Skylla

**Skylla** or **Scylla** (/ˈsɪlə/ ***SIL**-ə*; Greek: Σκύλλα, pronounced [skýl̚la], *Skylla*) is a sea monster that lives on one side of the Strait of Messina, opposite her counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait were within an arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis would pass dangerously close to Skylla and vice versa. The idiom "between Scylla and Charybdis" has come to mean being forced to choose between two similarly dangerous situations. She is the daughter of Krataeis and Phorkys.

Skylla appeared in Homer's *Odyssey*, where Odysseus and his crew encounter her and Charybdis on their travels. Later it was told that she was in fact a beautiful nymph who was turned into a monster.

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

> *"...they writhed
> gasping as Skylla 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."*
>
>

Skylla was a beautiful naiad who was claimed by Poseidon, but the jealous Amphitrite turned her into a monster by poisoning the water of the spring where Skylla would bathe.

A similar story is found in Hyginus, according to whom Scylla was loved by Glaucus, but Glaucus himself was also loved by the sorceress Circe. While Scylla was bathing in the sea, the jealous Circe poured a potion into the sea water which caused Scylla to transform into a monster with four eyes and six long necks equipped with grisly heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth. Her body consisted of 12 tentacle-like legs and a cat's tail, while four to six dog-heads ringed her waist. In this form, she attacked the ships of passing sailors, seizing one of the crew with each of her heads.

According to Ovid, the fisherman-turned-sea-god Glaucus fell in love with the beautiful Scylla, but she was repulsed by his fishy tail and fled onto the land where he could not follow. When he went to Circe to ask for a love potion to win her, the sorceress herself fell in love with him. Meeting with no success, she became hatefully jealous of her rival, prepared a vial of poison and poured it in the sea-pool where Scylla bathed, turning her into a thing of terror even to herself.

> "In vain she offers from herself to run
>
>

> And drags about her what she strives to shun."
>
>

In a time after Odysseus had made it through the strait, Herakles encountered Skylla during a journey to Sicily and slew her. Her father, the sea-god Phorkys, then applied flaming torches to her body and restored her to life.

The parentage of Skylla varies according to author. Homer, Ovid, Apollodorus, Servius, and a scholiast on Plato, all name Krataeis as the mother of Skylla. Neither Homer nor Ovid mention a father, but Apollodorus says that the father was either Tyrrhenos or Phorkys. The Plato scholiast gives the same, while Eustathius on Homer (*Odyssey* 12.85) gives the father as Triton. Other authors have Hekate as Skylla's mother. The Hesiodic *Megalai Ehoiai* gives Hekate and Phorbas as the parents of Skylla, while Acusilaus says that Skylla's parents were Hekate and Phorkys (so also schol. *Odyssey* 12.85). Perhaps trying to reconcile these conflicting accounts, Apollonius of Rhodes says that Krataeis was another name for Hekate, and that she and Phorkys were the parents of Skylla. Likewise, Semos of Delos (*FGrHist* 396 F 22) says that Krataeis was the daughter of Hekate and Triton, and mother of Skylla by Deimos. Stesichorus (alone) names Lamia as the mother of Skylla, possibly the Lamia who was the daughter of Poseidon, while according to Hyginus, Skylla was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna.