Scylla Seizes Six

20“Sadly we sailed into the strait, where stood
On one hand Scylla, and the dreaded rock
Charybdis on the other, drawing down
Into her horrid gulf the briny flood;
And as she threw it forth again, it tossed
And murmured as upon a glowing fire
The water in a cauldron, while the spray,
Thrown upward, fell on both the summit-rocks;
And when once more she swallowed the salt sea,
It whirled within the abyss, while far below
The bottom of blue sand was seen. My men
Grew pale with fear; we looked into the gulf
And thought our end was nigh. Then Scylla snatched
Six of my comrades from our hollow barque,
The best in valor and in strength of arm.
I looked to my good ship; I looked to them,
And saw their hands and feet still swung in air
Above me, while for the last time on earth
They called my name in agony of heart.
As when an angler on a jutting rock
Sits with his taper rod, and casts his bait
To snare the smaller fish, he sends the horn
Of a wild bull that guards his line afar
Into the water, and jerks out a fish,
And throws it gasping shoreward; so were they
Uplifted gasping to the rocks, and there
Scylla devoured them at her cavern’s mouth,
Stretching their hands to me with piercing cries
Of anguish. It was in truth the saddest sight,
Whatever I have suffered and wherever
Have roamed the waters, that mine eyes have seen.