The Strait of Messina, with Scylla (underlined in red) and Charybdis on the opposite shores
The sea monster Charybdis was believed to live under a small rock on one side of a narrow channel. Opposite her was Scylla, another sea monster, who lived inside a much larger rock.[1] The sides of the strait were within an arrow-shot of each other, and sailors attempting to avoid one of them would come in reach of the other. To be "between Scylla and Charybdis" therefore means to be presented with two opposite dangers, the task being to find a route that avoids both. Three times a day, Charybdis swallowed a huge amount of water, before belching it back out again, creating large whirlpools capable of dragging a ship underwater. In some variations of the story, Charybdis was simply a large whirlpool instead of a sea monster.
Through the descriptions of Greek mythical chroniclers and Greek historians such as Thucydides, modern scholars generally agree that Charybdis was said to have been located in the Strait of Messina, off the coastofSicily and opposite a rock on the mainland identified with Scylla.[2] A whirlpool does exist there, caused by currents meeting, but it is dangerous only to small craft in extreme conditions.[3]
Charybdis aided her father Poseidon in his feud with her paternal uncle Zeus and, as such, helped him engulf lands and islands in water. Zeus, angry over the land she stole from him, sent her to the bottom of the sea with a thunderbolt; from the sea bed, she drank the water from the sea thrice a day, creating whirlpools.[6][7] She lingered on a rock with Scylla facing her directly on another rock, making a strait.
In some myths, Charybdis was a voracious woman who stole oxen from Heracles, and was hurled by the thunderbolt of Zeus into the sea, where she retained her voracious nature.[5]
A 19th-century engraving of the Strait of Messina, the site associated with Scylla and Charybdis
Odysseus faced both Charybdis and Scylla while rowing through a narrow channel. He ordered his men to avoid Charybdis, thus forcing them to pass near Scylla, which resulted in the deaths of six of his men. Later, stranded on a raft, Odysseus was swept back through the strait and passed near Charybdis. His raft was sucked into her maw, but he survived by clinging to a fig tree growing on a rock over her lair. On the next outflow of water, when his raft was expelled, Odysseus recovered it and paddled away safely.[8]
In the Aeneid, the Trojans are warned by Helenus of Scylla and Charybdis, and are advised to avoid them by sailing around Pachynus point (Cape Passero) rather than risk the strait.[10] Later, however, they find themselves passing Etna, and have to row for their lives to escape Charybdis.[11]
Aristotle mentions in his Meteorologica that Aesop once teased a ferryman by telling him a myth concerning Charybdis. With one gulp of the sea, she brought the mountains to view; islands appeared after the next. The third is yet to come and will dry the sea altogether, thus depriving the ferryman of his livelihood.[12]
^Andrews, Tamra (2000). Dictionary of Nature Myths: Legends of the Earth, Sea, and Sky. Oxford University Press. p. 171. ISBN978-0-19-513677-7. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
Media related to Charybdis at Wikimedia Commons
