The Emperor Tiberius commissioned this statue of Scylla attacking Odysseus's ship for his grotto at Sperlonga. Well, not exactly this statue, because the original got smashed to powder by a gang of silly, Dark Age monks and what you're seeing is part painstaking reconstruction, part inspired guesswork.
Whatever- it's one of my favourite things.
And here's the poem I wrote about it eight years ago.
SCYLLA
To think or fuck? Is the marble Scylla
Made for his holiday home at Sperlonga
A porno-object, a six-cunt special-
Or was she there to remind him how heroes
Get batted about? Some monks with hammers
Broke her apart and her shining pieces
Lay under sand in the salt lagoon
Till this century we patched them together
And brought her back. Me, I adore her,
Salt-water-wallowing, free child of Nature,
Rearing up on her two coiled tails-
Six dog's heads where her sex should be,
Braced like a figurehead, beautiful-
As she grips the prow of Ulysses' ship
And lashes out with a busted tiller.