Book the Fourteenth
Fable I
Circe becomes enamoured of Glaucus, who complains to her of his repulse by Scylla. She endeavours, without success, to make him desert Scylla for herself. In revenge, she poisons the fountain where the Nymph is wont to bathe, and communicates to her a hideous form; which is so insupportable to Scylla, that she throws herself into the sea, and is transformed into a rock.
And now Glaucus, the Eubœan plougher of the swelling waves, had left behind Ætna, placed upon the jaws of the Giant, and the fields of the Cyclops, that had never experienced the harrow or the use of the plough, and that were never indebted to the yoked oxen; he had left Zancle, too, behind, and the opposite walls of Rhegium,1 and the sea, abundant cause of shipwreck, which, confined by the two shores, bounds the Ausonian and the Sicilian lands. Thence, swimming with his huge hands through the Etrurian seas, Glaucus arrived at the grass-clad hills, and the halls of Circe, the daughter of the Sun, filled with various wild beasts. Soon as he beheld her, after salutations were given and received, he said, “Do thou, a Goddess, have compassion on me a God; for thou alone (should I only seem deserving of it,) art able to relieve this passion of mine. Daughter of Titan, by none is it better known how great is the power of herbs, than by me, who have been transformed by their agency; and, that the cause of my passion may not be unknown to thee, Scylla has been beheld by me on the Italian shores, opposite the Messenian walls. I am ashamed to recount my promises, my entreaties, my caresses, and my rejected suit. But, do thou, if there is any power in incantations, utter the incantation with thy holy lips; xiv. 21-50. or, if any herb is more efficacious, make use of the proved virtues of powerful herbs. But I do not request thee to cure me, and to heal these wounds; and there is no necessity for an end to them; but let her share in the flame.” But Circe, (for no one has a temper more susceptible of such a passion, whether it is that the cause of it originates in herself, or whether it is that Venus, offended2 by her father’s discovery, causes this,) utters such words as these:—
“Thou wilt more successfully court her who is willing, and who entertains similar desires, and who is captivated with an equal passion. Thou art worthy of it, and assuredly thou oughtst to be courted spontaneously; and, if thou givest any hopes, believe me, thou shalt be courted3 spontaneously. That thou mayst entertain no doubts, or lest confidence in thy own beauty may not exist, behold! I who am both a Goddess, and the daughter of the radiant Sun, and am so potent with my charms, and so potent with my herbs, wish to be thine. Despise her who despises thee; her, who is attached to thee, repay by like attachment, and, by one act, take vengeance on two individuals.”
Glaucus answered her, making such attempts as these,— “Sooner shall foliage grow in the ocean, and sooner shall sea-weed spring up on the tops of the mountains, than my affections shall change, while Scylla is alive.” The Goddess is indignant; and since she is not able to injure him, and as she loves him she does not wish to do so, she is enraged against her, who has been preferred to herself; and, offended with these crosses in love, she immediately bruises herbs, infamous for their horrid juices, and, when bruised, she mingles with them the incantations of Hecate. She puts on azure vestments too, and through the troop of fawning wild beasts she issues from the midst of her hall; and making for Rhegium, opposite to the rocks of Zancle, she enters the waves boiling with the tides; on these, as though on the firm shore, she impresses her footsteps, and with dry feet she skims along the surface of the waves.
xiv. 51-74.
There was a little bay, curving in the shape of a bent bow, a favourite retreat of Scylla, whither she used to retire from the influence both of the sea and of the weather, when the sun was at its height in his mid career, and made the smallest shadow from the head downwards. This the Goddess infects beforehand, and pollutes it with monster-breeding drugs; on it she sprinkles the juices distilled from the noxious root, and thrice nine times, with her magic lips, she mutters over the mysterious charm, enwrapt in the dubious language of strange words.4 Scylla comes; and she has now gone in up to the middle of her stomach, when she beholds her loins grow hideous with barking monsters; and, at first believing that they are no part of her own body, she flies from them and drives them off, and is in dread of the annoying mouths of the dogs; but those that she flies from, she carries along with herself; and as she examines the substance of her thighs, her legs, and her feet, she meets with Cerberean jaws in place of those parts. The fury of the dogs still continues, and the backs of savage monsters lying beneath her groin, cut short, and her prominent stomach, still adhere to them.
Glaucus, still in love, bewailed her, and fled from an alliance with Circe, who had thus too hostilely employed the potency of herbs. Scylla remained on that spot; and, at the first moment that an opportunity was given, in her hatred of Circe, she deprived Ulysses of his companions. Soon after, the same Scylla would have overwhelmed the Trojan ships, had she not been first transformed into a rock, which even now is prominent with its crags; this rock the sailor, too, avoids.
Explanation
According to Hesiod, Circe was the daughter of the Sun and of the Nymph Perse, and the sister of Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos. Homer makes her the sister of Æetes, the king of Colchis, while other authors represent her as the daughter of that monarch, and the sister of Medea. Being acquainted with the properties of simples, and having used her art in mixing poisonous draughts, she was generally looked upon as a sorceress. Apollonius Rhodius says that she poisoned her husband, the king of the Sarmatians, and that her father Apollo rescued her from the rage of her subjects, by transporting her in his chariot into Italy. Virgil and Ovid say that she inhabited one of the promontories of Italy, which afterwards bore her name, and which at the present day is known by the name of Monte Circello.
xiv. 75-76.
It is not improbable that the person who went by the name of Circe was never in Colchis or Thrace, and that she was styled the sister of Medea, merely on account of the similarity of their characters; that they both were called daughters of the Sun, because they understood the properties of simples; and that their pretended enchantments were only a poetical mode of describing the effect of their beauty, which drew many suitors after them, who lost themselves in the dissipation of a voluptuous life. Indeed, Strabo says, and very judiciously, as it would seem, that Homer having heard persons mention the expedition of Jason to Colchis, and hearing the stories of Medea and Circe, he took occasion to say, from the resemblance of their characters, that they were sisters.
According to some authors, Scylla was the daughter of Phorcys and Hecate; but as other writers say, of Typhon. Homer describes her in the following terms:— ‘She had a voice like that of a young whelp; no man, not even a God, could behold her without horror. She had twelve feet, six long necks, and at the end of each a monstrous head, whose mouth was provided with a triple row of teeth.’ Another ancient writer says, that these heads were those of an insect, a dog, a lion, a whale, a Gorgon, and a human being. Virgil has in a great measure followed the description given by Homer. Between Messina and Reggio there is a narrow strait, where high crags project into the sea on each side. The part on the Sicilian side was called Charybdis, and that on the Italian shore was named Scylla. This spot has ever been famous for its dangerous whirlpools, and the extreme difficulty of its navigation. Several rapid currents meeting there, and the tide running through the strait with great impetuosity, the sea sends forth a dismal noise, not unlike that of the howling or barking of dogs, as Virgil has expressed it, in the words, ‘Multis circum latrantibus undis.’
Palæphatus and Fusebius, not satisfied with the story being based on such simple facts, assert that Scylla was a ship that belonged to certain Etrurian pirates, who used to infest the coasts of Sicily, and that it had the figure of a woman carved on its head, whose lower parts were surrounded with dogs. According to these writers, Ulysses escaped them; and then, using the privileges of a traveller, told the story to the credulous Phæacians in the marvellous terms in which Homer has related it. Bochart, however, says that the two names were derived from the Phœnician language, in which ‘Scol,’ the root of Scylla, signified ‘a ruin,’ and Charybdis, ‘a gulf.’