Scyllaeum

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Scyllaeum or Scylaeum (Greek: τὸ Σκύλλαιον or Σκύλαιον) was a promontory, and ancient town or fortress, on the west coast of Bruttium (modern Calabria), about 25 km north of Rhegium (Reggio di Calabria), and almost exactly at the entrance of the Sicilian strait. The promontory is well described by Strabo as a projecting rocky headland, jutting out boldly into the sea, and united to the mainland by a narrow neck or isthmus, so as to form two small but well sheltered bays, one on each side. There can be no doubt that this rocky promontory was the one which became the subject of so many fables, and which was represented by Homer and other poets as the abode of the monster Scylla.

But the dangers of the rock of Scylla were far more fabulous than those of its neighbor Charybdis, and it is difficult to understand how, even in the infancy of navigation, it could have offered any obstacle more formidable than a hundred other headlands whose names are unknown to fame. Procopius writes that Scylaeum was said by poets to be where Scylla once lived, not because there really existed there a woman in the form of a beast, but rather because a certain fish, formerly called "scylax" and later renamed...