Geryon

Today's Deity of the Day comes to us from Greece.


Also known as: Geryones, Geyron
Geryon is technically not a deity, but a monster. He was the grandson of the fearsome Medusa. He was describes as a monster with one head, three bodies, two arms, and some accounts say he had six legs. He owned a two-headed hound named Orthrus (brother of the more famous Cerberus). Geryon was the keeper of a herd of beautiful red cattle.

In the legend of Hercules’ ten tasks, he had to kill Geryon. He did, of course, succeed, and herded the cattle back to the city. That part took him almost a year.
Geryon was also in Dante’s Divine Comedy, as a death-demon and the western direction. He lives between the seventh (violence) and eighth (fraud) circles of Hell. In this story, however, he is a winged beast with the tail of a scorpion and the body of a lion.