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Lot Essay
The fine beetle has hatching on the thorax, with outlined corner winglets and a hatched plinth. On the underside, the sea monster Skylla wields an oar over her shoulder and prepares to hurl an octopus. She is depicted with a bare female torso joined to a fish body, embellished with circles along its length, a spiney dorsal fin and a three-pronged tail. At the join of the human and fish parts emerge three dog protomes. The figure is enclosed within a hatched border.
In Homer’s Odyssey (Book 12), Circe warns Odysseus of the dangers he will face on his journey, in which he must sail through a narrow channel inhabited by two monsters, the whirlpool Charybdis and the cliff-dwelling Skylla. Circe advises Odysseus to stick close to the cliffs, as it is better to lose six of his men to Skylla rather than to lose all of his men and his ship to Charybidis. Homer describes Skylla as having twelve dangling feet, six long necks with a grisly head on each of them, each with a triple row of teeth. The earliest depictions of Skylla in Greek art are on Melian terracotta reliefs of circa 460 B.C., slightly earlier than our gem, and while her appearance does not conform to Homer’s description, later writers agree that she has a single female head and torso, a fish tail and dog protomes at the merge. On two mid-fifth century B.C. gems, a rock crystal scaraboid in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, and a similar of glass paste in Berlin, the human part of Skylla is dressed (see pl. 453 in J. Boardman, Greek Gems and Finger Rings, and no. 157 in E. Zwierlein-Diehl, Antike Gemmen in Deutschen Sammlungen, Band II, Staatliche Museen Preuβischer Kulturbesitz, Antikenabteilung, Berlin), while on several West Greek coins, she is shown naked, as on our gem (see for example a silver stater from Cumae, no. 725 in C. Kraay, Archaic and Classical Greek Coins).
In Homer’s Odyssey (Book 12), Circe warns Odysseus of the dangers he will face on his journey, in which he must sail through a narrow channel inhabited by two monsters, the whirlpool Charybdis and the cliff-dwelling Skylla. Circe advises Odysseus to stick close to the cliffs, as it is better to lose six of his men to Skylla rather than to lose all of his men and his ship to Charybidis. Homer describes Skylla as having twelve dangling feet, six long necks with a grisly head on each of them, each with a triple row of teeth. The earliest depictions of Skylla in Greek art are on Melian terracotta reliefs of circa 460 B.C., slightly earlier than our gem, and while her appearance does not conform to Homer’s description, later writers agree that she has a single female head and torso, a fish tail and dog protomes at the merge. On two mid-fifth century B.C. gems, a rock crystal scaraboid in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, and a similar of glass paste in Berlin, the human part of Skylla is dressed (see pl. 453 in J. Boardman, Greek Gems and Finger Rings, and no. 157 in E. Zwierlein-Diehl, Antike Gemmen in Deutschen Sammlungen, Band II, Staatliche Museen Preuβischer Kulturbesitz, Antikenabteilung, Berlin), while on several West Greek coins, she is shown naked, as on our gem (see for example a silver stater from Cumae, no. 725 in C. Kraay, Archaic and Classical Greek Coins).