Tartarus (Art by Jeffrey Smith)
Tartarus is the darkest and deepest area of the Greek Underworld, where gods, angels, and royal demons imprison their enemies. It is a prison reserved for those who opposed the ruling of the divine and demonic.
Description[]
Zeus asserts that Tartarus is "as far beneath Hades as Heaven is high above the Earth." As a place so far from the sun and so deep in the Earth, Tartarus is hemmed in by three layers of night, which surround a bronze wall which in turn encompasses Tartarus. It is a dank and wretched pit engulfed in murky gloom. It is one of the primordial objects which sprung from Chaos. Along with Tartarus, Gaia (Earth), and Eros, emerged into the universe.
According to the Greek poet Hesiod, a bronze anvil falling from heaven would fall 9 days before it reaches the Earth. The anvil would take nine more days to fall from Earth to Tartarus, making it approximately 4733.22 miles deep.
Tartarus is also said to be below the Christian Hell with Immanuel explaining that Tartarus is the lowest point of Hell far beneath even the Ninth Circle and is the "middle-ground" between Hell and the Abyss. The demons of the Inferno consider Tartarus as among the worst forms of banishment second only to the Abyss, even. Tartarus is reserved only for the worst of the worst, traitors and fiends of all kinds with no hope of respite or pardon. It is where the Prime Evils were banished by the Satanic Triumvirate and where the Maleficar were born.
Overview[]
Tartarus is both a deity and a place in the Underworld even lower than Avernus and Hel. In ancient Orphic sources and in the mystery schools Tartarus is also the unbounded first-existing "thing" from which the Light and the cosmos is born. It is said to be the third primordial aspect that was born after Gaia from Chaos.
After the War in Heaven, when Lucifer and his rebel angels collided against the Abyss, it is said that the impact of the fallen upon this pre-existing fissure created a chain reaction which twisted the wasteland surrounding the Abyss into a blazing inferno. This blazing inferno became the realm of Tartarus itself where it serves as the intersecting region between Hell and the Abyss. Several of the fallen angels climbed out of Tartarus upon hearing Lucifer's rallying call to them with Satan being among them.
When the Titanomachy ended the gods of Olympus eventually defeated the Titans. Many, but not all of the Titans, were cast into Tartarus. Epimetheus, Metis, Menoetius, and Prometheus are some of the Titans who were not banished to Tartarus. In Tartarus, prisoners were guarded by the Hekatonkheir, giants each with 50 enormous heads and 100 strong arms. Later, when Zeus overcame the monster Typhon, the offspring of Tartarus and Gaia, he threw it, too, into the same pit and imprisoned it by trapping a mountain on top of the beast.