Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Scylla.
The gallery
Scylla (Boeotian red-figure bell-krater, detail of side A)
Unknown, 450–425 BC
On this Boeotian red-figure bell-krater Scylla is rendered in the canonical classical scheme: a beautiful maiden from the waist up, her lower body merging into a coiling fish-tail (kētos), with the foreparts of savage dogs bursting from her loins. The painter captures the horror Homer describes in Odyssey 12—the woman's face above, the pack of ravening hounds below that snatched six of Odysseus' comrades from the deck. The vessel, 22.5 cm high, was acquired by the Louvre in 1900 and is displayed in the Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities (inv. CA 1341).
Terracotta figurine of Scylla
Unknown, Late 4th century BC
This late Classical terracotta statuette gives Scylla three dimensions: the cliff-monster of the strait modeled with a woman's torso rising from a serpentine sea-coil, girdled at the waist by the heads of dogs—the 'twelve feet and six necks' of the Homeric description compressed into a votive-scale image. Such figurines circulated as apotropaic and decorative objects in the Greek world. The piece is held at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
Glaucus and Scylla
Bartholomeus Spranger, c. 1580–1582
Spranger illustrates Ovid's 'made, not born' origin of the monster (Metamorphoses 13–14): the sea-god Glaucus, smitten with the nymph Scylla, courts her before the jealous sorceress Circe poisons her bathing-pool and warps her into the dog-girt horror. The Mannerist composition pairs the muscular, sea-blue Glaucus rising from the water with the cool, reluctant figure of Scylla still in her unmarred human beauty—the moment before transformation. Oil on canvas, c. 110 × 81 cm, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Gemäldegalerie), Vienna (inv. GG 2615).
Glaucus and Scylla
Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1841
In one of his late mythological subjects Turner dissolves the Ovidian tale into light and atmosphere: Scylla flees in alarm across the rocks while the amorous sea-god Glaucus surges from the luminous water below, attended by nereids. Painted the year before Scylla's metamorphosis would seal her fate, the scene treats the strait and its monster less as narrative than as a shimmering meditation on the boundary between sea and shore. Oil on panel, 77 × 78 cm, now in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.
In play
Between Scylla and Charybdis
English still names a choice between two dangers between Scylla and Charybdis — the Strait of Messina monsters as the stock dilemma.
Hades II
Supergiant Games
Supergiant's sequel brings Scylla back as a siren-voiced sea boss — the many-headed strait hazard restaged for Melinoë's war.