Manguean languages).

In Dutch, when capitalizing the digraph ij, both the letter I and the letter J are capitalized, for example in the country name IJsland ("Iceland").

In Chinese pinyin, camel case is sometimes used for place names so that readers can more easily pick out the different parts of the name. For example, places like Beijing (北京), Qinhuangdao (秦皇岛), and Daxing'anling (大兴安岭) can be written as BeiJing, QinHuangDao, and DaXingAnLing respectively, with the number of capital letters equaling the number of Chinese characters. Writing word compounds only by the initial letter of each character is also acceptable in some cases, so Beijing can be written as BJ, Qinghuangdao as QHD, and Daxing'anling as DXAL.

In English, medial capitals are usually only found in Scottish or Irish "Mac-" or "Mc-" names, where for example MacDonald, McDonald, and Macdonald are common spelling variants of the same name, and in Anglo-Norman "Fitz-" names, where for example both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald are found.

In their English style guide The King's English, first published in 1906, H. W. and F. G. Fowler suggested that medial capitals could be used in triple compound words where hyphens would cause ambiguity—the examples they give are KingMark-like (as against King Mark-like) and Anglo-SouthAmerican (as against Anglo-South American). However, they described the system as "too hopelessly contrary to use at present".

In transliterations
In the scholarly transliteration of languages written in other scripts, medial capitals are used in similar situations. For example, in transliterated Hebrew, haIvri means "the Hebrew person" or "the Jew" and b'Yerushalayim means "in Jerusalem". In Tibetan proper names like rLobsang, the "r" stands for a prefix glyph in the original script that functions as tone marker rather than a normal letter. Another example is ts I urku, a Latin transcription of the Chechen term for the capping stone of the characteristic Medieval defensive towers of Chechnya and Ingushetia; the letter " I " (palochka) is not actually capital, denoting a phoneme distinct from the one transcribed as "i".

In abbreviations
Medial capitals are traditionally used in abbreviations to reflect the capitalization that the words would have when written out in full, for example in the academic titles PhD or BSc. A more recent example is NaNoWriMo, a contraction of National Novel Writing Month and the designation for both the annual event and the nonprofit organization that runs it. In German, the names of statutes are abbreviated using embedded capitals, e.g. StGB for Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code), PatG for Patentgesetz (Patent Act), BVerfG for Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court), or the very common GmbH, for Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (private limited company). In this context, there can even be three or more camel case capitals, e.g. in TzBfG for Teilzeit- und Befristungsgesetz (Act on Part-Time and Limited Term Occupations). In French, camel case acronyms such as OuLiPo (1960) were favored for a time as alternatives to initialisms.

Camel case is often used to transliterate initialisms into alphabets where two letters may be required to represent a single character of the original alphabet, e.g., DShK from Cyrillic ДШК.

Chemical formulas
The first systematic and widespread use of medial capitals for technical purposes was the notation for chemical formulas invented by the Swedish chemist Jacob Berzelius in 1813. To replace the multitude of naming and symbol conventions used by chemists until that time, he proposed to indicate each chemical element by a symbol of one or two letters, the first one being capitalized. The capitalization allowed formulas like "NaCl" to be written without spaces and still be parsed without ambiguity.

Berzelius' system continues to be used, augmented with three-letter symbols such as "Uue" for unconfirmed or unknown elements and abbreviations for some common substituents (especially in the field of organic chemistry, for instance "Et" for "ethyl-"). This has been further extended to describe the amino acid sequences of proteins and other similar domains.

Early use in trademarks
Since the early 20th century, medial capitals have occasionally been used for corporate names and product trademarks, such as
 * DryIce Corporation (1925) marketed the solid form of carbon dioxide (CO2) as "Dry Ice", thus leading to its common name.
 * CinemaScope and VistaVision, rival widescreen movie formats (1953)
 * ShopKo (1962), retail stores, later renamed Shopko
 * MisteRogers Neighborhood, the TV series also called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1968)
 * ChemGrass (1965), later renamed AstroTurf (1967)
 * ConAgra (1971), formerly Consolidated Mills
 * MasterCraft (1968), a sports boat manufacturer
 * AeroVironment (1971)
 * PolyGram (1972), formerly Grammophon-Philips Group
 * United HealthCare (1977)
 * MasterCard (1979), formerly Master Charge
 * SportsCenter (1979)

Computer programming
In the 1970s and 1980s, medial capitals were adopted as a standard or alternative naming convention for multi-word identifiers in several programming languages. The precise origin of the convention in computer programming has not yet been settled. A 1954 conference proceedings occasionally informally referred to IBM's Speedcoding system as "SpeedCo". Christopher Strachey's paper on GPM (1965), shows a program that includes some medial capital identifiers, including " " and " ".

Multiple-word descriptive identifiers with embedded spaces such as  or   cannot be used in most programming languages because the spaces between the words would be parsed as delimiters between tokens. The alternative of running the words together as in  or   is difficult to understand and possibly misleading; for example,   is an English word (able to be charted), whereas   means a table of.

Some early programming languages, notably Lisp (1958) and COBOL (1959), addressed this problem by allowing a hyphen ("-") to be used between words of compound identifiers, as in "END-OF-FILE": Lisp because it worked well with prefix notation (a Lisp parser would not treat a hyphen in the middle of a symbol as a subtraction operator) and COBOL because its operators were individual English words. This convention remains in use in these languages, and is also common in program names entered on a command line, as in Unix.

However, this solution was not adequate for mathematically oriented languages such as FORTRAN (1955) and ALGOL (1958), which used the hyphen as an infix subtraction operator. FORTRAN ignored blanks altogether, so programmers could use embedded spaces in variable names. However, this feature was not very useful since the early versions of the language restricted identifiers to no more than six characters.

Exacerbating the problem, common punched card character sets of the time were uppercase only and lacked other special characters. It was only in the late 1960s that the widespread adoption of the ASCII character set made both lowercase and the underscore character  universally available. Some languages, notably C, promptly adopted underscores as word separators, and identifiers such as  are still prevalent in C programs and libraries (as well as in later languages influenced by C, such as Perl and Python). However, some languages and programmers chose to avoid underscores—among other reasons to prevent confusing them with whitespace—and adopted camel case instead.

Charles Simonyi, who worked at Xerox PARC in the 1970s and later oversaw the creation of Microsoft's Office suite of applications, invented and taught the use of Hungarian Notation, one version of which uses the lowercase letter(s) at the start of a (capitalized) variable name to denote its type. One account claims that the camel case style first became popular at Xerox PARC around 1978, with the Mesa programming language developed for the Xerox Alto computer. This machine lacked an underscore key (whose place was taken by a left arrow "←"), and the hyphen and space characters were not permitted in identifiers, leaving camel case as the only viable scheme for readable multiword names. The PARC Mesa Language Manual (1979) included a coding standard with specific rules for upper and lower camel case that was strictly followed by the Mesa libraries and the Alto operating system. Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of Pascal, came to appreciate camel case during a sabbatical at PARC and used it in Modula, his next programming language.

The Smalltalk language, which was developed originally on the Alto, also uses camel case instead of underscores. This language became quite popular in the early 1980s, and thus may also have been instrumental in spreading the style outside PARC.

Upper camel case (or "Pascal case") is used in Wolfram Language in computer algebraic system Mathematica for predefined identifiers. User defined identifiers should start with a lower case letter. This avoids the conflict between predefined and user defined identifiers both today and in all future versions.

C# variable names are recommended to follow the lower camel case convention.

Computer companies and products
Whatever its origins in the computing field, the convention was used in the names of computer companies and their commercial brands, since the late 1970s — a trend that continues to this day:

 * (1977) CompuServe
 * (1978) WordStar
 * (1979) VisiCalc
 * (1982) MicroProse, WordPerfect
 * (1983) NetWare
 * (1984) LaserJet, MacWorks, PostScript
 * (1985) PageMaker
 * (1987) ClarisWorks, HyperCard, PowerPoint
 * (1990) WorldWideWeb (the first web browser), later renamed Nexus

Spread to mainstream usage
In the 1980s and 1990s, after the advent of the personal computer exposed hacker culture to the world, camel case then became fashionable for corporate trade names in non-computer fields as well. Mainstream usage was well established by 1990:

 * (1980) EchoStar
 * (1984) BellSouth
 * (1985) EastEnders
 * (1986) SpaceCamp
 * (1990) HarperCollins, SeaTac
 * (1998) PricewaterhouseCoopers, merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers

During the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, the lowercase prefixes "e" (for "electronic") and "i" (for "Internet", "information", "intelligent", etc.) became quite common, giving rise to names like Apple's iMac and the eBox software platform.

In 1998, Dave Yost suggested that chemists use medial capitals to aid readability of long chemical names, e.g. write AmidoPhosphoRibosylTransferase instead of amidophosphoribosyltransferase. This usage was not widely adopted.

Camel case is sometimes used for abbreviated names of certain neighborhoods, e.g. New York City neighborhoods SoHo (South of Houston Street) and TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street) and San Francisco's SoMa (South of Market). Such usages erode quickly, so the neighborhoods are now typically rendered as Soho, Tribeca, and Soma.

Internal capitalization has also been used for other technical codes like HeLa (1983).

Programming and coding
The use of medial caps for compound identifiers is recommended by the coding style guidelines of many organizations or software projects. For some languages (such as Mesa, Pascal, Modula, Java and Microsoft's .NET) this practice is recommended by the language developers or by authoritative manuals and has therefore become part of the language's "culture".

Style guidelines often distinguish between upper and lower camel case, typically specifying which variety should be used for specific kinds of entities: variables, record fields, methods, procedures, functions, subroutines, types, etc. These rules are sometimes supported by static analysis tools that check source code for adherence.

The original Hungarian notation for programming, for example, specifies that a lowercase abbreviation for the "usage type" (not data type) should prefix all variable names, with the remainder of the name in upper camel case; as such it is a form of lower camel case.

Programming identifiers often need to contain acronyms and initialisms that are already in uppercase, such as "old HTML file". By analogy with the title case rules, the natural camel case rendering would have the abbreviation all in uppercase, namely "oldHTMLFile". However, this approach is problematic when two acronyms occur together (e.g., "parse DBM XML" would become "parseDBMXML") or when the standard mandates lower camel case but the name begins with an abbreviation (e.g. "SQL server" would become "sQLServer"). For this reason, some programmers prefer to treat abbreviations as if they were words and write "oldHtmlFile", "parseDbmXml" or "sqlServer". However, this can make it harder to recognize that a given word is intended as an acronym.

Difficulties arise when identifiers have different meaning depending only on the case, as can occur with mathematical functions or trademarks. In this situation changing the case of an identifier might not be an option and an alternative name need be chosen.

Wiki link markup
Camel case is used in some wiki markup languages for terms that should be automatically linked to other wiki pages. This convention was originally used in Ward Cunningham's original wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, and can be activated in most other wikis. Some wiki engines such as TiddlyWiki, Trac and PmWiki make use of it in the default settings, but usually also provide a configuration mechanism or plugin to disable it. Wikipedia formerly used camel case linking as well, but switched to explicit link markup using square brackets and many other wiki sites have done the same. MediaWiki, for example, does not support camel case for linking. Some wikis that do not use camel case linking may still use the camel case as a naming convention, such as AboutUs.

Other uses
The NIEM registry requires that XML data elements use upper camel case and XML attributes use lower camel case.

Most popular command-line interfaces and scripting languages cannot easily handle file names that contain embedded spaces (usually requiring the name to be put in quotes). Therefore, users of those systems often resort to camel case (or underscores, hyphens and other "safe" characters) for compound file names like MyJobResume.pdf.

Microblogging and social networking services that limit the number of characters in a message are potential outlets for medial capitals. Using camel case between words reduces the number of spaces, and thus the number of characters, in a given message, allowing more content to fit into the limited space. Hashtags, especially long ones, often use camel case to maintain readability (e.g. #CollegeStudentProblems is easier to read than #collegestudentproblems); this practice improves accessibility as screen readers recognize CamelCase in parsing composite hashtags.

In website URLs, spaces are percent-encoded as "%20", making the address longer and less human readable. By omitting spaces, camel case does not have this problem.

Readability studies
Camel case has been criticized as negatively impacting readability due to the removal of spaces and uppercasing of every word.

A 2009 study of 135 subjects comparing snake case (underscored identifiers) to camel case found that camel case identifiers were recognized with higher accuracy among all subjects. Subjects recognized snake case identifiers more quickly than camel case identifiers. Training in camel case sped up camel case recognition and slowed snake case recognition, although this effect involved coefficients with high p-values. The study also conducted a subjective survey and found that non-programmers either preferred underscores or had no preference, and 38% of programmers trained in camel case stated a preference for underscores. However, these preferences had no statistical correlation to accuracy or speed when controlling for other variables.

A 2010 follow-up study used a similar study design with 15 subjects consisting of expert programmers trained primarily in snake case. It used a static rather than animated stimulus and found perfect accuracy in both styles except for one incorrect camel case response. Subjects recognized identifiers in snake case more quickly than camel case. The study used eye-tracking equipment and found that the difference in speed for its subjects was primarily due to the fact that average duration of fixations for camel-case was significantly higher than that of snake case for 3-part identifiers. The survey recorded a mixture of preferred identifier styles but again there was no correlation of preferred style to accuracy or speed.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Camel case


text:
Cereal

A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize. Edible grains from other plant families, such as buckwheat and quinoa, are pseudocereals. Most cereals are annuals, producing one crop from each planting, though rice is sometimes grown as a perennial. Winter varieties are hardy enough to be planted in the autumn, becoming dormant in the winter, and harvested in spring or early summer; spring varieties are planted in spring and harvested in late summer. The term cereal is derived from the name of the Roman goddess of grain crops and fertility, Ceres.

Cereals were domesticated in the Neolithic, some 8,000 years ago. Wheat and barley were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent; rice was domesticated in East Asia, and sorghum and millet were domesticated in West Africa. In the 20th century, cereal productivity was greatly increased by the Green Revolution. This increase in production has accompanied a growing international trade, with some countries producing large portions of the cereal supply for other countries.

Cereals provide food eaten directly as whole grains, usually cooked, or they are ground to flour and made into bread, porridge, and other products. Cereals have a high starch content, enabling them to be fermented into alcoholic drinks such as beer. Cereal farming has a substantial environmental impact, and is often produced in high-intensity monocultures. The environmental harms can be mitigated by sustainable practices which reduce the impact on soil and improve biodiversity, such as no-till farming and intercropping.

Origins

Wheat, barley, rye, and oats were gathered and eaten in the Fertile Crescent during the early Neolithic. Cereal grains 19,000 years old have been found at the Ohalo II site in Israel, with charred remnants of wild wheat and barley.

During the same period, farmers in China began to farm rice and millet, using human-made floods and fires as part of their cultivation regimen. The use of soil conditioners, including manure, fish, compost and ashes, appears to have begun early, and developed independently in areas of the world including Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, and Eastern Asia.

Cereals that became modern barley and wheat were domesticated some 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. Millets and rice were domesticated in East Asia, while sorghum and other millets were domesticated in sub-Saharan West Africa, primarily as feed for livestock.

In these agricultural regions, religion was often shaped by the divinity associated with the grain and harvests. In the Mesopotamian creation myth, an era of civilization is inaugurated by the grain goddess Ashnan. The Roman goddess Ceres presided over agriculture, grain crops, fertility, and motherhood; the term cereal is derived from Latin cerealis, "of grain", originally meaning "of [the goddess] Ceres". Several gods of antiquity combined agriculture and war: the Hittite Sun goddess of Arinna, the Canaanite Lahmu and the Roman Janus.

Complex civilizations arose where cereal agriculture created a surplus, allowing for part of the harvest to be appropriated from farmers, allowing power to be concentrated in cities.

Modern

During the second half of the 20th century, there was a significant increase in the production of high-yield cereal crops worldwide, especially wheat and rice, due to the Green Revolution, a technological change funded by development organizations. The strategies developed by the Green Revolution, including mechanized tilling, monoculture, nitrogen fertilizers, and breading of new strains of seeds. These innovations focused on fending off starvation and increasing yield-per-plant, and were very successful in raising overall yields of cereal grains, but paid less attention to nutritional quality. These modern high-yield cereal crops tend to have low-quality proteins, with essential amino acid deficiencies, are high in carbohydrates, and lack balanced essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and other quality factors. So-called ancient grains and heirloom varieties have seen an increase in popularity with the "organic" movements of the early 21st century, but there is a tradeoff in yield-per-plant, putting pressure on resource-poor areas as food crops are replaced with cash crops.

Biology

Cereals are grasses, in the Poaceae family, that produce edible grains. A cereal grain is botanically a caryopsis, a fruit where the seed coat is fused with the pericarp. Grasses have stems that are hollow except at the nodes and narrow alternate leaves borne in two ranks. The lower part of each leaf encloses the stem, forming a leaf-sheath. The leaf grows from the base of the blade, an adaptation that protects the growing meristem from grazing animals. The flowers are usually hermaphroditic, with the exception of maize, and mainly anemophilous or wind-pollinated, although insects occasionally play a role.

Among the best-known cereals are maize, rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, millet, oat, rye and triticale. Some other grains are colloquially called cereals, even though they are not grasses; these pseudocereals include buckwheat, quinoa, and amaranth.

Cultivation
All cereal crops are cultivated in a similar way. Most are annual, so after sowing they are harvested just once. An exception is rice, which although usually treated as an annual can survive as a perennial, producing a ratoon crop. Cereals adapted to a temperate climate, such as barley, oats, rye, spelt, triticale, and wheat, are called cool-season cereals. Those preferring a tropical climate, such as millet and sorghum, are called warm-season cereals. Cool-season cereals, especially rye, followed by barley, are hardy; they grow best in fairly cool weather, and stop growing, depending on variety, when the temperature goes above around 30 °C. Warm-season cereals, in contrast, require hot weather and cannot tolerate frost. Cool-season cereals can be grown in highlands in the tropics, where they sometimes deliver several crops in a single year.

Planting

In the tropics, warm-season cereals can be grown at any time of the year. In temperate zones, these cereals can only be grown when there is no frost. Most cereals are planted in tilled soils, which reduces weeds and breaks up the surface of a field. Most cereals need regular water in the early part of their life cycle. Rice is commonly grown in flooded fields, though some strains are grown on dry land. Other warm climate cereals, such as sorghum, are adapted to arid conditions.

Cool-season cereals are grown mainly in temperate zones. These cereals often have both winter varieties for autumn sowing, winter dormancy, and early summer harvesting, and spring varieties planted in spring and harvested in late summer. Winter varieties have the advantage of using water when it is plentiful, and permitting a second crop after the early harvest. They flower only in spring as they require vernalization, exposure to cold for a specific period, fixed genetically. Spring crops grow when it is warmer but less rainy, so they may need irrigation.

Growth

Cereal strains are bred for consistency and resilience to the local environmental conditions. The greatest constraints on yield are plant diseases, especially rusts (mostly the Puccinia spp.) and powdery mildews. Fusarium head blight, caused by Fusarium graminearum, is a significant limitation on a wide variety of cereals. Other pressures include pest insects and wildlife like rodents and deer. In conventional agriculture, some farmers will apply fungicides or pesticides

Harvesting
Annual cereals die when they have come to seed, and dry up. Harvesting begins once the plants and seeds are dry enough. Harvesting in mechanized agricultural systems is by combine harvester, a machine which drives across the field in a single pass in which it cuts the stalks and then threshes and winnows the grain. In traditional agricultural systems, mostly in the Global South, harvesting may be by hand, using tools such as scythes and grain cradles. Leftover parts of the plant can be allowed to decompose, or collected as straw; this can be used for animal bedding, mulch, and a growing medium for mushrooms. It is used in crafts such as building with cob or straw-bale construction.

Preprocessing and storage
If cereals are not completely dry when harvested, such as when the weather is rainy, the stored grain will be spoilt by mould fungi such as Aspergillus and Penicillium. This can be prevented by drying it artificially. It may then be stored in a grain elevator or silo, to be sold later. Grain stores need to be constructed to protect the grain from damage by pests such as seed-eating birds and rodents.

Processing

When the cereal is ready to be distributed, it is sold to a manufacturing facility that first removes the outer layers of the grain for subsequent milling for flour or other processing steps, to produce foods such as flour, oatmeal, or pearl barley. In developing countries, processing may be traditional, in artisanal workshops, as with tortilla production in Central America.

Most cereals can be processed in a variety of ways. Rice processing, for instance, can create whole-grain or polished rice, or rice flour. Removal of the germ increases the longevity of grain in storage. Some grains can be malted, a process of activating enzymes in the seed to cause sprouting that turns the complex starches into sugars before drying. These sugars can be extracted for industrial uses and further processing, such as for making industrial alcohol, beer, whisky, or rice wine, or sold directly as a sugar. In the 20th century, industrial processes developed around chemically altering the grain, to be used for other processes. In particular, maize can be altered to produce food additives, such as corn starch and high-fructose corn syrup.

Impacts

Cereal production has a substantial impact on the environment. Tillage can lead to soil erosion and increased runoff. Irrigation consumes large quantities of water; its extraction from lakes, rivers, or aquifers may have multiple environmental effects, such as lowering the water table and cause salination of aquifers. Fertilizer production contributes to global warming, and its use can lead to pollution and eutrophication of waterways. Arable farming uses large amounts of fossil fuel, releasing greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming. Pesticide usage can cause harm to wildlife, such as to bees.

Mitigations

Some of the impacts of growing cereals can be mitigated by changing production practices. Tillage can be reduced by no-till farming, such as by direct drilling of cereal seeds, or by developing and planting perennial crop varieties so that annual tilling is not required. Rice can be grown as a ratoon crop; and other researchers are exploring perennial cool-season cereals, such as kernza, being developed in the US.

Fertilizer and pesticide usage may be reduced in some polycultures, growing several crops in a single field at the same time. Fossil fuel-based nitrogen fertilizer usage can be reduced by intercropping cereals with legumes which fix nitrogen. Greenhouse gas emissions may be cut further by more efficient irrigation or by water harvesting methods like contour trenching that reduce the need for irrigation, and by breeding new crop varieties.

Direct consumption
Some cereals such as rice require little preparation before human consumption. For example, to make plain cooked rice, raw milled rice is washed and boiled. Foods such as porridge and muesli may be made largely of whole cereals, especially oats, whereas commercial breakfast cereals such as granola may be highly processed and combined with sugars, oils, and other products.

Flour-based foods

Cereals can be ground to make flour. Wheat flour is the main ingredient of bread and pasta. Maize flour has been important in Mesoamerica since ancient times, with foods such as Mexican tortillas and tamales. Rye flour is a constituent of bread in central and northern Europe, while rice flour is common in Asia.

A cereal grain consists of starchy endosperm, germ, and bran. Wholemeal flour contains all of these; white flour is without some or all of the germ or bran.

Alcohol
Because cereals have a high starch content, they are often used to make industrial alcohol and alcoholic drinks by fermentation. For instance, beer is produced by brewing and fermenting starch, mainly from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley. Rice wines such as Japanese sake are brewed in Asia; a fermented rice and honey wine was made in China some 9,000 years ago.

Animal feed

Cereals and their related byproducts such as hay are routinely fed to farm animals. Common cereals as animal food include maize, barley, wheat, and oats. Moist grains may be treated chemically or made into silage; mechanically flattened or crimped, and kept in airtight storage until used; or stored dry with a moisture content of less than 14%. Commercially, grains are often combined with other materials and formed into feed pellets.

Whole-grain and processed

As whole grains, cereals provide carbohydrates, polyunsaturated fats, protein, vitamins, and minerals. When processed by the removal of the bran and germ, all that remains is the starchy endosperm. In some developing countries, cereals constitute a majority of daily sustenance. In developed countries, cereal consumption is moderate and varied but still substantial, primarily in the form of refined and processed grains.

Amino acid balance
Some cereals are deficient in the essential amino acid lysine, obliging vegetarian cultures to combine their diet of cereal grains with legumes to obtain a balanced diet. Many legumes, however, are deficient in the essential amino acid methionine, which grains contain. Thus, a combination of legumes with grains forms a well-balanced diet for vegetarians. Such combinations include dal (lentils) with rice by South Indians and Bengalis, beans with maize tortillas, tofu with rice, and peanut butter with wholegrain wheat bread (as sandwiches) in several other cultures, including the Americas. For feeding animals, the amount of crude protein measured in grains is expressed as grain crude protein concentration.

Production and trade commodities

Cereals constitute the world's largest commodities by tonnage, whether measured by production or by international trade. Several major producers of cereals dominate the market. Because of the scale of the trade, some countries have become reliant on imports, thus cereals pricing or availability can have outsized impacts on countries with a food trade imbalance and thus food security. Speculation, as well as other compounding production and supply factors leading up to the 2007–2008 financial crises, created rapid inflation of grain prices during the 2007–2008 world food price crisis. Other disruptions, such as climate change or war related changes to supply or transportation can create further food insecurity; for example the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 disrupted Ukrainian and Russian wheat supplies causing a global food price crisis in 2022 that affected countries heavily dependent on wheat flour.

Production

Cereals are the world's largest crops by tonnage of grain produced. Three cereals, maize, wheat, and rice, together accounted for 89% of all cereal production worldwide in 2012, and 43% of the global supply of food energy in 2009, while the production of oats and rye has drastically fallen from their 1960s levels.

Other cereals not included in the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization statistics include wild rice, which is grown in small amounts in North America, and teff, an ancient grain that is a staple in Ethiopia. Teff is grown in sub-Saharan Africa as a grass primarily for feeding horses. It is high in fiber and protein. Its flour is often used to make injera. It can be eaten as a warm breakfast cereal like farina with a chocolate or nutty flavor.

The table shows the annual production of cereals in 1961, 1980, 2000, 2010, and 2019/2020.

Trade

Cereals are the most traded commodities by quantity in 2021, with wheat, maize, and rice the main cereals involved. The Americas and Europe are the largest exporters, and Asia is the largest importer. The largest exporter of maize is the US, while India is the largest exporter of rice. China is the largest importer of maize and of rice. Many other countries trade cereals, both as exporters and as importers. Cereals are traded as futures on world commodity markets, helping to mitigate the risks of changes in price for example, if harvests fail.

title: Cereal


text: Talk:Cereal

title: Talk:Cereal


text:
Talk:Complete works of Plato

I think the title of this article should be Works of Plato. The "Complete" doesn't really add (I woulnd't see the difference between an incomplete list and the complete one), while it also suggests that these works can actually be read here. Finally, I actually think this doesn't even deserve to be an article on its own; it would be just fine to include it in the Plato article. jheijmans

For now, it can be incorporated into the Plato article. When someone comes along that adds a summary for each work, then I would argue to move it to a separate page: Works of Plato. It then could also be linked from Reference tables, for example. Go ahead, and make the move. Ap

title: Talk:Complete works of Plato