Tartarus (place)

Tartarus is the darkest and deepest area of Hades' realm, known as the Underworld, where the gods imprison their enemies. Tartarus is also the primordial Greek god of the abyss.

History
While Erebus is the main realm of the dead in Greek mythology, Tartarus also contains a number of villains from Greek history. In early stories, it is primarily the prison for defeated enemies. The first beings to be jailed there, however, were the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkeries, by Uranus, although Cronus later freed them. After a while he put them back and had Kampê guard, but they were freed by Zeus and his siblings so they could fight for his cause. The Titans were condemned to Tartarus after their battle with the Olympians. The Hekatonkheires, after the Titanomachy, became the guards of Tartarus with the Titans imprisoned. Kronos is known for being held there.

During the Classical period, writers and playwrights such as Plato and Aristophanes depicted Tartarus as being the place in which the souls of those individuals that were wicked were sent to in order to face punushment. But in this series, the souls of the wicked, including those who, in myth, were sent to Tartarus (Tantalus and Sisyphus), are condemned to face eternal torment within the Fields of Punishment.

According to the Greek poet Hesiod, a bronze anvil falling from heaven would take nine days and nights to reach earth, and an object would take the same amount of time to fall from earth into Tartarus. Tartarus is described as a dark, gloomy pit, surrounded by a wall of bronze and beyond that a three-fold layer of night. It is one of the primordial beings that sprung from Chaos, along with Gaia, though some believe it was a son of Aether and Chaos, whilst Orphic sources claim Tartarus to be the unbounded first-existing entity.