Scylla, << SIHL uh >>, in Greek mythology, was at first a beautiful nymph. The Roman poet Ovid told how the sea-god Glaucus fell in love with Scylla when Glaucus saw her walking on the shore by the Strait of Messina. Scylla would not love Glaucus, and so Glaucus went for help to the sorceress Circe. Circe asked him to love her instead of Scylla, but he would not. In a rage, Circe turned Scylla into a sea monster, part woman and part fish, with heads of dogs growing out of her waist.
Scylla then lived in a cave above the Strait of Messina opposite the whirlpool Charybdis. Scylla seized and ate sailors that came too close. When Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin) passed that way, she seized six of his men (see Odyssey; Ulysses). Sailors tried to steer a middle course between Scylla and Charybdis. This expression is sometimes used when a person speaks of having to take a course between two evils.
