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Updated: June 7, 2025
In a poetical request, addressed to one of the last and most deserving of the Roman princes who reigned in Gaul, Sidonius Apollinaris personifies his tribute under the figure of a triple monster, the Geryon of the Grecian fables, and entreats the new Hercules that he would most graciously be pleased to save his life by cutting off three of his heads.
Immediately afterwards, there was an ugly three-headed dog, which growled and barked at Hercules, and snapped fiercely at the hands by which he held him! But Hercules would not let him go. In another minute, instead of the three-headed dog, what should appear but Geryon, the six-legged man-monster, kicking at Hercules with five of his legs, in order to get the remaining one at liberty!
To us also in our desire time bore a god's aid and arrival. For princely Alcides the avenger came glorious in the spoils of triple Geryon slain; this way the Conqueror drove the huge bulls, and his oxen filled the river valley.
So confident had Eryx been in his powers, that when the mighty Hercules passed through Sicily on his way from Spain, where he had slain King Geryon and carried off his splendid cattle, the Sicilian monarch ventured to challenge the hero to a combat with the cestus, staking his kingdom against the cattle which Hercules was bearing away to Greece.
Geryon was a three-bodied monster whose cattle were kept by a giant and a two-headed dog! Hercules slew the giant, the two-headed dog and Geryon himself, and in due course brought the oxen to Eurystheus. Sometime afterwards, Eurystheus, having heard rumors of a wonderful tree which, in some unknown land, yielded golden apples, was moved with great greed to have some of this remarkable fruit.
Here Virgil, by way of bait to the monster Geryon, or Fraud, let down over the side of the waterfall the cord of St. Francis, which Dante wore about his waist, and presently the dreadful creature came up, and sate on the margin of the fall, with his serpent's tail hanging behind him in the air, after the manner of a beaver; but the point of the tail was occasionally seen glancing upwards.
The rustics deposited flowers and earthen cups of milk before the motionless reptile, which with head lifted and venomous jaws open seemed to threaten them. In this place the unfortunate Zacynthus had been bitten by the serpent as he was returning to Greece with the red cattle stolen from Geryon. His body was burned on the Acropolis, and the city grew around the spot.
Above the doors of the temple is the hunting of the Erymanthian boar, and Hercules taking the mares of Diomede the Thracian, and robbing Geryon of his oxen in the island of Erytheia, and supporting the load of Atlas, and clearing the land of Elis of its dung.... The image of the god is in gold and ivory, seated on a throne. And a crown is on his head imitating the foliage of the olive tree.
The miserable harlot, in lowered voice, told the Greek why she was there. She was the favorite of Geryon, a Balearic slinger. He had left his companions a moment before, and had got out of her way so as not to have to give her the wages he had just received, and in searching for him she had stumbled upon Actæon.
For six crowns hath Isthmos given from her games to the people of Kadmos, a fair glory of triumph for my country, for the land wherein Alkmene bare her dauntless son, before whom trembled aforetime the fierce hounds of Geryon.
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