The Dutch Tiphys

...was taking plunder. The ship's name was Pegasus; just as individual ships are assigned a specific name. So too in Trojan times, the Tyrrhenians An ancient people of the Mediterranean, often associated with the Etruscans and frequently depicted as pirates in Greek myth. practiced piracy, infesting the sea with their scouts myoparonibus: light, fast vessels favored by pirates and triremes triremibus: standard ancient warships with three banks of oars. One of these triremes, named the Scylla, surpassed the others in speed and lay in wait for merchant vessels above all others. As Palaephatus An ancient author whose work On Incredible Tales sought to explain myths as misunderstood history. says, Ulysses The Roman name for the Greek hero Odysseus. successfully escaped that trireme by utilizing both the speed of his own ship and a favorable wind. original Greek: ὡς ἡ ναῦς τειήρης ταχεῖα, τὸ τέ ὄνομα Σκύλλα · αὕτη ἡ τειήρης τὰ λοιπὰ πλοίων συλλαμβάνουσα πολλάκις εἰργάζετο βρῶμα. Translation: "Because the ship was a swift trireme, and its name was Scylla; this trireme, by capturing the rest of the ships, often produced 'food' [booty]." The "prince of poets" A traditional reference to the Roman poet Virgil. seems to have had this in mind when, in his fifth book, he grants victory to Cloanthus, who was being carried by the Scylla.

— She fled toward the land swifter than the South Wind original Latin: Noto and a winged arrow, and hid herself in the deep harbor. A quote from Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 5, describing the speed of the ship Scylla during a race.

In these matters, everything has so far been shrouded in the fictions of myths. But what of that man who first of all tempted the seas with a long ship longa nave: a galley or warship, typically longer and narrower than a merchant vessel? With what great renown is he discussed in the speech of men? With what great scope is he celebrated? It truly seems to the poets that he "unlocked the Ocean" of the fables.

Would that the fir-timbers, hewn by axes in the Pelian grove A forest on Mount Pelion in Greece, where the wood for the Argo was sourced., had never fallen to the earth! And would that the beginning of the ship’s construction had never started there—that ship which is now called the Argo, in which the chosen Argive men sailed to seek that golden fleece of the ram from Colchis, under the command of King Pelias by means of deceit. This is a translation of a famous passage from the Roman playwright Ennius’s Medea, based on Euripides, describing the launch of the first ship.