A contemporary Geryon

In Greek mythology there is a particularly ferocious gigantic monster known as Geryon. The grandson of Medusa, he is described as being ‘humanoid’ but having three heads and, in some versions, wings and multiple bodies. Apart from his bizarre features, his appearance is that of a warrior.

Geryon owned a two-headed hound named Orthurus (the brother of Cerberus) and a herd of magnificent red cattle.

We learn of Geryon from the tenth labour of Heracles. The most complete account comes from the ‘Bibliotheke‘ of Pseudo-Apollodorus. As the story goes, Heracles was sent to deal with Geryon and obtain his cattle. This required killing Orthrus, Eurytion (the herdsman) who came to his defence, and then the tricephalous monster. Heracles succeeded in doing this with clubs and arrows dipped in the venomous blood of the Lernaean Hydra. While this was an impressive feat, the more difficult part of the labour was herding up the cattle and getting them back to the king of Eurystheus who had set the task. Heracles finally completed the challenge a year later.

Geryon reappears in Dante’s 14^th century epic poem ‘Inferno‘. Here, Geryon is the ‘Monster of Fraud’. His appearance is frightening with the body of a wyvern, dragon-like wings, the paws of a lion and a scorpion’s poisonous sting at the tip of his tail. However, in Dante’s version Geryon seems to have the face of an ‘honest man’. He escorts Virgil and Dante to the great depths of the Circle of Fraud.

As I took a break from the feverish chatter around the American presidential election, I lapsed into a dreamlike state where President Trump morphed into Geryon shouting ‘fraud’. His two-headed dog seemed to have the heads of William Barr and Mitch McConnell, Eurytion looked a lot like Lindsey Graham, and the RED cattle stampeded around trying to create mayhem.

‘Heracles Biden’ looks like accomplishing the Herculean task of defeating the Trump Geryon and, I imagine that if he succeeds, the most difficult part of the labour will again be rounding up the red cattle and getting them safely back to the kingdom. I suspect it might take much more than a year ….