What It Is
Near the waterfall that descends to the next circle, Dante recalls an object he wears girded about his body: a cord, with which he once thought to catch the spotted-coated leopard of the first canto. Virgil orders it removed, Dante unties it coiled as the master commanded, and Virgil throws it on the right side into the depths of the abyss, without explaining. The signal has a response: from below there rises, swimming through the thick and dark air like someone returning from loosening an anchor caught on the bottom, Geryon, the filthy image of fraud, with the face of a just man, so benign was the skin on the outside, and the rest of the body that of a serpent, with two hairy paws, its back and flanks painted with knots and rings, and a tail that twists in the void with the tip of a scorpion.
Where It Appears
In Canto XVI of Inferno, the narrator speaks of the cord, and of it alone:
Io avea una corda intorno cinta, / e con essa pensai alcuna volta / prender la lonza a la pelle dipinta., I had a cord girded about me, and with it I once thought to catch the leopard of the painted skin.
Before telling what the cord brings up, he swears to the reader by the notes of the comedy: there is a truth with the face of a lie that a man must keep his lips shut about as long as he can, but here he cannot keep silent; and by the notes of this comedy, reader, I swear to you.
Sempre a quel ver c’ha faccia di menzogna / de’ l’uom chiuder le labbra fin ch’el puote, / però che sanza colpa fa vergogna; / ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note / di questa comedìa, lettor, ti giuro, to that truth which has the face of a lie a man should close his lips as long as he can, for without fault it brings shame; but here I cannot keep silent; and by the notes of this comedy, reader, I swear to you.
In Canto XVII of Inferno Virgil beckons the beast to come to the edge, and the poem describes it by its face before the rest:
La faccia sua era faccia d’uom giusto, / tanto benigna avea di fuor la pelle, / e d’un serpente tutto l’altro fusto, its face was the face of a just man, so benign was the skin outside, and the rest of its trunk that of a serpent.
Dante goes alone to see the people seated nearby, the usurers, who defend themselves with their hands now against the vapors, now against the hot ground, like dogs bitten by fleas and flies. He recognizes no face, only a purse of a certain color and a certain sign hanging from each neck:
Poi che nel viso a certi li occhi porsi, / ne’ quali ’l doloroso foco casca, / non ne conobbi alcun; ma io m’accorsi / che dal collo a ciascun pendea una tasca / ch’avea certo colore e certo segno, / e quindi par che ’l loro occhio si pasca., after I had turned my eyes to the faces of some, upon which the sorrowful fire falls, I knew none of them; but I perceived that from the neck of each hung a purse of a certain color and a certain sign, and from them their eyes seem to feed.
On his return, he finds Virgil already mounted on the back of the beast, who orders him to climb in front so that the tail may do him no harm. Dante's fear is that of fever, and what makes him mount is shame:
Qual è colui che sì presso ha ’l riprezzo / de la quartana, c’ha già l’unghie smorte, / e triema tutto pur guardando ’l rezzo, / tal divenn’ io a le parole porte; / ma vergogna mi fé le sue minacce, / che innanzi a buon segnor fa servo forte., like one who is so close to the chill of the quartan fever that his nails are already pale, and he trembles all over merely looking at the shade, such I became at those words that opened the way; but shame made his threats of no effect, for before a good lord it makes the servant strong.
He thinks no greater fear was felt by Phaethon when he let go the reins, nor by Icarus when he felt his back without feathers, and the descent ends with Geryon letting the two of them down at the foot of the cut rock and vanishing like an arrow loosed from the bowstring.
What It Means
Geryon is fraud as the appearance of justice over a venomous nature: the poem shows the benign face first, the serpent's body and the scorpion's tail afterward, and the reader sees the beast as Dante sees it, the face before the rest. The cord is a sign that the poem uses and does not explain. What it brings up is fraud, and that is enough to read the sign by the direction of the scene: whoever throws the cord calls the beast.
The text supports two readings of the cord. In one, it is the cincture of penance or of a virtue that Dante no longer carries, and throwing it into the abyss is letting go of the last remnant of protection he brought from life. In the other, it is merely the signal Virgil needs to call Geryon. In either case, the descent to Malebolge depends on an object of Dante's, and it is fraud, not violence, that leads the pilgrim to the eighth circle.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Sin, Loyalty and betrayal.
- Themes of the work: Sin, Loyalty and betrayal.
- Characters: Dante, Virgil.
- Neighboring symbols: the forest and the three beasts, whose leopard returns in the mention of the cord, and the ice of Cocytus, where the same fraud ends.