Stephenson:Neal:The System of the World:366:Scylla! Charybdis!
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Stephenson:Neal:The System of the World:366:Scylla! Charybdis!
Stephensonia
Scylla and Charibdis are the names of the guardian dogs that Eliza carries around in Hanover.
In page 673, Caroline of Ansbach addresses Newton and Leibniz using the metaphorical sense: [...]And yet there is between you a schism as deep as that between Scylla and Charybdis.
Wikipedia
Scylla
Scylla is one of the two sea monsters in Greek mythology (the other being Charybdis) which lives on one side of a narrow channel of water. Traditionally this has been associated with the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily but more recently this theory has been challenged and the alternative location of Cape Skilla in north west Greece suggested. Scylla has the face and torso of a woman, but from her flanks grow six dog heads and her body below that sprouts twelve canine legs and a fish's tail. She was one of the children of Phorcys and Ceto known as the Phorcydes.
In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus successfully navigates his ship past Scylla and Charybdis.
As retold by Thomas Bulfinch, Scylla was originally a beautiful nymph. She scorned her many suitors and chose to live among the Nereids instead, until one day Glaucus saw and fell in love with her. Glaucus was a mortal fisherman who had previously been transformed by chewing a plant, gaining the form of a fish from his waist down. When Glaucus declared her love to Scylla she fled, taking him for a monster. Glaucus sought the help of Circe, hoping that this witch could make Scylla to love him with her herbs, but Circe fell in love with Glaucus herself and asked him to forget Scylla. Glaucus rejected her request, declaring that his love for Scylla was eternal.
Circe was enraged by Glaucus' refusal, and turned her anger on the girl whom he loved. She went and poisoned the water which Scylla used to bathe with her magical herbs. When Scylla waded into the water, the submerged half of her body was transformed into a combination of fish joined with six ferocious dogs' heads sprouting from around her waist. The dogs attacked and devoured anyone who came near, beyond her ability to control, and Scylla fled to the shore of the strait to live there alone.
It is said that by the time Aeneas' fleet came through the strait after the fall of Troy, Scylla had been changed into a dangerous rock outcropping which still stands there to this day.
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Charybdis
In Greek mythology, Charybdis, or Kharybdis ("sucker down"), is a sea monster, daughter of Poseidon and Gaia, who swallows huge amounts of water three times a day and then spouts it back out again, forming an enormous whirlpool. She lay on one side of a narrow channel of water.
On the other side of the strait was Scylla, another sea-monster. The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's range of each other, so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis will pass too close to Scylla and vice versa.
The phrase between Scylla and Charibdis means to be between in a narrow strip between two dangers.
The Argonauts were able to avoid both dangers because they were guided by Thetis, one of the Nereids. Odysseus was not so fortunate; he chose to risk Scylla at the cost of some of his crew rather than lose the whole ship to Charybdis. (Homer's Odyssey, Book XII).
Traditionally location of Charybdis has been associated with the Strait of Messina off the coast of Sicily, opposite the rock called Scylla. The whirlpool there is caused by the meeting of currents, but is seldom dangerous. Recently scholars have looked again at the location and suggested this association was a misidentification and that a more likely origin for the story could be found near Cape Skilla in north west Greece.
Charybdis was originally a sea-nymph who flooded her father's kingdom, the sea, until Zeus turned her into a monster.