Scylla- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster"Terror of the Strait"

Origins

Homer calls Scylla's mother Crataeis and tells Odysseus to pray to her before entering the strait. Apollodorus names her father as Phorcys, the old sea god, and gives her mother as Crataeis or Hecate. Hyginus placed her among the children of Typhon and Echidna, kin to the Hydra and Cerberus. But Ovid tells a different story. She was once beautiful, and she was made terrible against her will.

The Transformation

In Ovid's telling, Scylla was a sea nymph who spent her days in the coastal waters of Sicily. She swam in secluded coves and laughed off every suitor who followed her to shore. Many pursued her, gods and mortals alike, but she wanted none of them.

The sea god Glaucus had eaten a strange herb on a riverbank and found himself dragged into the sea, his legs fused into a fish's tail. He fell hopelessly in love with Scylla. When he surfaced before her, she fled to a cliff that jutted over the shore. His fish-scaled body and hair tangled with seaweed revolted her. Desperate, Glaucus went to Circe and begged her to brew a charm that would turn Scylla's heart.

Circe wanted Glaucus for herself. She offered herself to him, but he refused: forests would grow on the sea floor and seaweed on mountaintops before his love for Scylla faded. Circe turned her wrath on the woman who held what she could not take. She gathered herbs touched by Hecate's power and brewed a poison. Before dawn, she traveled to the cove where Scylla bathed each morning and poured the mixture into the water.

When Scylla waded in, the poison seized her. Strange growths erupted from her waist. She looked down and screamed. Six serpentine necks had sprouted from her body, each with a head of triple rows of teeth. Twelve legs thrashed beneath her. She tried to tear the new limbs away, but they were her own flesh now. She retreated to a cave in the cliffs above the strait between Sicily and the Italian mainland. There she would remain, eternally hungry, eternally trapped.

The Monstrous Form

In the Odyssey, Circe describes the creature Scylla has become. Her cry is like a newborn puppy's, a sound that deceives, for the six heads behind it are terrible. Each sits on a long neck that can reach to the waterline, and each mouth holds teeth "packed thick and full with black death." She lurks in a cave set halfway up a sheer cliff so tall no man could climb it, even with twenty hands and feet. The cliff face is smooth, dark stone, and the cave mouth opens toward the water. Below, the strait churns. From her height she fishes the dark water for dolphins and sea dogs, and when a ship passes, her six necks uncoil downward. No vessel has ever come through without losing men to those mouths.

Circe tells Odysseus that Scylla is "not mortal." She is an immortal evil that cannot be fought. Even a hero should not arm himself against her but row past and call on Crataeis to hold her daughter back.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

Directly across the narrow strait lay Charybdis, a whirlpool that three times daily sucked in the sea and all upon it, then belched it forth again. Homer places the two hazards close enough that an arrow could fly between them. A bowshot of water separated certain death from probable death. Ships could not avoid both; they had to choose.

Circe, the same goddess who had created Scylla, gave Odysseus grim counsel: steer toward Scylla, not Charybdis. The whirlpool might swallow the entire ship. Scylla would take only six men, one for each head. Odysseus followed this advice. He could not bring himself to warn his crew. He donned his armor and took up two spears at the prow, but he never saw her strike. Six of his best men were snatched from their oars. They called his name. They reached for him as she hauled them upward. Scylla devoured them at the mouth of her cave while Odysseus watched from below. Of everything he suffered in ten years of wandering, he would call this the worst.

Other Sailors

Other heroes faced the strait. When the Argonauts returned from Colchis, Thetis and the Nereids guided the Argo through the narrows. They passed the ship between them while the heroes sat still at their oars. Hera had arranged the escort for Jason's sake, and not a man was lost.

When Heracles drove the cattle of Geryon through the region, Scylla snatched beasts from the shore. Heracles killed her, but her father Phorcys gathered the remains and burned them over a fire. Scylla rose again. She was bound to her cliff and her hunger, and no force could free her from either.