Sea Monsters

Greek myth knows a handful of true sea monsters: Scylla and Charybdis on either side of a narrow strait, the ketos that threatened Andromeda and Hesione, and the serpents that came across the water to Troy. Most are tied to Poseidon’s anger or to the family of Phorcys and Ceto, and each belongs to a particular hero’s voyage.

Ceto and Phorcys

The word ketos means any large sea creature, and the goddess Ceto (Keto), sister and wife of Phorcys, is the mother of such creatures in Hesiod. According to Hesiod (Theogony 270–336) she and Phorcys had the Graiai, the Gorgons, Echidna and the serpent that guards the golden apples of the Hesperides. Both are children of Pontus and Gaia (Theogony 233–239). Scylla is traditionally their child too, though sources differ on her mother.

Scylla

In the Odyssey (12.73–126) Circe describes Scylla to Odysseus. She lives in a cave halfway up a smooth cliff. She has twelve dangling feet and six long necks, each with a head carrying a triple row of teeth, and her voice is like a puppy’s. Waist-deep in the cave, she darts her heads out to snatch dolphins, sharks and larger creatures, and from each passing ship she takes one man with every head. Circe says she is not mortal but an immortal monster, that there is no defence, and that the best course is to row past quickly and call on Crataeis, her mother. Odysseus did so and lost six men.

Homer names Crataeis as her mother and says nothing of her father. Apollonius makes her the daughter of Phorcys and of “night-wandering Hecate, who is called Crataeis” (Argonautica 4.828–829); Apollodorus (Epitome 7.20) calls her the daughter of Crataeis and of Trienus or Phorcus, and Hyginus (Fabulae 125) makes her a daughter of Typhon, a woman above, a fish from the groin down, with six dogs grown from her body. Apollodorus adds that Odysseus sailed past her cliff standing fully armed on the stern, but that she still snatched six of his comrades (7.21). In a later version told by Ovid (Metamorphoses 13.900–14.74), Scylla was a beautiful girl whom the sea god Glaucus loved; he asked Circe for a love charm, and the jealous Circe instead poisoned the water where Scylla bathed, so that from the waist down she became a ring of barking dogs. When the Argonauts sailed past Scylla and Charybdis, Thetis and the Nereids guided the ship through at Hera’s request (Apollonius, Argonautica 4.825–832, 4.922–923; Apollodorus 1.9.25).

Charybdis

Charybdis is the other danger Circe warns of. On a lower cliff an arrow’s flight from Scylla stands a great fig tree, and beneath it Charybdis sucks the dark water down three times a day and spews it out three times. Circe tells Odysseus that not even Poseidon could save him if he were caught there (Odyssey 12.101–110); Hyginus repeats that she swallowed and spewed the sea three times a day (Fabulae 125). Odysseus passed on the side of Scylla; after the loss of his ship he returned to the strait on a makeshift raft and was drawn toward Charybdis, where he clung to the fig tree until the raft came up again (Odyssey 12.426 ff.).

The Sea Monster of Andromeda

Apollodorus (2.4.3) tells how Cassiopeia, wife of King Cepheus of Ethiopia, boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids. The Nereids were angry, and Poseidon sent a flood and a ketos against the land. The oracle of Ammon said the trouble would end if their daughter Andromeda were exposed to the monster, and Cepheus chained her to a rock. Perseus saw her, agreed to kill the monster in return for her hand, and did. In Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.663–752) Perseus, flying on his winged sandals, stabs the beast with his curved sword; Nonnus says he turned it to stone with the Gorgon’s head and offered the stone monster as his bridal gift (Dionysiaca 25.80–84, 47.509–538), but that is not the version of Apollodorus or Ovid.

The Sea Monster of Troy

A second ketos was sent by Poseidon against Troy, when King Laomedon cheated him over the walls. Homer mentions the high earthwork near Troy that the Trojans and Athena built for Heracles to flee to when the sea monster chased him from the shore onto the plain (Iliad 20.145–148). In Apollodorus (2.5.9) an oracle told Laomedon to expose his daughter Hesione to the creature. Heracles agreed to rescue her in return for the mares that Zeus had given in compensation for the taking of Ganymede, and killed the monster. Laomedon then refused the payment, and Heracles later came back with eighteen ships and took Troy (Apollodorus 2.6.4).

The Serpents of Laocoon

When the Trojans debated what to do with the wooden horse, two huge serpents swam across from the island of Tenedos and killed the priest Laocoon and his sons. Apollodorus (Epitome 5.17–18) says that Laocoon, a seer, supported Cassandra’s warning that the horse held armed men, and that Apollo then sent a sign: two serpents swam across from the neighbouring islands and devoured Laocoon’s sons. Virgil (Aeneid 2.199–227) has the serpents come from Tenedos and kill Laocoon himself and both his sons while he, as priest of Neptune, is sacrificing a bull. In Quintus of Smyrna (Fall of Troy 12.389–499) Athena, angry that Laocoon urged the Trojans to burn the horse, first strikes him blind and then sends two serpents from the island of Calydna, which devour his sons alone and vanish into the earth by Apollo’s temple. The lost epic Sack of Ilium told the story too, and the motive for his death varies from version to version.

See Also: Scylla, Charybdis, Keto, Phorcys, Poseidon, Perseus, Andromeda, Heracles, Laocoon