Taken by Leah Morse in July 2002, these pictures show the cape and rocks on the Italian island of Lipari, in the Straits of Messina, that are traditionally considered the Scylla and Charybdis of The Odyssey, book 12. There, Circe warns Odysseus to steer clear of the deadly Wandering Rocks and then goes on to say:

                                        "A second course

lies between headlands. One is a sharp mountain

piercing the sky, with stormcloud round the peak

dissolving never, not in the brightest summer,

to show heaven's azure there, nor in the fall.

No mortal man could scale it, nor so much 

as land there, not with twenty hands and feet,

so sheer the cliffs are--as of polished stone.

Midway that height, a cavern full of mist

opens toward Erebos and evening. Skirting

this in the lugger, great Odysseus,

your master bowman, shooting from the deck,

would come short of the cavemouth with his shaft;

but that is the den of Skylla, where she yaps

abominably, a newborn whelp's cry,

though she is huge and monstrous. God or man,

no one could look on her in joy. Her legs--

and there are twelve--are like great tentacles,

unjointed, and upon her serpent necks

are borne six heads like nightmares of ferocity,

with triple serried rows of fangs and deep

gullets of black death. Half her length, she sways

her heads in air, outside her horrid cleft,

hunting the sea around that promontory

for dolphins, dogfish, or what bigger game

thundering Amphitritê feeds in thousands.

And no ship's company can claim

to have passed her without loss and grief; she takes,

from every ship, one man for every gullet.

"The opposite point seems more a tongue of land

you'd touch with a good bowshot, at the narrows.

A great wild fig, a shaggy mass of leaves,

grows on it, and Kharybdis lurks below

to swallow down the dark sea tide. Three times

from dawn to dusk she spews it up

and sucks it down again three times, a whirling

maelstrom; if you come upon her then

the god who makes earth tremble could not save you.

No, hug the cliff of Skylla, take your ship

through on a racing stroke. Better to mourn

six men than lose them all, and the ship, too."

(Lines 90-130, trans. Robert Fitzgerald)

Updating the story from the Bronze Age to the beginning of the Roman era, the Roman poet Ovid tells the story of Circe's transformation of Scylla from a beautiful woman to a monster and adds:

"Scylla, fixed in that place, detests all men and destroys

whomever she can--her victims include Ulysses' companions.

She would have destroyed Aeneas' party as well, had she not,

before they hove into view, been changed again to a rock,

which stands offshore to this day--and sailors give it wide berth."

(Metamorphoses, book 14, lines 70-74, trans. David R. Slavitt)