| I've always found the myth about the giant Procrustes to be very interesting. He's the fellow who had an inn, I believe it was between Scylla and Charybdis, and he invited weary travelers to stay ovenight at his inn. Trouble was, he had only one bed, made of iron, and all travelers were required to fit into it -- if a traveler was too short for the bed, he was stretched to fit it; and if he was too long, his feet were cut off with enough of his legs to make him fit the bed.
The bed of Procrustes became known as the "Procrustean Bed," which became a widely used metaphor for anything that was used on a one-size-fits-all basis, where the user was required to fit the bed rather than the other way around. |