Source Verification: Scylla
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
How many heads did Scylla have?
Six, according to Homer's Odyssey, each on its own long neck and each packed with three rows of close-set teeth. She also has twelve misshapen feet, giving her a body unlike any other monster in the poem, and a voice Circe compares, oddly, to a young puppy's yelp.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 12.85-100
What happened when Odysseus sailed past Scylla?
Exactly what Circe had warned him: Scylla darted out her six necks and seized six of his men, the strongest in his crew, snatching them straight from the ship's deck. Homer describes them shrieking and stretching out their hands to Odysseus as she devoured them at the mouth of her cave, unable to be saved.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 12.245-259
Why didn't Odysseus just steer around Scylla entirely?
Circe told him plainly that the alternative was worse: hugging the far side of the strait to avoid Scylla meant risking Charybdis, whose whirlpool could swallow the entire ship and crew. Losing six men to Scylla, however painful, was the survivable choice between two dangers neither of which could be avoided outright.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 12.101-110
Was Scylla always a monster, or was she human first?
Depends on the source. Homer's Odyssey never gives her any earlier form; she is simply a monster from the start. Ovid's Metamorphoses, writing centuries later, tells a different story in which Scylla was once a beautiful nymph, transformed into her monstrous shape by a jealous Circe after rejecting the sea-god Glaucus's love.
Source: Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 14
Who were Scylla's parents?
Homer names only her mother, Crataeis, without naming a father at all. Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica instead identifies Crataeis with the goddess Hecate and adds Phorcys as her father, giving a fuller but different genealogy than Homer's own brief mention.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 12.101-125
Did the Argonauts also have to pass Scylla and Charybdis?
Yes. Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica has the Argo's return route pass directly between Scylla's cliff and Charybdis's whirlpool, with Hera sending the sea-goddess Thetis and her sister Nereids to physically guide the ship safely through the strait.
Source: Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica
Where Accounts Differ
- Scylla's parentage
- whether Scylla was ever human
- Scylla's parentage varies: Homer names only her mother, Crataeis, without a father; Apollonius of Rhodes instead identifies Crataeis with the goddess Hecate and names Phorcys as the father.
- Ovid's account of Scylla as a beautiful nymph transformed by a jealous Circe has no equivalent in Homer, where she is simply described as a monster with no earlier human form.
Sources
- Homer, Odyssey 12.85-125
- Homer, Odyssey 12.245-259
- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 14
- Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)