Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/600

Rh 574 S C Y S C Y eludes for the year 347. The latest edition is that of Fabricius (Leipsic, 1878). SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. In Homer (Od., xii. 73 sq.) Scylla is a dreadful sea-monster, daughter of Crataeis, with six heads, twelve feet, and a voice like the yelp of a puppy. She dwelt in a sea-cave looking to the west, far up the face of a huge cliff. Out of her cave she stuck her heads, fishing for marine creatures and snatching the sea- men out of passing ships. Within a bowshot of this cliff was another lower cliff with a great fig-tree growing on it. Under this second rock dwelt Charybdis, who thrice a day sucked in and thrice spouted out the sea water. Between these rocks Ulysses sailed, and Scylla snatched six men out of his ship. In later classical times Scylla and Charybdis were localized in the Strait of Messina, Scylla on the Italian, Charybdis on the Sicilian side. In Ovid (Afetam., xiv. 1-74) Scylla appears as a beautiful maiden beloved by the sea-god Glaucus and changed by the jealous Circe into a sea -monster; afterwards she was transformed into a rock shunned by seamen. There are various other ver- sions of her story. According to a late legend (Servius on Virgil, jn., iii. 420), Charybdis was a voracious woman who robbed Hercules of his cattle and was there- fore cast into the sea by Jupiter, where she retained her old voracious nature. The well-known line " Incidis in Scyllam cupiens vitare, Charybdim " occurs in the Alexandras of Philip Gualtier (a poet of the 13th century), which was printed at Lyons in 1558. Another Scylla, confounded by Virgil (Ec., vi. 74 sq.) with the sea-monster, was a daughter of Nisus, king of Megara. When Megara was besieged by Minos, Scylla, who was in love with him, cut off her father's purple lock, on which his life depended. But Minos drowned the un- dutiful daughter (^Eschylus, Choeph., 613 sq.; Apollodorus, iii. 15, 8). SCYMNUS of Chios, a Greek geographer of uncertain date, known to us only by a few references in later writers, but perhaps identical with the Scymnus Chius of a Delphic inscription of the beginning of the 2d century B.C., 1 was commonly taken to be the author of an imperfect anony- mous Paraphrasis in verse describing the northern coast of the Mediterranean, which in the first edition (Augsburg, 1600) was ascribed to Marcianus of Heraclea. Meineke showed conclusively that this piece cannot be by Scymnus. It is dedicated to a King Nicomedes, probably Nicomedes III. of Bithynia, and so would date from the beginning of the 1st century B.C. See Miiller, Geog. Gr. Min., vol. i., where the poem is edited with sufficient prolegomena. SCYROS, a small rocky barren island in the ^Egean Sea, off the coast of Thessaly, containing a town of the same name. In 469 B.C. it was conquered by the Athe- nians under Cimon, and it was probably about this time that the legends arose which connect it with the Attic hero Theseus, who was said to have been treacherously slain and buried there. A mythic claim was thus formed to justify the Athenian attack, and Cimon brought back the bones of Theseus to Athens in triumph. The inhabitants of Scyros before the Athenian conquest were Dolopes (Thuc., i. 98) ; but other accounts speak of Pelasgians or Carians as the earliest inhabitants. There was a sanctuary of Achilles on the island, and numerous traditions connect Scyros with that hero. He was concealed, disguised as a woman, in the palace of Lycomedes, king of the island, when his mother wished to keep him back from the Trojan War; he was discovered there by Odysseus, and gladly accompanied him to Troy. An entirely different cycle of legends relate the conquest of Scyros by Achilles. The actual worship on the island of a hero or god named 1 See Rhode, in Rhein. Mus., 1879, p. 153 sq. Achilles, and the probable kinship of its inhabitants with a Thessalian people, whose hero Achilles also was, form the historical foundation of the legends. Scyros was left, along with Lernnos and Imbros, to the Athenians by tho peace of Antalcidas (387 B.C.). It was taken by Philip, and continued under Macedonian rule till 196, when the Romans restored it to Athens, in whose possession it re- mained throughout the Roman period. It was sacked by an army of Goths, Heruli, and Peucini, in 269 A.D. The ancient city was situated on a lofty rocky peak, on the north-eastern coast, where the modern town of St George now stands. A temple of Athena, the chief goddess of Scyros, was on the shore near the town. The island has a small stream, called in ancient times Cephissus. Strabo mentions as its sole products its excellent goats and a species of variegated marble the latter in great favour at Rome. SCYTHE AND SICKLE. Till the invention of the reaping machine, which came into practical use only about the middle of the 19th century, scythes and sickles were the sole reaping implements. The scythe is worked with two hands with a swinging motion, while the sickle or reaping hook is held in one hand and the reaper bends and cuts the crop with a shearing or hitting motion. Of the two the sickle is the more ancient, and indeed there is some reason to conclude that its use is coeval with the cultivation of grain crops. Among the remains of the later Stone period in Great Britain and on the European continent curved flint knives have occasionally been found the form of which has led to the suggestion that they were used as sickles. Sickles of bronze occur quite commonly among remains of the early inhabitants of Europe. Some of these are deeply curved hooks, flat on the under-side, and with a strengthening ridge or back on the upper surface, while others are small curved knives, in form like the ordinary hedge-bill. Among the ancient Egyptians toothed or serrated sickles of both bronze and iron were used. Ancient Roman drawings show that both the scythe and the sickle were known to that people, and Pliny makes the distinction plain. 2 Although both imple- ments have lost much of their importance since the general introduction of mowing and reaping machinery, they are still used very extensively, especially in those countries where small agricultural holdings prevail. The principal modern forms are the toothed hook, the scythe hook, the Hainault scythe, and the common scythe. The toothed hook, which was in general use till towards the middle of the 19th century, consists of a narrow-bladed curved hook, having on its cutting edge a series of fine close-set serratures cut like file-teeth, with their edges inclined towards the heft or handle. Such sickles were formerly made of iron edged with steel; but in recent times they came to be made of cast steel entirely. To- wards the middle of the century the toothed hook was gradually supplanted by the scythe hook or smooth-edged sickle, a somewhat heavier and broader-bladed implement, having an ordinary knife edge. Both these implements were intended for " shearing " handful by handful, the crop being held in the left hand and cut with the tool held in the right. A heavy smooth-edged sickle is used for "bagging" or "clouting," an operation in which the hook is struck against the straw, the left hand being used to gather and carry along the cut swath. The Hainault scythe is an implement intermediate between the scythe and 2 "Of the sickle there are two varieties, the Italian, which is the shorter and can he handled among brushwood, and the two-handed Gallic sickle, which makes quicker work of it when employed on their [the Gauls'] extensive domains ; for there they cut their grass only in the middle, and pass over the shorter blades. The Italian mowers cut with the right hand only " (H. N., xviiL 67).