Scylla (sea monster)

This article is about Scylla (sea monster). For other uses of the term Scylla, please see Scylla (disambiguation).

Scylla depicted on an Etruscan vase (Louvre) from 450–425 BC

In Greek mythology, Scylla was a female sea monster mentioned in many of the important surviving ancient Greek and Latin writings that involve sea voyages. Her description is not always consistent across works. In several, she is a six-headed horror with legs made of snakes, who attacked and devoured sailors along one side of a narrow sea passage. In other sources, Scylla is a dangerous rock that ships ran aground on. The narrow passage where the rock was situated even more dangerous because of another nearby sea monster, Charybdis (a whirlpool). Boats in the constricted area could avoid either monster but not both, and the only way to avoid danger was to take a long detour by water. From this came the saying "to be between Scylla and Charybdis", which implies that one can avoid immediate danger only by making an unwanted, long detour through uncharted waters. The saying corresponds (though not perfectly) to the English figure of speech "to be between a rock and a hard place".

While Scylla is mentioned throughout ancient literature mainly as a hazard to be avoided, Ovid gave her a gripping origin story in his book Metamorphoses, and it is both Scylla's teamwork with Charybdis and her transformation from a young and beautiful woman into a monster that make her worth story so compelling.

Scylla's transformation from human to a sea monster

Though as a sea hazard Scylla was considered vicious and a danger to anyone venturing near her, she was said by Ovid to have begun life fully human, a shy and beautiful maiden. Her transformation was inadvertently instigated by Glaucus, a so-called "sea god" who had himself once been fully human. Glaucus was a risk taker whose unthinking actions led to his own unhappiness, and to Scylla's. While still a mere human, Glaucus observed that fish thrown onto a certain field of grass became enlivened and were able to jump back into the sea. He incautiously rolled around in the same field of grass, getting a strong dose of the same herbal intoxicant that revived the fish, with the consequence that he grew gills and fins and could suddenly swim like a fish. He gained great longevity through the changes to his body, but unfortunately, his mutations now made his appearance abhorrent to most people. He started living in the sea all the time. He was also so long-lived as to be considered one of the immortals.

One day, the sea-dwelling Glaucus observed a beautiful human maiden, Scylla, bathing in a small alcove of the sea. He fell in love with her beauty and approached her, trying to converse with her, and boasting about himself. But she abhorred his looks and fled each time he tried to approach. Having been soundly rebuffed by Scylla, Glaucus decided to ask for an intervention from the notoriously dangerous Circe, who was known as a brilliant herbalist, or even a witch with magical abilities. The following account of Glaucus' ill-advised visit to Circe is from Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, which is a retelling of the account from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Glaucus said to Circe: “Goddess, I entreat your pity; you alone can relieve the pain I suffer…I love Scylla. I am ashamed to tell you how I have sued and promised to her, and how scornfully she has treated me. I beseech you to use your incantations, or potent herbs, if they are more prevailing, not to cure me of my love,--for that I do not wish,--but to make her share it and yield me a like return.”

To which Circe replied, for she was not insensible to the attractions of the sea-green deity, “You had better pursue a willing object; you are worthy to be sought, instead of having to seek in vain. Be not diffident, know your own worth. I protest to you that even I, goddess though I be…should not know how to refuse you. If she scorns you scorn her; meet one who is ready to meet you half way, and thus make a due return to both at once.”

To these words Glaucus replied: “Sooner shall trees grow at the bottom of the ocean, and the sea weed at the top of the mountains, than I will cease to love Scylla, and her alone.”

The goddess was indignant, but she could not punish him, neither did she wish to do so, for she liked him too well; so she turned all her wrath against her rival, poor Scylla.

[Jumping ahead to the next time Scylla bathed in the sea, due to Circe’s powers:] The lower half of Scylla’s body was turned into a bunch of writhing sea serpents and barking monsters, still attached to her body. Scylla remained rooted to the spot. Her temper grew as ugly as her form, and she took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came within her grasp…till at last she was turned into a rock, and as such still continues to be a terror to mariners.

Ovid describes how Scylla ends up as a rock:

Glaucus, {still} in love, bewailed {her}, and fled from an alliance with Circe, who had {thus} too hostilely employed the potency of herbs. Scylla remained on that spot; and, at the first moment that an opportunity was given, in her hatred of Circe, she deprived Ulysses of his companions. Soon after, the same {Scylla} would have overwhelmed the Trojan ships, had she not been first transformed into a rock, which even now is prominent with its crags; {this} rock the sailor, too, avoids.