<P> The story was often applied to political situations at a later date . In James Gillray's cartoon, Britannia between Scylla and Charybdis (3 June 1793),' William Pitt helms the ship Constitution, containing an alarmed Britannia, between the rock of democracy (with the liberty cap on its summit) and the whirlpool of arbitrary power (in the shape of an inverted crown), to the distant haven of liberty' . This was in the context of the effect of the French Revolution on politics in Britain . 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 ." </P> <P> 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 . A shield emblazoned "Neutrality" hangs on the ship's thwarts, referring to how Palmerston tried to maintain a strict impartiality towards both combatants in the American Civil War . 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". </P> <P> Victor Hugo uses the equivalent French idiom (tomber de Charybde en Scylla) in his novel Les Miserables (1862), again in a political context, as a metaphor for the staging of two rebel barricades during the climactic uprising in Paris, around which the final events of the book culminate . The first chapter of the final volume is entitled "The Charybdis of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Scylla of the Faubourg du Temple". </P> <P> By the time of Nicholas Monsarrat's 1951 war novel, The Cruel Sea, however, the upper - class junior officer, Morell, is teased by his middle - class peer, Lockhart, for using such an old - fashioned phrase . Nevertheless, the idiom has since taken on new life in pop lyrics . In The Police's 1983 single "Wrapped Around Your Finger", the second line uses it as a metaphor for being in a dangerous relationship; this is reinforced by a later mention of the similar idiom of "the devil and the deep blue sea". American heavy metal band Trivium also referenced the idiom 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". </P>

Where did between a rock and a hard place come from