of opinion that, "by girding himself with the Franciscan cord, he had endeavored to restrain his sensual appetites, indicated by the panther; and still wearing the cord as a Tertiary of the Order, he makes it serve here to deceive Geryon, and bring him up." Biagioli understands by it "the humility with which a man should approach Science, because it is she that humbles the proud." Fraticelli thinks it means vigilance; Tommaseo, "the good faith with which he hoped to win the Florentines, and now wishes to deal with their fraud, so that it may not harm him"; and Gabrielli Rossetti says, "Dante flattered himself, acting as a sincere Ghibelline, that he should meet with good faith from his Guelf countrymen, and met instead with horrible fraud."
Dante elsewhere speaks of the cord in a good sense. In [[../../Volume 2/Canto 7|Purgatorio, VII.]] 114, Peter of Aragon is "girt with the cord of every virtue." In Inferno, XXVII. 92, it is mortification, "the cord that used to make those girt with it more meagre"; and in [[../../Volume 3/Canto 11|Paradiso, XI.]] 87, it is humility, "that family which had already girt the humble cord."
It will be remembered that St. Francis, the founder of the Cordeliers (the wearers of the cord), used to call his body asino, or ass, and to subdue it with the capestro, or halter. Thus the cord is made to symbolize the subjugation of the animal nature. This renders Lombardi's interpretation the most intelligible and satisfactory, though Virgil seems to have thrown the cord into the abyss simply because he had nothing else to throw, and not with the design of deceiving.
112. As a man does naturally in the act of throwing.
131. That Geryon, seeing the cord, ascends, expecting to find some moine défroqué, and carry him down, as Lombardi suggests, is hardly admissible; for that was not his office. The spirits were hurled down to their appointed places, as soon as Minos doomed them. Inferno, V. 15.
132. Even to a steadfast heart.
CANTO XVII.
1. In this Canto is described the punishment of Usurers, as sinners against Nature and Art. See Inf. XI. 109:—
"And since the usurer takes another way,
Nature herself and 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:—
