The phrase derives from two dangerous entities found in the Mediterranean sea, which Homer tells us about in his Odyssey.
To be ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’ is, if you will, to be caught between a rock and a hard place – in other words, between two equally unappealing dangers or prospects. Curiously, like many other classic myths, this one may have arisen as an origin story to explain the rich gold deposits in the river Pactolus. The latter of these was his reward from Dionysus, although he soon discovered that his gift was a bane rather than a blessing, and that he couldn’t even do simple things like take a drink without the water turning into gold. Midas is known for two things: being given the ears of an ass, and turning everything he touched into gold. He was thus doomed to repeat this action forever.
The poster-boy of existentialism, Sisyphus has become associated with laborious and pointless tasks, because he was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, only for the boulder to roll back down to the bottom just as he was about to complete the task. But the figures are so closely associated with Greek myth that we felt they should be included here. Echo found it hard to tell Narcissus how she felt for him, in any case, because she had already been cursed so that she could only repeat what others said, rather than speak for herself.Īlthough we feature this classic mythological tale on this list of best Greek stories, the introduction of Echo into the tale of Narcissus appears to have been the invention of a Roman poet, Ovid, in his Metamorphoses. Echo loved Narcissus, but he shunned her because he only had eyes for himself, and Echo pined away until only her voice remained. Narcissus was a beautiful youth – so beautiful, in fact, that he fell in love with his own reflection, which he saw while gazing down at the surface of the water while drinking one day. He was ordered to carry out his famous ‘Twelve Labours’ as penance for the murder of his own wife and children, while he was in the service of the king Eurystheus.Ī few of them are quite famous – Heracles killing the Nemean lion, or stealing the golden apples of the Hesperides – but others, such as slaying the Stymphalian birds, are more obscure. Orpheus couldn’t resist one quick glance … and Eurydice was lost to him forever.īetter-known as Hercules (the Latin version of his Greek name), Heracles was the all-round action hero of Greek mythology. His wish was granted – but on the condition that he mustn’t look back at Eurydice as she followed him out of Hades, until they were both safely back in the land of the living.
The lyrist Orpheus fell in love with the beautiful Eurydice, only for her to die shortly after Orpheus made the journey into Hades, the Underworld, to try to bring his beloved back. But as with the tale of Echo and Narcissus (see below), this is a doomed love story made more famous through Roman writers (Ovid, Virgil) than Greek originals. One of the great tragic love stories from Greek mythology, the tale of the musician Orpheus and his lover Eurydice features the Underworld.
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