81As she spoke such words, night, the greatest nurse of cares, came on, and with the darkness her boldness grew. 83The first rest had come, when sleep holds hearts wearied by the cares of the day: silently she enters her father's chamber and (alas, the crime!) the daughter robs her parent of his fateful lock and, having gained her unspeakable prize, passes through the midst of the enemy (so great is her confidence in her deserving) and reaches the king. 89And she addressed him, in his alarm, like this: 'Love urged the deed. 90I, Scylla, royal offspring of Nisus, hand over to you my country and my household gods. 92I ask for no reward but you.
92Take this purple lock as a pledge of love, and believe that I am handing you now not a lock but my father's head.' 94And with her guilty right hand she held out the gift. 95Minos shrank from what was held out and, troubled by the sight of so strange a deed, replied: 'May the gods banish you from their world, you disgrace of our age, and may land and sea be denied to you. 99Certainly I shall not allow Crete, the cradle of Jupiter, which is my world, to be touched by so great a monster.' 101He spoke, and when, as a most just law-giver, he had imposed terms on the captured enemy, he ordered the fleet's moorings to be loosed and the bronze-beaked ships to be driven on by the oarsmen.
104When Scylla saw the keels launched and floating on the sea, and that the leader did not grant her the reward of her crime, her prayers spent, she passes into violent rage, and stretching out her hands, frenzied, her hair streaming, she cries out: 'Where are you fleeing, leaving behind the author of your gains, O you preferred to my country, preferred to my father? 110Where are you fleeing, cruel one? 110you whose victory is both my crime and my service. 111Did neither the gifts I gave move you, nor my love, nor that all my hope was heaped on you alone? 113For where shall I return, deserted? 114To my country?
114It lies defeated. 114But suppose it still stands: it is closed to me by my treachery. 115To my father's face? 116Whom I gave to you! 116The citizens rightly hate me, the neighbours fear my example: I am cast out, bereft, so that Crete alone of all lands might be open to me. 119If you bar me from this too and abandon me, ungrateful man, Europa is not your mother, but the inhospitable Syrtis, Armenian tigresses, and Charybdis lashed by the south wind. 122You are not born of Jupiter, nor was your mother lured by the likeness of a bull (that tale of your descent is false!): it was a real bull, wild and loving no heifer, that fathered you.
125Exact your punishment, father Nisus! 126Rejoice in my misfortunes, walls I lately betrayed! 127for I confess I deserved it and I am worthy to die. 128But even so, let one of those whom I wickedly harmed destroy me. 129Why do you, who conquered through my crime, pursue that crime? 130Let this be a wickedness towards my country and my father, but a service to you. 131Truly she is a wife worthy of you, the adulteress who deceived the grim bull with a wooden cow and bore in her womb an ill-matched offspring. 133Do my words reach your ears at all? 134Or do the winds carry off my empty words, and the same winds your ships, ungrateful man?
136Now, now it is no wonder that Pasiphae preferred the bull to you: you had more savagery in you. 138Wretched me! 138he orders them to hurry, and the wave torn apart by the oars resounds; 139and together with me my land recedes. 140You achieve nothing, O you who in vain have forgotten my services: I shall follow you against your will, and, clinging to your curved stern, I shall be dragged over the long seas.' 142Scarcely had she spoken when she leaps into the waves and overtakes the ships, desire giving her strength, and clings, an unwelcome companion, to the Cnossian keel. 145When her father saw her (for he was now hovering in the air and had just been made a sea-eagle with tawny wings), he was going to tear her with his hooked beak as she clung.
148In fear she let go of the stern, and a light breeze seemed to hold her up as she fell, so that she should not touch the sea. 150It was feathers: changed by feathers into a bird, she is called the ciris, and she got this name from the shorn lock.