Geryon

A triple-bodied giant — three-headed in Hesiod, three bodies joined at the waist with six hands and feet in the Apollodoran summary. He ruled Erytheia, the red sunset island beyond the Ocean stream, where he kept a magnificent herd of red cattle guarded by his hound Orthus and the herdsman Eurytion. The tenth labour of Heracles was to bring that herd back to Mycenae. Heracles crossed the western Ocean in the golden cup of Helios, killed hound and herdsman at a blow each, and when Geryon himself ran up in his triple-armour, shot him through all three bodies with a single Hydra-poisoned arrow. Stesichorus's lost *Geryoneis* gave the giant his own defiant voice on the eve of death — a tragic dignity absent from the brief mythographic notice.

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