Saturday, January the 24th, 2004
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To be given a Sop. The full quotation should be “to give a sop to Cerberus”. Cerberus was Pluto's three-headed dog set at the gates of the Infernal Regions over which Pluto was King. The Greeks and Romans when burying their dead put into the hands of the corpse a cake. The idea was that the cake was a sop to Cerberus to allow the dead to pass unmolested.
Source : Encyclopaedia of Phrases & Origins by Edwin Radford (1945)