Glaucus answered her, making such attempts as these,-- "Sooner shall foliage grow in the ocean, and { sooner} shall sea-weed spring up on the tops of the mountains, than my affections shall change, while Scylla is alive." The Goddess is indignant; and since she is not able to injure him, and as she loves him she does not wish { to do so}, she is enraged against her, who has been preferred to herself; and, offended with these crosses in love, she immediately bruises herbs, infamous for their horrid juices, and, when bruised, she mingles with them the incantations of Hecate. She puts on azure vestments too, and through the troop of fawning wild beasts she issues from the midst of her hall; and making for Rhegium, opposite to the rocks of Zancle, she enters the waves boiling with the tides; on these, as though on the firm shore, she impresses her footsteps, and with dry feet she skims along the surface of the waves.
There was a little bay, curving in { the shape of} a bent bow, a favourite retreat of Scylla, whither she used to retire from the influence both of the sea and of the weather, when the sun was at its height in his mid career, and made the smallest shadow from the head { downwards}. This the Goddess infects beforehand, and pollutes it with monster-breeding drugs; on it she sprinkles the juices distilled from the noxious root, and thrice nine times, with her magic lips, she mutters over the mysterious charm, { enwrapt} in the dubious language of strange words.[4] Scylla comes; and she has { now} gone in up to the middle of her stomach, when she beholds her loins grow hideous with barking monsters; and, at first believing that they are no part of her own body, she flies from them and drives them off, and is in dread of the annoying mouths of the dogs; but those that she flies from, she carries along with { herself}; and as she examines the substance of her thighs, her legs, and her feet, she meets with Cerberean jaws in place of those parts. The fury of the dogs { still} continues, and the backs of savage { monsters} lying beneath her groin, cut short, and her prominent stomach, { still} adhere to them.
Glaucus, { still} in love, bewailed { her}, and fled from an alliance with Circe, who had { thus} too hostilely employed the potency of herbs. Scylla remained on that spot; and, at the first moment that an opportunity was given, in her hatred of Circe, she deprived Ulysses of his companions. Soon after, the same { Scylla} would have overwhelmed the Trojan ships, had she not been first transformed into a rock, which even now is prominent with its crags; { this} rock the sailor, too, avoids.