Tartaros

The vanquished were enchained and thrown into Tartaros, which is as deep below the earth as the earth is below the sky. An anvil dropped from the sky falls for nine nights, and on the tenth it reaches the earth; and likewise it falls nine nights and days from the earth, and on the tenth day it reaches Tartaros. Tartaros is surrounded by an iron wall.

Kerényi presents Tartaros as the cosmological extreme of depth and total enclosure, the final prison of the defeated Titans, establishing it as mythographic ground-zero for the imagery of absolute psychic imprisonment.

Kerényi, Karl, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis

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hurled them beneath the wide-pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains when they had conquered them by their strength for all their great spirit, as far beneath the earth as heaven is above earth; for so far is it from earth to Tartarus. For a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth: and again, a brazen anvil falling from earth nine nights and days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth. Round it runs a fence of bronze, and night spreads in triple line all about it

Hesiod's Theogony supplies the canonical cosmological measurement and imagery of Tartaros — triple Night, bronze fence, immeasurable depth — as the absolute nadir of mythic space into which defeated primordial powers are consigned.

Hesiod, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700thesis

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Tartaros is here distinct from Hades (both names can denote deities as well). Rather than a place of punishments for mortals, it is the furthest a god can be from divine society and so forms a holding place for Zeus' enemies

Lattimore's commentary draws the critical distinction between Tartaros and Hades: the former is not a site of mortal punishment but a cosmic quarantine for divine enemies, marking a structural boundary within the Greek underworld's own internal topography.

Lattimore, Richmond, The Iliad of Homer, 2011thesis

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In punishment for his sin against the gods, Tantalos was confined for eternity in Tartaros, the darkest abyss of the underworld. There he was stood in a pool, with the water reaching his chin; he was tormented by thirst, but could not drink, for when he bent down, the water disappeared.

Greene reads Tantalos's eternal confinement in Tartaros as mythic exemplar of Plutonian retributive justice, connecting the abyss directly to the psychological dynamics of hubris and perpetual unsatisfied desire.

Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate, 1984thesis

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The Italian name tartaruga keeps alive a designation dating from late antiquity, according to which the tortoise holds up the lowest layer of the universe, namely Tartarus (TaQtaQouxoc).

Jung and Kerényi identify a linguistic-mythological connection between the tortoise (tartaruga) and Tartaros, positioning the animal as a chthonic bearer of the cosmic nadir and extending the symbolism into natural history and etymology.

Jung, C. G. and Kerényi, C., Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949supporting

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Tartaros, 20, 38

Hillman's index confirms Tartaros as a named coordinate within his archetypal underworld topography, appearing alongside Styx, Thanatos, and Hades as a structural element of the imaginal geography he constructs.

Hillman, James, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979supporting

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there dwells the goddess loathed by the deathless gods, terrible Styx, eldest daughter of back-flowing Ocean

Hesiod's description of the underworld geography adjacent to Tartaros — including Styx, Hades, Persephone, and Kerberos — establishes the broader mythic neighbourhood within which Tartaros is situated as the outermost depth.

Hesiod, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700supporting

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Tityos attacked Leto as she was approaching Delphi, and carried her off by force. He lay in the Underworld

Kerényi's reference to Tityos lying in the Underworld as punishment for assaulting Leto situates the punitive-abyss theme adjacent to Tartaros mythology, though the term itself is not explicitly named here.

Kerényi, Karl, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951aside

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