Between Scylla and Charybdis

Scylla and Charybdis were mythical sea monsters noted by Homer; Greek mythology sited them on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria, on the Italian mainland.

That the dilemma had still to be resolved in the aftermath of the revolution is suggested by Percy Bysshe Shelley's returning to the idiom in his 1820 essay A Defence of Poetry: "The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.

"[11] A later Punch caricature by John Tenniel, dated 10 October 1863, pictures the prime minister Lord Palmerston carefully steering the British ship of state between the perils of Scylla, a craggy rock in the form of a grim-visaged Abraham Lincoln, and Charybdis, a whirlpool which foams and froths into a likeness of Jefferson Davis.

[12] American satirical magazine Puck also used the myth in a caricature by F. Graetz, dated November 26, 1884, in which the unmarried president-elect Grover Cleveland rows desperately between snarling monsters captioned "Mother-in-law" and "Office Seekers".

[13] Victor Hugo uses the equivalent French idiom (tomber de Charybde en Scylla) in his novel Les Misérables (1862), again in a political context, as a metaphor for the staging of two rebel barricades during the climactic uprising in Paris.

"[16][17] American heavy metal band Trivium also referenced it in "Torn Between Scylla and Charybdis," a track from their 2008 album Shogun, in which the lyrics are about having to choose "between death and doom.

According to his programme note, its four movements "do not refer specifically to the protagonists or to events connected with the famous legend"; they reflect images "conj[u]red up in the composer's mind during the writing".