sop to Cerberus

English

Etymology

From Virgil's Aeneid, where the Sibyl throws Cerberus a loaf laced with honey and herbs to induce sleep.

Noun

sop to Cerberus

1. Something given or done to pacify or bribe.

   to give/throw a sop to Cerberus

   • 1914 January, Alfred Hayes, “The Relation of Music to Poetry”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     He has thrown a sop to Cerberus, and is consequently now acclaimed in sacred circles to which entrance had long been denied him.

   • 1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic‎^[2]:

     For a moment there was a profound silence all round, and I was beginning to think that I should be accidentally shoved off the moving train, when a voice asked, ‘Have you got any English cigarettes? ’ As it happened I had a couple of packets of a brand that I very much disliked, and I distributed the contents of one all round. This sop to Cerberus had the happiest results.

   • 2017 April 9, William Keegan, “Brexit hasn’t happened yet – and it is changing all the time”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:

     By calling the referendum in the first place, Cameron was offering a sop to the Cerberus of the Tory Brexiters. But in Greek mythology Cerberus was never satisfied, and demanded more.

Further reading

• “sop to Cerberus”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “a sop to Cerberus”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• Elizabeth Knowles, editor (2000), “give a sop to Cerberus”, in The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 1026.