As Odysseus cautiously prepares to enter the straits plagued by Charybdis and Scylla, he encourages his crew by referring to his earlier success against the Cyclops (Od. 12.208-12). This article argues that the Odyssey constructs the Scylla adventure as a tale of heroic failure in contrast with the Cyclops episode. Special attention is paid to narrative paradigms that underlie the Scylla episode and emphasize Odysseus' inability to defeat the monster. I further show that the Cyclops/Scylla contrast serves both as an argument presented to Odysseus' internal Phaeacian audience and an interpretive key for the external audience.
What's in a name? Using the example of a famous monster from Greek myth, this book challenges the dominant view that a mythical symbol denotes a single, clear-cut 'figure' and proposes instead to define the name 'Scylla' as a combination of three concepts - sea, dog and woman - whose articulation changes over time. While archaic and classical Greek versions usually emphasize the metaphorical coherence of Scylla's components, the name is increasingly treated as a well-defined but also paradoxical construct from the late fourth century BCE onward. Proceeding through detailed analyses of Greek and Roman texts and images, Professor Hopman shows how the same name can variously express anxieties about the sea, dogs, aggressive women and shy maidens, thus offering an empirical response to the semiotic puzzle raised by non-referential proper names.
Abstract. At Juvenal 5.141-45, Virro distributes a curious series of presents to the children of his impoverished client Trebius: a viridis thorax, nuts, and an as. Through an exploration of the connotations attached to these gifts, I argue that the scene provides a vivid mise en abyme for the rest of the poem. Just as the dinner offered to Trebius is not only meager but transforms him into a buffoon, the presents given to his children are both mean and perverse. In particular, the viridis thorax has un-Roman and effeminate connotations akin to the description of patronage as a sexual perversion in Satire 9.
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