There was a similar feeling in my head, as of the whirling and sickening sensation of passing downwards through the air, like the description Dante gives of his descent upon Geryon.

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.

"O sweet bands (Seneca exclaims), which so happily combine, that those which are bound by them love their binders, desiring withal much more harder to be bound," and as so many Geryons to be united into one.

Geryon amicitae symbolum.

There is a tradition that Hercules, having slain Geryon, drove off his oxen, which were of surpassing beauty, to that spot: and that he lay down in a grassy spot on the banks of the river Tiber, where he had swam across, driving the cattle before him, to refresh them with rest and luxuriant pasture, being also himself fatigued with journeying.

Warton, who has a grudge against Dante natural to a man of happier piety, thinks him ridiculous also in describing the monster Geryon lying upon the edge of one of the gulfs of hell "like a beaver" (canto xvii.).

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.

Geryon pushed back with them from the edge of the precipice, like a ship leaving harbour; and then, turning about, wheeled, like a sullen successless falcon, slowly down through the air in many a circuit.

The monster Geryon, ever sullen as the falcon who seats himself at a distance from his dissatisfied master, shook his riders from off his back to the water's side, and then shot away like an arrow.

The monster Geryon, son of Chrysaor (Golden-sword), and the Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (Fair-flowing), was rich in the possession of sheep.

Eurytion's Dog (herdsman of Geryon), "Orthros."

" Geryon's Dogs.

Herculês killed both of Geryon's dogs.

Thou through such a mist dost shew us, That our best friends do not know us, And, for those allowed features, Due to reasonable creatures, Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, Monsters that, who see us, fear us; Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion.

Picus was the first king of it, and after him his son Faunus, when Heracles came there with the rest of the kine of Geryon.

GERYON, a king of Erytheia (i. e. red island), on the western borders of the world, with three bodies and three heads, who had a herd of oxen guarded by a giant shepherd and his dog, the two-throated Orthros, which were carried off by Hercules at the behest of his fate.