Geryon, the monster, lands on the brink of the abyss, his tail hanging over the side. Geryon’s face is that of an innocent man, but his body is half-reptile, half-hairy beast, with a scorpion’s stinger at the end of his tail. The poets approach him, and Virgil tells Dante to go and see the sinners in the final round of Circle VII, warning him to make his talk brief.
Dante moves around the circle alone and approaches a group of sinners whose eyes are full of tears and set on enormous purses hanging around their necks. Dante sees no one that he knows among the group, though he seems to recognize the coat-of-arm symbols emblazoned on the purses. This group, the Usurers, tells Dante to go away and leave them alone. Fearing that he has stayed too long, Dante goes back to Virgil, who is already mounted on the rump of Geryon. Dante is terribly afraid but mounts Geryon anyway, and before he can ask for assistance, Virgil embraces him and helps him hold on. Virgil tells Geryon to fly smoothly, which he does, and he lets the poets off at the bottom of the pit near the eighth circle. Geryon takes off like a shot, relieved of Dante’s living weight.
