Book 12: Visualizing

You are going to show your ability to visualize! You can choose to either draw this by hand and submit a picture, or you can use an online tool (like Paint).

Separate a piece of paper (or online document) into four sections and label the sections with the following names: Circe, Sirens, Scylla, Charybis.  Read the below excerpts from Book 12. Use the descriptions to draw a picture of the four characters. Don't stress about how amazing your artistic skills are (or are not). I want to see your ability to visualize!

Circe:

In the entrance way they stayed

to listen there: inside her quiet house they heard the goddess Circe.

Low she sang

in her beguiling voice, while on her loom

she wove ambrosial fabric sheer and bright,

by that craft known to the goddesses of heaven.

Sirens:

Square in your ship’s path are Sirens, crying

beauty to bewitch men coasting by;

woe to the innocent who hears that sound!

He will not see his lady nor his children

in joy, crowding about him, home from sea;

the Sirens will sing his mind away

on their sweet meadow lolling. There are bones

of dead men rotting in a pile beside them

and flayed skins shrivel around the spot.

Scylla

Midway that height, a cavern full of mist

opens toward Erebus 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 Scylla, where she yaps

abominably Links to an external site., 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 Amphitrite 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.

Charybdis

 A great wild fig, a shaggy mass of leaves,

grows on it, and Charybdis 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 Scylla, take your ship

through on a racing stroke. Better to mourn

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