Scylla
Terror of the Strait
SILL-uh
Six heads over a narrow channel, with the whirlpool Charybdis on the far side, a choice between losing six men and losing the ship.
Domains
The StraitShipwreckAmbush
Symbols
Six HeadsCliff FaceRing of Dogs
The Story
In the older tellings she was a nymph, turned into this by a jealous rival poisoning the pool she bathed in: six long necks, each with a head of three rows of teeth, and a girdle of barking dogs at the waist. She cannot be fought, only passed.
Circe's advice to Odysseus is the whole of the myth, steer for Scylla, not Charybdis, and row hard, because six dead is better than everyone. He does it, and the six men calling his name as they go up the cliff is the sight he says he never got over.
Did You Know?
- Between Scylla and Charybdis is still the standard phrase for a choice with no good option, and predates caught between a rock and a hard place by about three thousand years.
- Both are traditionally located in the Strait of Messina, where a real tidal whirlpool called Garofalo forms, impressive enough to worry a small wooden ship, and nothing like the myth.
- Homer never explains where she came from. The story of the jealous rival poisoning her bath is Ovid's, written seven centuries later.