Charybdis- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster"Daughter of Poseidon"

The Devouring Whirlpool

Homer describes Charybdis with terrible precision. Three times a day she sucks down the dark water of the strait, then three times she belches it forth again. When she swallows, the seafloor itself becomes visible, rocks and sand exposed as the waters drain into her maw with a roar. When she disgorges, the waters seethe and thunder like a cauldron over a great fire, spray hurled high enough to fall upon the cliff-tops. Any ship caught in her inhalation is dragged down beyond rescue. Not even Poseidon himself, Homer says, could save a vessel that enters her gullet.

She dwells beneath a rocky outcrop in the narrow strait separating Sicily from the Italian mainland, directly opposite the cave of the six-headed Scylla. She cannot be fought, outwitted, or bargained with.

Origins and the Punishment of Zeus

Charybdis was a daughter of Poseidon and Gaia. In her original form she was a voracious naiad who served her father's ambitions. After the Titanomachy, while the Olympians were still dividing the world, Charybdis helped Poseidon expand his domain. She swallowed coastal lands and flooded them beneath the sea, and whole stretches of shoreline disappeared. She consumed part of Heracles' cattle during his tenth labor, when he was driving the herd of Geryon through Sicily, and she flooded lands that Zeus had claimed for his own.

Zeus struck her with a thunderbolt that transformed her from a nymph into the whirlpool itself and bound her to the seabed at the narrowest point of the Sicilian strait. She has swallowed and disgorged the waters ever since.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

The narrow strait presents sailors with an impossible choice. The channel is narrow enough that avoiding one monster means approaching the other. Scylla lurks in a cave high on the cliff opposite Charybdis, her six serpentine heads darting down to snatch sailors from passing ships. Each head claims one victim, so a ship passing close to Scylla loses six men. But Scylla cannot destroy the ship itself. Charybdis spares no one. When she inhales, every soul aboard goes down together.

Circe warned Odysseus that there was no armor against Charybdis. Steer close to Scylla's rock, she said, and row past at speed. Accept the loss of six men rather than risk the entire ship. "Better to mourn six companions than to lose them all together." When Odysseus asked whether he could fight Scylla while avoiding Charybdis, Circe rebuked him: Scylla was not mortal and could not be fought. Speed was the only defense.

The First Passage

Odysseus encountered the strait twice during his wanderings. The first passage followed Circe's instructions. He armed himself with two long spears and stood at the prow, watching for Scylla while his rowers pulled hard past Charybdis's whirlpool on the opposite side. He had not told his crew about Scylla, fearing they would abandon the oars and hide below deck. But while he stared down at the churning waters of Charybdis, watching the dark water drain to expose the seafloor, Scylla struck from above and snatched six of his men. Homer says they reached out their hands to Odysseus as they were lifted into the air, crying his name. Scylla carried them to her cave and devoured them at the entrance while they screamed. Homer describes this as the most pitiable sight of all Odysseus's sufferings on the sea.

The Fig Tree

Odysseus met Charybdis again under far worse circumstances. After his crew slaughtered the sacred cattle of Helios on Thrinacia, Zeus destroyed the ship with a thunderbolt as soon as they put to sea. All his remaining companions perished. Odysseus alone survived, clinging to the mast and keel that the waves lashed together into a makeshift raft. The current carried the wreckage back through the strait, directly toward Charybdis.

As the whirlpool sucked down the timbers, Odysseus leaped upward and seized the branches of a wild fig tree that grew from the rock above the maelstrom. He clung there, suspended over the churning void, arms and legs wrapped around the branches, unable to find a foothold on the smooth rock below. He hung through the hours of Charybdis's feeding cycle, waiting for the monster to disgorge his raft. Homer compares his long wait to the time a judge spends settling disputes in the marketplace before rising for his evening meal. Finally, when Charybdis vomited forth the keel and mast, Odysseus let go, dropped onto the floating timbers, and paddled away with his hands. He drifted for nine days before washing ashore on Ogygia, the island of Calypso.

The Argonauts and Charybdis

Charybdis appears again in Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica, when Jason and the Argonauts navigate the same strait on their return voyage with the Golden Fleece. The Argo had no chance of making the passage alone. Thetis and the Nereids rose from the sea and passed the ship between them, lifting the hull clear of the water while Charybdis sucked at the depths below and Scylla reached from her cave. The Argonauts sat gripping their benches while divine hands carried them through. Odysseus had Circe's counsel and his own endurance. Jason needed the Nereids' hands on his hull.