"And since the usurer takes another way,
Nature herself in her follower
Disdains he, for elsewhere he puts his hope."
The Monster Geryon, here used as the symbol of Fraud, was born of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe, and is generally represented by the poets as having three bodies and three heads. He was in ancient times King of Hesperia or Spain, living on Erytheia, the Red Island of sunset, and was slain by Hercules, who drove away his beautiful oxen. The nimble fancy of Hawthorne thus depicts him in his Wonder-Book, p. 148: --
"But it was really and truly an old man? Certainly at first sight it looked very like one; but on closer inspection, it rather seemed to be some kind of a creature that lived in the sea. For on his legs and arms there were scales, such as fishes have; he was web-footed and web-fingered, after the fashion of a duck; and his long beard, being of a greenish tinge, had more the appearance of a tuft of sea-weed than of an ordinary beard. Have you never seen a stick of timber, that has been long tossed about by the waves, and has got all overgrown with barnacles, and at last, drifting ashore, seems to have been thrown up from the very deepest bottom of the sea? Well, the old man would have put you in mind of just such a wave-tost spar."
The three bodies and three heads, which old poetic fable has given to the monster Geryon, are interpreted by modern prose as meaning the three Balearic Islands, Majorca, Minorca, and Ivica, over which he reigned.
"With pleasing mien, grave walk, and decent vest,
Fraud rolled her eyeballs humbly in her head;
And such benign and modest speech possest,
She might a Gabriel seem who Ave said.
Foul was she and deformed in all the rest;
But with a mantle, long and widely spread,
Concealed her hideous parts; and evermore
Beneath the stole a poisoned dagger wore."
The Gabriel saying Ave is from Dante, Purgatory, X. 40: --
"One would have sworn that he was saying Ave."
"If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be,
That such high fancies of a soul so proud
Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd,
(As, touching my Discourse, I'm told by thee,)
This were my grevious pain; and certainly
My proper blame shoud not be disavowed;
Though hereof somewhat, I declare aloud,
Where due to others, not alone to me.
False hopes, true poverty, and therewithal
The blinded judgement of a host of friends,
And their enteaties, made that I did thus.
But of all this there is no gain at all
Unto the thankless souls with whose base ends
Nothing agrees that's great or generous."
"One at the loom so excellently skilled
That to the Goddess she refused to yield."
"Half dead with sudden fear he dropt the reins;
The horses felt `em loose upon their manes,
And, flying out through all the plains above,
Ran uncontrolled where-er their fury drove;
Rushed on the stars, and through a pathless way
Of unknown regions hurried on the day.
And now above, and now below they flew,
And near the earth the burning chariot drew.
At once from life and from the chariot driv'n,
Th'ambitious boy fell thunder-struck from heav'n.
The horses started with a sudden bound,
And flung the reins and chariot to the ground:
The studden harness from their necks they broke,
Here fell a wheel, and here a silver spoke,
Here were the beam and axle torn away;
And, scatter'd o'er the earth, the shining fragments lay.
The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair,
Shot from the chariot, like a falling star,
That in a summer's ev'ning from the top
Of heav'n drops down, or seems at least to drop;
Till on the Po his blasted corpse was hurled,
Far from his counry, in the Western World."
"The soft'ning was, that felt a nearer sun,
Dissolv'd apace, and soon began to run.
The youth in vain his melting pinions shakes,
His feathers gone, no longer air he takes.
O father, father, as he strove to cry,
Down to the sea he tumbled from on high,
And found his fate; yet still subsists by fame,
Among those waters that retain his name.
The father, now no more a father, cries,
Ho, Icarus! where are you? as he flies:
Where shall I seek my boy? he cries again,
And saw his feathers scattered on the main."
"To him the Balearic sling is slow,
And the shaft loiters from the Parthian bow."