The Prison Below

Tartarus lies as far beneath the earth as heaven stands above it — a bronze anvil would fall nine days to reach it — and the poem maps the deep like a dreadful travel guide. Bronze gates forged by Poseidon; the Hundred-Handers standing guard over the gods who once let them rot; the house where Night and Day pass on a single threshold and are never home together; Sleep who is kind and Death with a heart of iron; Cerberus, who fawns on all who enter and devours any who leave; and the cold water of Styx, by which the gods swear oaths that even they dare not break.