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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com - The Odyssey by Homer
always carries off one of them, and Father Jove has to send another to make up their
number; no ship that ever yet came to these rocks has got away again, but the waves
and whirlwinds of fire are freighted with wreckage and with the bodies of dead men.
The only vessel that ever sailed and got through, was the famous Argo on her way
from the house of Aetes, and she too would have gone against these great rocks, only
that Juno piloted her past them for the love she bore to Jason.

“’Of these two rocks the one reaches heaven and its peak is lost in a dark cloud. This
never leaves it, so that the top is never clear not even in summer and early autumn. No
man though he had twenty hands and twenty feet could get a foothold on it and climb
it, for it runs sheer up, as smooth as though it had been polished. In the middle of it
there is a large cavern, looking West and turned towards Erebus; you must take your
ship this way, but the cave is so high up that not even the stoutest archer could send an
arrow into it. Inside it Scylla sits and yelps with a voice that you might take to be that
of a young hound, but in truth she is a dreadful monster and no one-not even a god-
could face her without being terror-struck. She has twelve mis-shapen feet, and six
necks of the most prodigious length; and at the end of each neck she has a frightful
head with three rows of teeth in each, all set very close together, so that they would
crunch any one to death in a moment, and she sits deep within her shady cell thrusting
out her heads and peering all round the rock, fishing for dolphins or dogfish or any
larger monster that she can catch, of the thousands with which Amphitrite teems. No
ship ever yet got past her without losing some men, for she shoots out all her heads at
once, and carries off a man in each mouth.

“’You will find the other rocks lie lower, but they are so close together that there is not
more than a bowshot between them. [A large fig tree in full leaf grows upon it], and
under it lies the sucking whirlpool of Charybdis. Three times in the day does she vomit
forth her waters, and three times she sucks them down again; see that you be not there
when she is sucking, for if you are, Neptune himself could not save you; you must hug
the Scylla side and drive ship by as fast as you can, for you had better lose six men than
your whole crew.’ “’Is there no way,’ said I, ‘of escaping Charybdis, and at the same
time keeping Scylla off when she is trying to harm my men?’ “’You dare-devil,’ replied
the goddess, you are always wanting to fight somebody or something; you will not let
yourself be beaten even by the immortals. For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is
savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible.

There is no help for it; your best chance will be to get by her as fast as ever you can, for
if you dawdle about her rock while you are putting on your armour, she may catch you
with a second cast of her six heads, and snap up another half dozen of your men; so
drive your ship past her at full speed, and roar out lustily to Crataiis who is Scylla’s
dam, bad luck to her; she will then stop her from making a second raid upon you.
“’You will now come to the Thrinacian island, and here you will see many herds of
cattle and flocks of sheep belonging to the sun-god-seven herds of cattle and seven
flocks of sheep, with fifty head in each flock. They do not breed, nor do they become
fewer in number, and they are tended by the goddesses Phaethusa and Lampetie, who
are children of the sun-god Hyperion by Neaera. Their mother when she had borne
them and had done suckling them sent them to the Thrinacian island, which was a long
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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com - The Odyssey by Homer



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