What's in a name? Using the example of a famous monster from Greek myth, this book challenges the dominant view that a mythical symbol denotes a single, clear-cut 'figure' and proposes instead to define the name 'Scylla' as a combination of three concepts - sea, dog and woman - whose articulation changes over time. While archaic and classical Greek versions usually emphasize the metaphorical coherence of Scylla's components, the name is increasingly treated as a well-defined but also paradoxical construct from the late fourth century BCE onward. Proceeding through detailed analyses of Greek and Roman texts and images, Professor Hopman shows how the same name can variously express anxieties about the sea, dogs, aggressive women and shy maidens, thus offering an empirical response to the semiotic puzzle raised by non-referential proper names.

It was meant to be a paradise, it was supposed to be a place to escape the dying planet of Earth and thrive in ways that they couldn't. Aria had it all; the best clothes, the best home a reputable family, but what does that amount to when the sun explodes and plunges the world into darkness.

Scylla thought she was normal, with a normal home life, and only the normal oddities of being a teenager to cause her angst. Everything changes during her senior year in high school when she discovers that not everyone lives with demons, gargoyles, angels and vampires, and not everyone has a crazy group of people who are actively hunting them down and trying to kill them. When you're the granddaughter of some big-name gods and the daughter of a well-known, mass-murdering demigod, life can be really weird.

The history of the Jews in Sicily covers a period of over a thousand years, from Antiquity to the Expulsion, based on some 40,000 archival records, most of them hitherto unpublished. It illustrates the political, legal, economic, social and religious vicissitudes of the Jewish minority and its relations with the surrounding majority of Romans, Moslems and Christians. While the antecedents of the Jewish presence on the island are shrouded in mystery, more and more historical records surface with the passage of time.

Scylla and Charybdis offers a collection of studies on epistolary and scholarly responses to religious and political controversy in Early Modern Europe. Careful examination of key intellectual letter-writers yields new biographical information as well as a more balanced judgement on the ways they responded to the challenges of their time.