1–3. Behold the beast … the whole world stink: This unusual canto opening serves partly to heighten interest in the still undescribed creature that came swimming up at the end of the last canto. It also calls attention to the fact that, like Cantos 8 and 9, this canto forms a major transition between divisions of Hell, for we now move from the circle of violence to the two circles of fraud (simple fraud and treacherous fraud [see 11.52- 66]; for the new elaborateness of canto openings in the Malebolge, see the note on 18.1–18).
Line 7 makes it explicit that Geryon is a personification of fraud. Fraud makes all physical barriers and defenses (mountains, walls, and armor) useless. It makes “the whole world stink” primarily with the venom of its scorpion-like tail (lines 25—27); this is a submerged reference to fraud as poison (truth is the food of the soul-mind, deception its poison; see Additional Note 13).
5. come ashore: Continues the nautical terminology of 16.131–36. See also the notes to lines 8–9, 19–24, and 100–101.
6. our marble pathway: That is, the margin of the river of blood, on which the pilgrim and Virgil are standing, first mentioned as their pathway in 14.84 (see the note to 15.4–11).
8. beached its head and chest: See the note to lines 19—24; another nautical image.
10–27. Its face … like a scorpion’s: The description of Geryon draws on a wide variety of sources, such as the description in Apoc. 9.7–10 of the plague of locusts: “And their faces were as the faces of men… . And they had tails like to scorpions, and there were stings in their tails.” (Geryon’s being called a beast in line 1 may also recall the beast of Apoc. 11.7.) Dante also draws on the fabulous Manticore described by Pliny and by Brunetto Latini in Tresor 1.192, which combines parts of man, lion, and scorpion; and contemporary, especially Franciscan, discussions of the Antichrist (Friedman 1972). Geryon is a triple hybrid (the first in the poem; previous hybrids have been double), whose successive parts—man, beast (bear?), and serpent—descend on the scale of nature (the scorpion was classed as a worm) (see the note to line 97).
In Geryon, the pilgrim sees the process of fraud spatially, as it were from outside time (in itself an apocalyptic perspective). The succession of Geryon’s parts is a spatial representation of the chronological sequence of a fraudulent “deal”: the honest appearance engages initial trust, the bright colors and little wheels complicate and confuse, and the end of the process brings the sting, whether of loss or of death; at some point the claws begin acquiring.
10. Its face was that of a just man: In Convivio 4.12.3, Dante mentions “the traitor, who, in the face he puts forward, shows as a friend, but under it conceals his enmity” (cf. 16.124–26, 127–29, with notes). It was apparently a common belief in Dante’s time that the scorpion’s face resembled a human face.
12. its torso was that of a serpent: Like Cerberus, “the great worm” (6.22), and Minos (5.7–12), Geryon is part snake. The serpent was of course the first deceiver (Genesis 3); compare also the dragon of the Apocalypse (Apoc. 12.2–3 and 12.9).
14–18. it had back and breast … for such tapestries: Geryon’s brightly “colored” (dtpinti) torso recalls the “gaily painted hide” (1.42) of the leopard (cf. 16.108, “painted skin,” pelle dipinta) and provides the basis of the most probable identification of the leopard, that it represents fraud.
The association of fraud (and the telling of tales) with spinning and weaving is ancient and virtually universal (compare such English expressions as “pull the wool over someone’s eyes”). In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (6.1–145) Arachne challenges Minerva to a weaving contest. While Minerva makes a tapestry showing the benefactions of the gods, Arachne’s (which Ovid says is just as skillful as Minerva’s) shows the disguises, deceptions, and crimes of the gods. The envious and enraged goddess strikes Arachne and destroys her work; Arachne attempts to hang herself but is changed by Minerva into a spider. In the medieval allegorical interpretations of Ovid, Arachne is identified as the devil.
Dante’s “weave and embroidery” (line 16) and “painted” (line 15) refer to tapestries, for both Minerva and Arachne weave colored backgrounds and then embroider figures with gold thread (Met. 6.23: “pingebat acu” [she painted with the needle] and 6.68–69):
illic et lentum filis immittitur aurum,
et vetus in tela deducitur argumentum.
[the pliant gold is inserted among the threads,
and the old story is drawn into the weave.]
For Arachne and painting, see Barkan 1988.
19–24. As skiffs … the sand: As in lines 7–9, Dante here emphasizes that the beast is only halfway on the shore; half of his body remains in the void. We are now close to the midpoint of the Inferno; if we count Geryon, more than half of the Inferno is devoted to the sins of fraud. In terms of the body analogy (see Additional Note 13), this midpoint is the division between chest and abdomen.
22. the beaver positions itself to wage its war: That the beaver used its tail to attract fish which it then caught was a widespread belief.
27. like a scorpion’s: Compare Ovid, Met. 2.195–97:
Est locus, in geminos ubi bracchia concavat arcus
Scorpiuset cauda flexisque utrimque lacertis
porrigit in spatium signorum membra duorum.
[There is a place, where Scorpius curves in double arcs his
arms, and, with tail and legs curving on both sides,
extends his members over two signs of heaven.]
For the tale of Phaethon, from which this passage is drawn, see the note to lines 106–11.
31. toward the right breast: For similar expressions, see 12.97, 15.98. Since the river of blood lies to their left, there is no other direction of descent from the high margin: everything they have seen from it (all the souls of this circle so far, and Geryon) has been to their right (see the note to 9.132).
35. a little further: That is, still to the right.
40–41. I will speak with this beast: Dante opens a parenthesis here, marked by the pilgrim’s turns to and from the right: the pilgrim returns to the beast at line 79; within the parenthesis is the account of the usurers. Compare the “border” zones at the beginning of the poem (Limbo, the neutrals) and between incontinence and violence (the wrathful and slothful, the heretics) with the border of the circle of violence here, in a sense already within the orbit of “the image of fraud.”
45. the mournful people were sitting: The third of the groups listed in 14.22–24. The sitting posture suits the idleness of usurers, whose “work” is done by their money (cf. line 78).
49. dogs behave in the summer: The commentators note the disparaging comparison of the usurers to animals here and in line 75, and in the animals on their associated bags (lines 60, 63, 64, 73).
51. gnats or horseflies: The Italian literally means “flies and horseflies.”
54. I recognized none: Several of these figures have been identified, but Dante’s point lies partly in the fact that conviction for usury often brought not only civil and religious penalties but also public infamy, which extended to children and relatives.
55. a bag of a special color: Contemporary accounts prove that bags were carried by moneylenders and placed on their changing tables (Salvemini 1901— 1902); visual representations of Hell (e.g., the Last Judgment in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua) typically show usurers holding bags.
57. their eyes seem to feed there: Compare Eccles. 4.8: “neither are his eyes satisfied with riches.” The obsession of the usurers with both coats of arms and moneybags focuses Dante’s condemnation of a class, many of whose members were recently knighted, that owed its wealth and influence to the practice of usury (see the note to lines 64—65). Dante’s verb here, pascere, is normally used of the grazing of animals.
59. on a yellow purse … a lion: The device of the Gianfigliazzi family of Florence, prominent Guelfi after 1215 and followers of the Black Guelfi after 1300. The figure here is perhaps Catello di Rosso Gianfigliazzi, who practiced usury in France and became a knight on returning to Florence; he was dead by 1298.
62–63. red as blood … whiter than butter: The Ghibelline Obriachi were a Florentine family of the high aristocracy residing in the part of the Oltrarno that includes the modem Via dei Bardi. Closely allied with the Uberti, Farinata’s family, they were well known as bankers and money changers.
64–65. sack signed with a fat blue sow: A blue sow big with young, rampant, was the device of the wealthy Scrovegni (from scrofa, sow) family of Padua (see line 70). Reginaldo Scrovegni, who died in 1290, made an immense fortune; his son Arrico obtained a knighthood. Arrico financed the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua, frescoed by Giotto in the first decade of the fourteenth century; it is conceivable that Dante, who seems to have been in Padua at an appropriate time, helped with the planning.
68. my neighbor … at my left flank: This expected usurer (the only one given a name), is usually identified with Vitaliano del Dente, who married a daughter of Reginaldo Scrovegni and served as podestà of several cities; there is little evidence, beyond this passage, for his having been a usurer. Scrovegni’s phraseology may evoke the placing of the wicked thief, and of the reprobate at the Last Judgment, at Christ’s left.
72–73. Let the reigning knight… three goats: Three goats in a gold field was the device of the Buiamonte family. Giovanni di Buiamonte de’ Becchi was Gonfaloniere della Giustizia (commissioner and chief of police) of Florence in 1293, when only newly a knight.
74–75. Here he twisted … licking its snout: The usurer’s grotesque gesture (he is the one with the sow on his bag) expresses both reduction to bestiality and a weird sluggishness perhaps associated with their sin.
81. Now be strong and bold: See 2.14–15, with note.
82. henceforth we descend by stairs like these: The figure of the “chain” or “ladder of being” is all but explicit (see the notes on 2.52—117 and 11.18, and Introduction, pp. 18—20). Geryon is a ladder not only in providing transport, but by representing in his body the descent from the human to the lowest of the beasts, as Minos’s tail mapped the coils of Hell. See also 34.82, 119 and notes.
86–87. quartan fever … at the shade: Tertian and quartan fevers are forms of malaria whose attacks recur every forty-eight and seventy-two hours, respectively. The pilgrim’s symptoms echo those of the frightened Phaethon (Met. 2.200): “mentis inops gelida formidine” [his mind failed, frozen with fear]; see also Met. 2.180: “palluit, et subito genua intremuere timore” [he turned pale, and suddenly his knees shook with fear]. For Phaethon, see also the note to lines 106–14.
96. clasped and braced me: As in lines 83–84, this may be taken allegori-cally, indicating the wayfarer protected by his guide, reason, from the threat of fraud. For Virgil carrying the pilgrim bodily, see 19.43—44, 124 and 23.49—51, 24.22–24.
97. Geryon: Only now is the “image of fraud” given a name, that of one of the classical monsters defeated by Hercules (like Cerberus in Canto 6; other defeated opponents of Hercules are Cacus, in Canto 25, and Antaeus, in Canto 31). According to Vergil, Geryon is triple-bodied (Aen. 6.289: “forma tricorporis umbrae” [the form of the triple-bodied shade]). By making him a triple hybrid, Dante metamorphoses Geryon into a fantastic creature like the classical Chimera (lion, goat, and serpent), mentioned along with Geryon at Aen. 6.288.
98–99. your wheelings large, your descent slow: Geryon is to avoid the extremes of too narrow an arc or of too precipitous a descent. For the relation of these instructions to those given to Phaethon and Icarus, see the note to lines 106—11 and Additional Note 6, which also discusses the relation of Geryon’s motion to that of the sun. See also 34.96 and note.
99. consider the new weight you carry: A reference to the pilgrim’s physical body (see 8.27, with note). Benvenuto de’ Rambaldi began the tradition of attributing a metaliterary implication to the pilgrim’s flight on Geryon, associating the “new weight” with the new subject matter of the circles of fraud. Current criticism tends to see the flight on Geryon as metaphorical for the entire poem (Ferrucci 1971; Barolini 1992).
100–101. As a little boat … he moved thence: The figure of Geryon as a boat (see lines 5,19) is continued. Ovid, in Met. 2.163–66, compares the chariot of Phaethon (see next note) to a boat with insufficient ballast (Brownlee 1984), and at Met. 8.228 compares Icarus’s wings to oars. For this comparison (used to illustrate metaphor in medieval handbooks of rhetoric), see the note to 26.125; the parallel between Ulysses’ and the pilgrim’s journeys begins to be established here.
106–11. I believe … bad course: To describe the pilgrim’s fear of riding on the back of Geryon, Dante draws on a pair of Ovidian myths that were traditional examples of overreaching: in the first (Met. 1.747–2.332), Phaethon requests, as proof of his divine origin, that his father Helios (the sun) allow him to drive the chariot of the sun for one day. Losing control of the horses, Phaethon allows the chariot to veer from its track and bums both the heavens, leaving the Milky Way as a scorch mark (cf. lines 107–8; Dante mentions the Milky Way in Convivio 2.14), and the earth, making the Sahara Desert (Met. 2.237–38; see 24.85–90, with note), until felled by a lightning bolt from Jove.
The second myth (Met. 8.183—259) is that of Icarus, the son of Daedalus the craftsman. Escaping with him from the labyrinth of King Minos (see 12.12, 25 and notes) on wings fashioned by his father, Icarus disregards his father’s advice to steer a middle course between sky and sea (hence the cry of Dante’s line 111, which does not appear in Ovid) and flies too close to the sun, whose heat melts the wax holding his wings together; he falls into the sea and drowns. Mention of Icarus completes a series of references to Cretan myth in the middle area of Hell (see the note to 12.12 and Additional Notes 3 and 6).
106, 110. when Phaethon abandoned … , when the wretched Icarus felt: As the commentators point out, Dante chooses the critical moments: when Phaethon, terrified by the Scorpion (with a stinging tail, like Geryon), “abandons the reins” (Met. 2.200: lora remisit), and when Icarus, climbing too high, feels the wax melting (8.226: “tnollit odoratas, pennarum vincula, ceras” [it softened the sweet-smelling wax, the bonds of his wings]).
120–26. I lean out … came closer on every side: The vividness and accuracy of Dante’s imagining of night flight, particularly of the perception of descent by the sight of the lights on the ground, are striking.
127–32. As when a falcon … spite: The second of many images in the poem drawn from falconry (in the Inferno, see 3.117, 22.128—41, and 33.22). The falcon of this simile, returning without prey and unbidden by its master, is both like and unlike Geryon, who is bearing the load of the pilgrim, but not doing so willingly. The simile and the tercet that follows, juxtaposing Geryon’s turnings at Virgil’s bidding (see lines 97–99) with the direct flight of an arrow (line 136), expresses the reluctance of Geryon’s obedience to Virgil, the strongest argument for the view of some commentators that Geryon—and his master—have been defrauded of expected prey.
132. its master: The point of view of the simile is that of the falconer (line 129); it is implied that the falconer is Satan, Geryon’s lord (cf. 3.117).
136. like the notch from the bowstring: The comparison of directed motion to the J; :,; ht of an arrow is frequent in Dante’s work and in thirteenth-century writing on physics generally; see Aquinas, Summa theol. la, q. 1, a. 2: “thus an arrow directs itself to its determined end because it is set in motion by the bowman, who directs his action to an end” (cf. 8.13–14, on Phlegyas).