#tartarus

Summary:

Tartarus is one of the earliest beings to exist, alongside Chaos, Gaia and Eros.

Tartarus is both a deity and a place in the underworld but unlike Zeus or Poseidon, Tartarus isn't usually portrayed as a human-like god who interacts with other gods. Instead, he represents the deepest, darkest region of the cosmos itself.

Tartarus was believed to lie far below Hades. It served as a place of imprisonment and punishment.

The Titans defeated by Zeus and the Olympian gods were eventually imprisoned there. Cronus, depending on the mythological tradition, is also associated with imprisonment in Tartarus.

Hesiod describes Gaia and Tartarus as the parents of Typhon.

Typhon was an enormous, serpentine monster who challenged Zeus for control of the cosmos. Zeus eventually defeated him and, in some traditions, buried him beneath Mount Etna.

Virgil describes Tartarus in great detail in the Aeneid, Book VI. He described it as expansive. It is surrounded by three perimeter walls, beyond which flows a flaming river named the Phlegethon. Drinking from the Phlegethon will not kill a mortal and it will heal while causing great pain. To further prevent escape, a hydra with fifty black, gaping jaws sits atop a gate that screeches when opened. They are flanked by adamantine columns, a substance that, like diamond, was believed to be so hard that nothing can cut through it. Inside the walls of Tartarus sits a wide-walled castle with a tall, iron turret. Tisiphone, one of the Erinyes, who represents vengeance, stands sleepless guard at the top of the turret lashing her whip. Roman mythology describes a pit inside extending down into the earth twice as far as the distance from the lands of the living to Olympus. The twin sons of the Titan Aloeus were said to be imprisoned at the bottom of this pit.

Legends:

King Salmoneus was also mentioned to have been imprisoned in Tartarus after passing himself off as Zeus, causing the real Zeus to smite him with a thunderbolt.

Arke is the sister of Iris who sided with the Titans as their messenger goddess. Zeus removed her wings following the gods' victory over the Titans and she was thrown into Tartarus with the Titans.

Opus umbrarum, mutationes chthoniae, chaos et mors.

Memor esto eorum ad quos vocas.

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The old bus waited beneath Daniel’s window.

No horn. No notebook. No driver calling. Just open doors and yellow light on wet pavement.

Daniel boarded wearing Phil’s coat, but the bus was empty. No passengers from before. No guide. Only the driver and the seat Phil had left behind.

“Am I becoming him?” Daniel asked.

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re worried about it.”

The bus stopped for a woman named Leah. She carried a suitcase and a sealed letter written by her dead sister to their dead father. She had kept it for six years because she believed protecting him was love.

Now both of them were gone.

The letter belonged to no one.

Or perhaps it still belonged to her decision.

Leah asked Daniel whether he was the guide.

“No,” he said. “I’m someone riding one stop.”

She wanted him to tell her what to do with the letter. Open it. Burn it. Keep it. Leave it on the bus.

He refused to decide for her.

When she tried to leave the envelope on Phil’s empty seat, Daniel understood what the bus had been collecting: unfinished objects carried by people who believed keeping them was responsibility.

He returned the letter to Leah.

“This belongs with your decision.”

Then he removed Phil’s coat and left it on Phil’s seat.

At the next stop, Daniel and Leah got off.

She walked into the square carrying the letter. Daniel placed the red toy car on top of Phil’s folded coat.

The driver offered him a permanent place.

“You could stay.”

“Would I help people?”

“Yes.”

“Would it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Would I become useful?”

“Yes.”

“Would I know when to leave?”

“No.”

That was the whole trap.

Phil had written:

If I become useful, leave me anyway.

So Daniel refused.

The driver admitted that he had once been a passenger too. A passenger who stayed because someone had to drive.

“Do they?” Daniel asked.

For the first time, the driver said:

“I don’t know.”

The bus left.

Daniel stood on the curb without Phil’s coat, the badge, the notebook, or the red car.

No visible proof of the route.

Just Daniel.

Cold. Hungry. Responsible for the next ordinary choice.

Behind him, somewhere beyond traffic, brakes sighed.

He did not turn around.

Not because the bus was gone.

Because this time, he was.