*** Welcome to piglix ***

Scylla


In Greek mythology, Scylla (/ˈsɪlə/ SIL; Greek: Σκύλλα, pronounced [skýl̚la], Skylla) was a monster that lived on one side of a narrow channel of water, 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 too close to Scylla and vice versa.

Scylla made her first appearance in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus and his crew encounter her and Charybdis on their travels. Later myth gave her an origin story as a beautiful nymph who gets turned into a monster.

The strait where Scylla dwelled has been associated with the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily. The idiom "between Scylla and Charybdis" has come to mean being forced to choose between two equally dangerous situations.

The parentage of Scylla varies according to author. Several authors name Crataeis as the mother of Scylla, see Homer, Odyssey 12.124–125; Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.749; Apollodorus, E7.20; Servius on Virgil Aeneid 3.420; and schol. on Plato, Republic 588c. Neither Homer nor Ovid mention a father, but Apollodorus says that the father was either Trienus (Triton?) or Phorcus (a variant of Phorkys), similarly the Plato scholiast, perhaps following Apollodorus, gives the father as Tyrrhenus or Phorcus, while Eustathius on Homer, Odyssey 12.85 gives the father as Triton.


...
Wikipedia

...