Scylla

In Greek mythology, Scylla[a] (/ˈsɪlə/ SIL-ə; Greek: Σκύλλα,

translit.   Skúlla, pronounced  [skýlːa]) is a legendary monster who
lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her
counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait are within an
arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to
avoid Charybdis would pass dangerously close to Scylla and vice
versa.

Scylla is first attested in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus and his

crew encounter her and Charybdis on their travels. Later myth
provides an origin story as a beautiful nymph who gets turned into Scylla as a maiden with a kētos tail
a monster.[2] and dog heads sprouting from her
body. Detail from a red-figure bell-
Book Three of Virgil's Aeneid[3] associates the strait where Scylla crater in the Louvre, 450–425 B.C.
dwells with the Strait of Messina between Calabria, a region of This form of Scylla was prevalent in
Southern Italy, and Sicily. The coastal town of Scilla in Calabria ancient depictions, though very
takes its name from the mythological figure of Scylla and it is said different from the description in
to be the home of the nymph. Homer, where she is land-based and
more dragon-like.[1]
The idiom "between Scylla and Charybdis" has come to mean
being forced to choose between two similarly dangerous situations.

Contents
Parentage
Narratives
Homer's Odyssey
Ovid's Metamorphoses
Keats' Endymion
Paintings
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links

Parentage
The parentage of Scylla varies according to author.[4] Homer, Ovid, Apollodorus, Servius, and a scholiast
on Plato, all name Crataeis as the mother of Scylla.[5] Neither Homer nor Ovid mentions a father, but
Apollodorus says that the father was either Trienus (probably a textual corruption of Triton) or Phorcus (a
variant of Phorkys).[6] Similarly, the Plato scholiast, perhaps following Apollodorus, gives the father as
 Tyrrhenus or Phorcus,[7] while Eustathius on Homer, Odyssey
12.85, gave the father as Triton, or Poseidon and Crateis as the
parents.[8]

Other authors have Hecate as Scylla's mother. The Hesiodic

Megalai Ehoiai gives Hecate and Apollo as the parents of Scylla,[9]
Scylla on the reverse of a first while Acusilaus says that Scylla's parents were Hecate and Phorkys
century B.C. denarius minted by (so also schol. Odyssey 12.85).[10]
Sextus Pompeius
Perhaps trying to reconcile these conflicting accounts, Apollonius
of Rhodes says that Crataeis was another name for Hecate, and that
she and Phorcys were the parents of Scylla.[11] Likewise, Semos of Delos[12] says that Crataeis was the
daughter of Hecate and Triton, and mother of Scylla by Deimos. Stesichorus (alone) names Lamia as the
mother of Scylla, possibly the Lamia who was the daughter of Poseidon,[13] while according to Gaius
Julius Hyginus, Scylla was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna.[14]

Narratives
According to John Tzetzes[15] and Servius' commentary on the
Aeneid,[16] Scylla was a beautiful naiad who was claimed by
Poseidon, but the jealous Nereid Amphitrite turned her into a
terrible monster by poisoning the water of the spring where Scylla
would bathe.

A similar story is found in Hyginus,[17] according to whom Scylla

was loved by Glaucus, but Glaucus himself was also loved by the The Rock of Scilla, Calabria, which
goddess sorceress Circe. While Scylla was bathing in the sea, the is said to be the home of Scylla
jealous Circe poured a baleful potion into the sea water which
caused Scylla to transform into a frightful monster with four eyes
and six long snaky necks equipped with grisly heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp shark's
teeth. Her body consisted of 12 tentacle-like legs and a cat's tail, while six dog's heads ringed her waist. In
this form, she attacked the ships of passing sailors, seizing one of the crew with each of her heads.

In a late Greek myth, recorded in Eustathius' commentary on Homer and John Tzetzes,[18] Heracles
encountered Scylla during a journey to Sicily and slew her. Her father, the sea-god Phorcys, then applied
flaming torches to her body and restored her to life.

Homer's Odyssey

In Homer's Odyssey XII, Odysseus is advised by Circe to sail closer to Scylla, for Charybdis could drown
his whole ship: "Hug Scylla's crag—sail on past her—top speed! Better by far to lose six men and keep
your ship than lose your entire crew."[19] She also tells Odysseus to ask Scylla's mother, the river nymph
Crataeis, to prevent Scylla from pouncing more than once. Odysseus successfully navigates the strait, but
when he and his crew are momentarily distracted by Charybdis, Scylla snatches six sailors off the deck and
devours them alive.

…they writhed
gasping as Scylla swung them up her cliff and there
at her cavern's mouth she bolted them down raw—
 screaming out, flinging their arms toward me,
lost in that mortal struggle.[20]

Ovid's Metamorphoses

According to Ovid,[21] the fisherman-turned-sea god Glaucus falls in

love with the beautiful Scylla, but she is repulsed by his piscine form
and flees to a promontory where he cannot follow. When Glaucus
goes to Circe to request a love potion that will win Scylla's affections,
the enchantress herself becomes enamored with him. Meeting with no
success, Circe becomes hatefully jealous of her rival and therefore Scylla figurine, late 4th BC.
prepares a vial of poison and pours it into the sea pool where Scylla National Archaeological Museum,
regularly bathed, transforming her into a thing of terror even to herself. Athens

In vain she offers from herself to run

And drags about her what she strives to shun.[22]

The story was later adapted into a five-act tragic opera, Scylla et Glaucus
(1746), by the French composer Jean-Marie Leclair.

Keats' Endymion

In John Keats' loose retelling of Ovid's version of the myth of Scylla and
Glaucus in Book 3 of Endymion (1818), the evil Circe does not transform
Scylla into a monster but merely murders the beautiful nymph. Glaucus
then takes her corpse to a crystal palace at the bottom of the ocean where Glaucus and Scylla by
lie the bodies of all lovers who have died at sea. After a thousand years, she Bartholomeus Spranger
is resurrected by Endymion and reunited with Glaucus.[23] (c.1581)

Paintings
At the Carolingian abbey of Corvey in Westphalia, a unique ninth-century
wall painting depicts, among other things, Odysseus' fight with Scylla.[b]
This illustration is not noted elsewhere in medieval arts.[24]

In the Renaissance and after, it was the story of Glaucus and Scylla that
caught the imagination of painters across Europe. In Agostino Carracci's
1597 fresco cycle of The Loves of the Gods in the Farnese Gallery, the two
are shown embracing, a conjunction that is not sanctioned by the myth.[c]
More orthodox versions show the maiden scrambling away from the
amorous arms of the god, as in the oil on copper painting of Fillipo Lauri[d] J. M. W. Turner's painting of
and the oil on canvas by Salvator Rosa in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Scylla fleeing inland from
Caen.[e] the advances of Glaucus
(1841)
Other painters picture them divided by their respective elements of land and
water, as in the paintings of the Flemish Bartholomäus Spranger (1587),
now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.[f] Some add the detail of Cupid aiming at the sea-god with
his bow, as in the painting of Laurent de la Hyre (1640/4) in the J. Paul Getty Museum[g] and that of
Jacques Dumont le Romain (1726) at the Musée des beaux-arts de Troyes.[26] Two cupids can also be seen
fluttering around the fleeing Scylla in the late painting of the scene by J. M. W. Turner (1841), now in the
Kimbell Art Museum.[h]

Peter Paul Rubens shows the moment when the horrified Scylla first begins to change, under the gaze of
Glaucus (c.1636),[27] while Eglon van der Neer's 1695 painting in the Rijksmuseum shows Circe
poisoning the water as Scylla prepares to bathe.[i] There are also two Pre-Raphaelite treatments of the latter
scene by John Melhuish Strudwick (1886)[28] and John William Waterhouse (Circe Invidiosa, 1892).[29]

Notes
a. The Middle English Scylle (/ˈsɪliː/, reflecting Greek: Σκύλλη), is obsolete.
b. via Wikimedia
c. at Wikimedia
d. Magnoliabox (http://www.magnoliabox.com/art/391086/Glaucus_and_Scylla) Archived (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20140322014348/http://www.magnoliabox.com/art/391086/Glaucus
_and_Scylla) 2014-03-22 at the Wayback Machine
e. View on the Reproarte site (http://www.reproarte.com/files/images/R/rosa_salvator/0492-020
1_glaucus_and_scylla.jpg); a preliminary drawing (https://www.flickr.com/photos/renzodioni
gi/3624763164) in MFA Boston is dated 1661
f. Available in at Wikimedia
g. View on the museum website[25]
h. There is a more conventional print from around 1810/15 in the Tate Gallery (http://www.tate.o
rg.uk/art/artworks/turner-glaucus-and-scylla-a01150)
i. View on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/renzodionigi/3623947737/sizes/o)

References
1. Ogden (2013), p. 132.
2. Ogden (2013), pp. 130–131.
3. Virgil (2007). Aeneid (https://archive.org/details/aeneidoxfordworl00virg). Translated by Ahl,
Frederick. Oxford University Press. pp. 67 (https://archive.org/details/aeneidoxfordworl00vir
g/page/n92). ISBN 978-0-19-283206-1.
4. For discussions of the parentage of Scylla, see Fowler, p. 32 (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=scd8AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA32), Ogden, pp. 134 (https://books.google.com/books?id=FQ
2pAK9luwkC&pg=PA134)–135 (https://books.google.com/books?id=FQ2pAK9luwkC&pg=P
A135); Gantz, pp. 731–732; and Frazer's note 3 to Apollodorus, E7.20 (http://data.perseus.or
g/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg002.perseus-eng1:e.7.20).
5. Homer, Odyssey 12.124–125 (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text;jsessionid=0C3862
DF72BDE338E6D62A24A49FEF27?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3
D12%3Acard%3D111); Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.749 (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D13%3Acard%3D705);
Apollodorus, E7.20 (http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg002.perseus-
eng1:e.7.20); Servius on Virgil Aeneid 3.420; schol. on Plato, Republic 9.588c.
6. Ogden, p. 135 (https://books.google.com/books?id=FQ2pAK9luwkC&pg=PA135); Gantz, p.
731; Frazer's note 3 to Apollodorus, E7.20 (http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tl
g0548.tlg002.perseus-eng1:e.7.20).
7. Fowler, p. 32 (https://books.google.com/books?id=scd8AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA32)
 8. Eustathius on Homer, p. 1714
9. Hesiod fr. 200 Most (https://www-loebclassics-com.ezproxy.bu.edu/view/hesiod-other_fragm
ents/2018/pb_LCL503.311.xml) [= fr. 262 MW] (Most, pp. 310, 311).
10. Acusilaus. fr. 42 Fowler (Fowler, p. 32 (https://books.google.com/books?id=scd8AQAAQBAJ
&pg=PA32)).
11. Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4. 828–829 (pp. 350–351) (https://archive.org/stream/arg
onautica00apoluoft#page/350/mode/2up).
12. FGrHist 396 F 22
13. Stesichorus, F220 PMG (Campbell, pp. 132–133) (http://www.loebclassics.com/view/stesich
orus_i-fragments/1991/pb_LCL476.133.xml?result=1&rskey=vkJkZt).
14. Hyginus, Fabulae Preface (http://www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae1.html), 151 (http://ww
w.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae4.html).
15. John Tzetzes, On Lycophron 45
16. Servius on Aeneid III. 420.
17. Hyginus, Fabulae, 199
18. On Lycophron 45
19. Robert Fagles, The Odyssey 1996, XII.119ff.
20. Fagles 1996 XII.275–79.
21. Ovid, Metamorphoses xiii. 732ff., 905; xiv. 40ff.; translation by Nicholas Rowe and Samuel
Garth is in GoogleBooks (https://books.google.com/books?id=j24VAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA121
&ots=c5s-G4aNox&dq=Ovid%20%20%22Glaucus%20and%20Scylla%22&pg=PA121)
22. Ovid, Metamorphoses xiv.51–2 (https://books.google.com/books?id=j24VAAAAYAAJ&lpg=P
A121&ots=c5s-G4aNox&dq=Ovid%20%20%22Glaucus%20and%20Scylla%22&pg=PA12
4)
23. Endymion Book III (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24280/24280-h/24280-h.htm), line 401ff –
via Project Gutenberg
24. "UNESCO: Corvey Abbey and Castle" (https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/1366/).
25. "Glaucus and Scylla" (http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/728/laurent-de-la-hyre-glau
cus-and-scylla-french-about-1640-1644/).
26. View on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/34326717@N03/3261056474/sizes/m)
27. Musée Bonat, available in at Wikimedia
28. View on Wikimedia
29. Available on the website (http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/pictures/circe-invidiosa-18
92) devoted to the artist

Bibliography
Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George
Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London,
William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library (https://www.per
seus.tufts.edu/hopper/text;jsessionid=C431BA809CA4DEA22A15DA9C666F3400?doc=Pe
rseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0022%3atext%3dLibrary).
Apollonius Rhodius (1912), The Argonautica (https://archive.org/stream/argonautica00apolu
oft#page/n5/mode/2up), translated by Robert Cooper Seaton (trans 1912 ed.), W.
Heinemann – via Internet Archive
Campbell, David A., Greek Lyric III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others, Harvard
University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0674995253.
 Fowler, R. L., Early Greek Mythography: Volume 2: Commentary, Oxford University Press,
2013. ISBN 978-0198147411.
Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1996, Two volumes: ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 978-0-8018-
5362-3 (Vol. 2).
Hanfmann, George M. A., "The Scylla of Corvey and Her Ancestors" Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 41 "Studies on Art and Archeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Seventy-Fifth
Birthday" (1987), pp. 249–260.
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, The Myths of Hyginus (http://www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae1.h
tml). Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.
Most, G.W., Hesiod: The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments, Loeb Classical
Library, No. 503, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2007, 2018.
ISBN 978-0-674-99721-9. Online version at Harvard University Press (https://www.loebclass
ics.com/view/LCL503/2018/volume.xml).
Ogden, Daniel (2013). Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman
Worlds. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199557325.
Stesichorus, in Greek Lyric, Volume III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others. Edited
and translated by David A. Campbell. Loeb Classical Library 476 (https://www.loebclassics.
com/view/LCL476/1991/volume.xml). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Virgil, Aeneid. Translated by Frederick Ahl: Oxford University Press, 2007.

External links
"Skylla" (http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Skylla.html). Theoi Project. – references in classical
literature and ancient art.
"Images of Scylla on Classical artefacts (Archive.org link)" (https://web.archive.org/web/2011
0928040613/http://www.lessing-photo.com/search.asp?a=1&kc=2020202053F6&kw=ODYS
SEE%3ASCYLLA&p=1&ipp). Archived from the original (http://www.lessing-photo.com/sear
ch.asp?a=1&kc=2020202053F6&kw=ODYSSEE%3ASCYLLA&p=1&ipp) on 2011-09-28.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Scylla and Charybdis"  (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_E
ncyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Scylla_and_Charybdis). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24
(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 519.

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