Read Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two Online
Authors: Bernard Evslin
Minos (MY nos) | King of Crete |
Scylla (CIL uh) | Wolf-girl of Corinth |
Charybdis (kuh RIB dis) | Princess of Thessaly |
Daedalus (DEHD uh luhs | Great inventor and artisan who serves Minos |
Ulysses (u LIHS eez) | The greatest sea captain of antiquity |
Others
Famine | Potent hag who wields hunger |
The Pharaoh (FAH roe) | Father of Nisus |
Amet, Crown Prince | Brother of Nisus |
Two Shepherds | Parents of Scylla |
Captain of Egyptian trading vessel |
Assorted Egyptians, Cretans, and Corinthians |
Wolves |
A bear |
Contents
Introduction
The Cretan Ships
Before Daedalus, ships of every kind were steered by long, heavy sweep oars pegged to their stern. But the salty old wonderworker who had been exiled from his native Athens and given haven by King Minos of Crete replaced the great clumsy stern-oar with a hinged fin-shaped panel of bronze. He called this a
rudder
, fixed a handle to it, which became known as a
tiller
, and the ships of Minos were enabled to outmaneuver all other craft on the Middle Sea.
Daedalus also changed the rigging of the Cretan vessels so that they could tilt their sails to a quartering wind, allowing them literally to sail circles around the old-style ships which could sail only when the wind was directly abeam. And so the warships of Minos were able to defeat much larger fleets. He not only fought off the beaked ships of pirate kings who, for centuries, had harried the Cretan shores, but was able to carry the fight to the raiders' home islands.
His swift vessels fell upon the enemy like hawks upon doves. He swept the nearby waters of all who dared sail against him, and visions of empire began to dance behind his cold black eyes.
And yet, these inventions of Daedalus's that so brilliantly improved seafaring were to create a pair of monsters who wrecked so many ships and killed so many sailors that they became known as the deadliest maritime hazard of the ancient world. The way this happened is a dire and twisted tale, full of magic and mysteryâthe story of Scylla and Charybdis.
1
Shepherds and Wolves
Through the ages, children have proven almost as useful as dogs for herding sheep. So it became the custom of shepherds to marry young and keep their wives pregnant.
Our story begins with a certain shepherd of Corinth who sired eleven sons in thirteen years and whose wife was again big with child. Both parents were awaiting the birth with great hope for they had been informed by dreams that this one would be a girlâsomething they had wanted for a long time. They decided to name her Scylla.
But the shepherd was never to see his daughter. Awakened by the howling of wolves upon a moonstruck night, he was patrolling a pasture with his dogs when a bush grew too tall. It became a bear rearing up on its hind legs and swept the shepherd into its fatal hug.
Bears don't eat people unless they're famished and this one was only moderately hungry. But the wolves, when they came, ate one leg before turning their attention to the sheep. And what the wolves left, the vultures finished, so that only a few gnawed bones and some bloody rags were left for the widow to burn on the funeral pyre.
She had no sooner scattered her husband's ashes than she gave birth to a daughter, and allowed herself two days to get her strength back before going out with the sheep. For the wolves were emboldened now, and were raiding the herds nightly ⦠and a widow with twelve children to feed can't take time off.
In the days when humankind was new and raw and wild with delight at finally being created, the gods were sometimes aghast at what they had made. For this youngest race was noisier and more demanding by far than all the other breeds combined. So the gods grew short-tempered. The more impatient ones were quick to punish. They flailed about blindly at times, and with more force than they intended. When such rage destroyed someone innocent this was called
accident
⦠and still is. Accidents also had a stubborn way of following certain families once they struck.
And our shepherd family which had just lost husband and father was to suffer another loss.
The most ancient earth-goddess, Gaia, feeling herself neglected, decided to throw a mild tantrum. She shrugged her shoulders and shook a few hills in Corinth. Boulders rolled, tore up trees, hit other rocks that began to rollâand three villages were buried under landslides.
Our shepherd family dwelt beyond the farthest village, and the widow had been grazing her sheep on a grassy slope. Hearing a strange rumbling, she thrust her baby into a shallow pitâjust in time. The rumbling became thunderous and a rockslide swept her away ⦠her and her sheep and her dogs.
By some fluke, however, the pit mouth was unblocked, and a she-wolf, prowling in search of her cubs, which had also disappeared in the rockslide, heard a thin wailing that seemed to come out of the ground under her paws. Digging swiftly, she uncovered a human baby. The wolf was very hungry, but her udders were painfully swollen with milk, and another hunger stirred in her bereft heart. With a hoarse whine, she folded her legs, and the starving frightened baby suddenly found herself wrapped in warm fur and guzzling a wilder milk.
The she-wolf tenderly closed her jaws about the naked babe and brought her to a den dug into the slope of another hill. There the infant dwelt, suckled by the wolf, who regarded this creature as a curious unfurred cub, slow to learn, but sweet natured. And the mother wolf loved the child with a fierce protective love, and kept loving her even after the he-wolf came back to the cave.
In due time the she-wolf littered again and the baby girl found herself with three wolf-cub brothersâwho, in a few weeks, could do more than she could. Two years after that, a tiny tangle-haired fleet-footed girl was flitting through the wooded slopes like a shadowâand was safer in that wild place than any child in Corinth, for she was coursing the hills with five full-grown wolves.
2
The Stone Crone
The kingdom of Corinth was a land riddled by sorcery. Its headland was dominated by a tall rock, looking out to sea. It had been sculpted by the wind into the shape of a cloaked hag, and the wind, whistling through its eyeholes, made it moan and howl. The figure became known as the Stone Crone, and was believed to be a sibyl of most ancient days whose prophecies had been so dire that she petrified herself.
People shunned the place where she stood, for they thought that whoever heard the Stone Crone speak with the wind's voice would die of fright. It was also believed that upon certain nights she awoke from her stone sleep and chased after young men, whom she crushed in her embrace.
Of all the folk in Corinth, Scylla alone did not fear the howling rock. She delighted in bringing her pack to the headland on a stormy night. The wolves would sit on their haunches, circling the cowled boulder, looking the way Scylla liked them bestâthe wind ruffling their feathery fur, their muzzles grinning, their eyes slits of green fire. Her wolf brothers were beautiful to her, and she nestled among them, listening to the wind singing through the rock, making the Stone Crone howl in a way that wolves understand.
A half gale blew upon this night, driving the clouds swiftly across the sky, so that the moon glittered brieflyâlike a blade. And Scylla, burning with excitement, feeling herself go drunk on sea-wind and moon-flash and weird song, howled back at the rock:
Mother, demon mother,
speak to me â¦
Tell me, please,
what is to be â¦
She heard the Stone Crone answer:
Wolf-girl, wolf-girl,
you shall stalk
the Son of the Hawk,
And abide the law
of tooth and claw â¦
First a wedding,
then the beheading â¦
Scylla sprang up. Although not quite full-grown, she was very tall, her body suave with power. Her doeskin tunic, taken from her first kill, fell to the midpoint of her long thighs. She had never worn shoes, and her feet were hard as hooves.
“Thank you, Crone!” she cried. “I don't know what you mean, but it sounds wonderful.”
She raced off, followed by the wolves. For the wind had shifted, had become a land-wind, bearing the smell of deer, and Scylla and her brothers were suddenly famished for meat.
3
An Egyptian Prince
Who, indeed, was this “Son of the Hawk” whose name had been uttered by the Stone Crone?
He was Nisus, an Egyptian prince, younger brother of the pharaoh, loathed by the entire court, by the priesthood, and by the military commandersâin other words, by the most potent and dangerous people in the land. Hatred of this nature is usually based on some kind of fear, and the fear of Nisus was planted before he was born. It all began when the high priest and his corps of wizards went into the desert to visit a great demon statue called the Sphinxâwhich was a woman's head on a lioness's crouched body, measuring a quarter of a mile from tip of nose to tip of tail.
According to legend, the Sphinx had deciphered the vital riddle of the future, and upon occasion would turn to flesh and speak to those who came to her, instructing the Egyptians on how to survive in a world growing more dangerous each day. She had not spoken now for many years, but the priests and wizards visited her at sowing time and harvest and Nile-flood, and upon the birth of every royal child. They were visiting her now as the queen went into labor.
She had not spoken in the lifetime of anyone there, and no one really expected to hear anything on this occasion. So the assemblage of bejeweled old men were amazed when the stone cracked and fell away from the blazing body of the lioness. She arose, stretched, rippled her muscles. The empty eye sockets of the woman's head upon the lioness's body filled with cold amber light. She spoke:
“Hearken, oh priests and wizards, listen well. Children of the royal line have mortal parents, who are the pharaoh and his queen, but their ancestry stretches back to the first beast-gods of Egyptâto Ra, the Great Hawk, and to the Horned Moon whose milk is rain, known to you as Hathor, the Sacred Cow ⦔
The old men lay prostrate before the Sphinx. Their faces were pressed to the ground because the sight of her, come alive, was too terrible. And they shuddered at the sound of her voice, but sought to answer according to rote:
“Have mercy, Ra, Ra, Hawk of the Sky ⦔
“Bless us, Hathor, Sacred Cow ⦔
“Cease your monkey-chatter!” roared the Sphinx. “Be silent and heed my words!”
The crouched old men shuddered and were silent.
“A prince is about to come among you now,” said the Sphinx. “He will be born tonight when the shadow of a hawk crosses the horned moon. He is a younger brother and will not rule. But he inherits more than the throne. He shall be gifted with special vision. He shall have the demigod's crystal eye that slides along the shifting cusps of Time's great spiral and
remembers
the future. He will tell you truths you are too foolish to heed, but heed them you must, or perish.”
“Not perish ⦔ quavered the old men. “Not that, please. Ra, Ra, have mercy now. Spare us, Hathor, Sacred Cow.”
“Silence!” roared the Sphinx. A paw lashed out and struck a wizard, pinning him to the ground exactly as a cat pins a mouse. She drew him toward her and lifted him to her mouth. She ate him raw, wriggling, but his head went in first so his screams were muffled by the sounds of crunching.
Priests and wizards swooned in terror. When they regained consciousness, the Sphinx was stone again. She lay still, half-covered by drifting sand, as they had always seen her. And they would have thought that it had all been a dreadful dream except that one of them was missing, and the stone mouth was bloody.
Nevertheless, on their way back to the treasure-city of Rameses where their queen lay in labor, they did assure one another that it had been a dreamâthat they had been felled by sunstroke, as was not uncommon in the desert, and that as they lay in a swoon, their companion had wandered away, dazed, and was wandering still.
One of the wizards questioned the high priest: “Could we have all dreamed the same dream at the same time?”