The Corruption Of Geryon In Dante's Inferno

Dante’s poem The Divine Comedy tells the tale of his enlightening journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante experiences this tour at the bequest of his late love, Beatrice, who intends for this journey to assist Dante in realizing his sinful ways and turning from them. While travelling through Hell in his canticle Inferno, Dante encounters various mythological beasts. These beasts are placed within certain circles of Hell and reflect the sins and punishments present there. One significant beast Dante encounters is Geryon who is described in lines 10-20 of the Inferno:

“The face was as the face of a just man,

Its semblance outwardly was so benign,

And of a serpent all the trunk beside.

Two paws it had, hairy unto the armpits;

The

The entirety of Geryon’s physical appearance points toward his personification of fraud, or the “corruption of appetite, will, and intellect” (Inferno). His body is split into three sections: a human face, a serpentine body with the arms of a lion, and a scorpion-like tail. The first part of Geryon that Dante and Virgil see is his “face of a just man” whose outward appearance is “benign.” (line 10-11) At first glance, Geryon appears to be a trustworthy and kind creature, but his face only serves as a distraction from the real danger lurking behind in the form of a scorpion’s sting. The layout of Geryon’s body exemplifies the way fraud tends to occur: “the righteous countenance and seductive colors…lure in and distract the victim until the fraudulent deed…is done.” (Seductive). Geryon’s pleasing front holds the attention of the viewer until he is able to whip his tail around and poison them with his stinger. In the same way, acts of fraud seem to be just until their horrid nature is

The Geryon in the myth of Hercules and the Aeneid is a king with either three heads or three bodies. (Encyclopedia) (AENEID) Dante uses this character to inspire his formation of the Geryon found in the Inferno, but instead of creating Geryon with three heads or three bodies, Dante gives him one body with three natures: “human, bestial, and serpentine” (Poet). Geryon presents a seemingly impossible “copresence of different ‘natures’ within a single body” (Encyclopedia). This amalgamation of three conflicting natures intensifies Geryon’s position as fraud. The just nature of his human face contrasts with the sting of his tail while the strength of the lion’s paws contrasts with the cunning of the serpentine body (Encyclopedia). In his physical body, nature, and allegorical representation, Geryon is “multifaceted and deceptive” (Inferno). Although these presentations of Geryon are sparsely related in physique, they do bear the same name. It is possible that Dante gave his character its name because the Geryon of Greek mythology was the brother of Echidna; she was a serpentine woman and the mother of the Hydra, which was a hundred-headed serpent (Prototype). Dante’s use of the name Geryon reflects the mythological Geryon of Hercules’ twelve labors and Virgil’s Aeneid in name and tri-fold