Scylla
The six-headed danger in Homer’s Odyssey
The creature in a high sea-cliff cave who takes six of Odysseus’s companions as his ship passes between her rock and Charybdis.
Quick answer
Scylla is an individual sea-cliff monster in Book XII of Homer’s Odyssey. Circe describes her as an immortal creature with six heads who takes sailors from passing ships. Odysseus later recounts losing six companions to her while the crew watches the neighbouring whirlpool of Charybdis.[1][2]
Quick facts
| Record type | Individual creature in Ancient Greek epic |
|---|---|
| Source | Homer, Odyssey, Book XII; Samuel Butler’s prose translation |
| Source realm | Greek mythic world: the cliff opposite Charybdis |
| Form in Circe’s warning | Twelve feet, six long necks, six heads, three rows of teeth in each head[1] |
| Voice | Yelping compared to a young hound[1] |
| Mother named by Circe | Crataiis, in Butler’s spelling[1] |
| Encounter | Six companions seized and eaten; the ship passes on[2] |
What the source says
Circe’s warning
Circe places Scylla inside a cavern in a sheer, cloud-capped rock. She warns that Scylla can take one sailor in each mouth, and advises Odysseus to pass close to that rock: losing six men is preferable to losing the whole crew to Charybdis. When he asks about resisting Scylla, Circe says she is immortal and cannot be overcome. Delay could expose the ship to a second attack. She advises him to call on Scylla’s mother, Crataiis, to restrain her.[1]
The passage and the loss
Odysseus tells the helmsman to steer near the rock, but withholds the warning about Scylla because he fears the men will stop rowing and hide. Despite Circe’s instructions, he arms himself and stands in the bow with two spears. He cannot see Scylla as he searches the cliff.[2]
While everyone watches Charybdis, Scylla seizes six men. Odysseus sees their limbs lifted above the ship and hears them calling to him. She carries them to her cave-mouth and eats them. The narrative compares her handling of the men to a fisherman lifting his catch; Odysseus remembers the sight as the most dreadful of his voyages. The surviving crew sails onward and later mourns the lost companions.[2]
Description and abilities
In Butler’s wording, the twelve feet are misshapen and the six necks exceptionally long. Each head has three closely set rows of teeth. Scylla keeps herself within the cave while extending her heads to catch marine animals, including dolphins and dogfish. Her reach also makes a passing ship vulnerable to the loss of six people at once. The passage gives no measured height, colour, wings, or human upper body.[1]
The comparison with a young hound describes her voice; it does not by itself establish six dog heads. Likewise, Circe’s description of her as invincible belongs to this warning about the voyage, rather than a system of powers for every Scylla tradition. This page uses Odysseus for the hero whom Butler calls Ulysses, and retains Butler’s Scylla and Crataiis spellings.[1]
Source realm: the rock beside Charybdis
Scylla’s cave faces west, towards Erebus, high in a rock too sheer to climb. Across the narrow passage stands the lower rock above Charybdis. These are distinct dangers: the creature taking sailors and the whirlpool threatening the ship. The record preserves that narrated geography without assigning modern coordinates or turning it into a species’ habitat.[1]
The archive places this Greek epic encounter in Mythic cosmos, on the Ancient Mediterranean cultural shelf.
Themes in this episode
The limits of resistance: Circe recommends speed and endurance, while Odysseus reaches for armour and spears. His preparation does not save the six men. The cost of command: he conceals the danger to keep the crew rowing, then must witness men calling for help he cannot provide. These are readings of the episode’s actions, not universal symbolic meanings assigned to Scylla.[1][2]
Books and references
- 1Homer, The Odyssey, Book XII: Circe’s warning
Rendered into English prose by Samuel Butler; first published London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900. Text consulted: Project Gutenberg eBook 1727, updated 1 December 2023, reproducing the second-edition text with Henry Festing Jones’s preface dated 4 December 1921. In Book XII, see Circe’s description beginning “Of these two rocks” through her advice to invoke Crataiis. Public-domain translation. Butler’s geographical and authorship theories in his notes and prefaces are not treated here as statements by the poem.
Read Book XII ↗ · 1900 edition catalogue ↗ - 2Homer, Odyssey, Book XII: the passage past Scylla
Butler, same edition and digital witness as above. See the paragraphs after the Sirens, from the crew’s fear at the roaring water through Scylla’s seizure of six men and the survivors’ arrival at the Sun-god’s island. The paragraph beginning “Then we entered the Straits” locates the attack.
Read the encounter in Book XII ↗ - 3John Flaxman, Scylla illustration
Wikimedia Commons file OdysseyScylla.png, dated 1810, credited to John Flaxman and sourced there to Boston College’s Flaxman Odyssey collection. Image reference only. The file is marked PD-Art / public domain: Flaxman died in 1826, and the work was published before 1931.
Image provenance and rights statement ↗
