Scylla is most known for her appearance within the tales of Odysseus, and is depicted on this vase similarly as she is depicted in the Homeric text. In The Odyssey she is one of the feminine sea creatures (the other being Charybdis) terrorizing Odysseus’ men and even devouring six of them alive. The image on the pot above relates her identity to the function of vase as a vessel for water. Her identity relates to certain ancient Greek words: “skyllaros” means hermit crab describing her hard exterior shell, “skylax” translates into “dog” of which she has six coming out of her torso all writhing and yelping, each with triple rowed fangs, and the word “skyllo” which means “to tear apart violently” describing her ways of hunting for live food. Before the 5th century BCE there are few visual artworks depicting Scylla (though she is present in texts which describe her form in different ways).

Ideological origins of Scylla can be attributed to a synthesis of human psychological fears and visual/textual representations. From tales steaming from Minoan sailors traveling the rough seas of the Strait of Messina (Sicily) there began expression of Skylla as the rationalization of what causes the ocean to stir. Combined with this in imagery of her are physical fears of dogs attacking ancient people. It is not unusual that the powers of feminine goddess were represented by or juxtaposed with a canine, for example Ishtar the Mesopotamian fertility goddess and Gula the Babylonian healing goddess.

Many mythologies touch upon feelings and situations of betrayal, rejection, or abandonment by gods. According to a later version of her story dating to the year 8 CE, Ovid explored a more sympathetic origin of Scylla. Starting as a beautiful nymph she was later transformed into a monstrous creature. Skylla was the victim of a love triangle in which her divine rival, Circe, punished her by turning her beauty into grotesqueness which in turn led to her admirer abandoning her. Similar accounts of gods violently transforming women into monsters appear in stories of Medusa who was turned into a gorgon by Athena, Arachne who was turned into a spider by Athena, and Charybdis (who resides in the same river as Scylla) turned into a vortex by Zeus.

Mythological characters regularly embody natural human emotions of anger against “monstrous” injustice to the extreme point of embodying the monstrous itself. These women themselves become creatures almost unrecognizable from before, seeking revenge on those who abandoned them or even the world that forgot them. In Greek art and literature there is a strong theme of women being punished for their beauty (as were Skylla and Medusa), their skills (as was Arachne for her weaving abilities), or other assigned attributes out of their control (as was Charybdis who was punished because her father assigned her the task of flooding the lands which enraged Zeus). But also embedded in these stories are these women’s responses to their unjust punishments, violence in turn wreaked upon unlucky victims. Greek myth in this way is clear regarding the power of a woman scorned.