“Here Scylla bellows from her dire abodes,
Tremendous pest, abhorred by man and gods!
…
Six horrid necks she rears, and six terrific heads;
Her jaws grin dreadful with three rows of teeth;
Jaggy they stand, the gaping den of Death.”[260]
Not far off were the Sirens, who strove by their music to draw the
navigator to certain doom:--
“Their song is death, and makes destruction please.
Unblest the man whom music wins to stay
Nigh the cursed shore and listen to the lay:
No more that wretch shall view the joys of life,
His blooming offspring or his beauteous wife!”[261]
Forewarned, the wise Ulysses took all precautions against the fatal
perils. Avoiding the Sicilian whirlpool, he did not run upon the
Italian rock or yield to the voice of the charmer. And yet he could
not renounce the opportunity of hearing the melody. Stuffing the ears
of his companions with wax, so that they could not be entranced by the
Sirens, or comprehend any countermanding order which his weakness might
induce him to utter, he had himself tied to the mast,--like another
Farragut,--and directed that the ship should be steered straight on. It
was steered straight on, although he cried out to stop. His deafened
companions heard nothing of the song or the countermand,--
“Till, dying off, the distant sounds decay.”
The dangers of both coasts were at length passed, not without the loss
of six men, “chiefs of renown,” who became the prey of Scylla. But
the Sirens, humbled by defeat, dashed themselves upon the rocks and
disappeared forever.
Few stories have been more popular. It was natural that it should enter
into poetry and suggest a proverb. St. Augustine uses it, when he says,
“_Ne iterum, quasi fugiens Charybdim, in Scyllam incurras_.”[262]
Milton more than once alludes to it. Thus, in the exquisite “Comus,” he
shows these opposite terrors subdued by another power:--
“Scylla wept
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause.”[263]
In the “Paradise Lost,” while portraying Sin, the terrible portress at
the gates of Hell, the poet repairs to this story for illustration:--
“Far less abhorred than these,
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore.”[264]