Charybdis

Charybdis (Ancient Greek: Χάρυβδις,  pronounced  [kʰárybdis], Kharybdis) is a sea monster in the Strait of Messina that creates whirlpools large enough to sink ships.

Charybdis lives under a small rock on one side of a narrow channel in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the tip of Italy (the region of Calabria). Opposite her is Skylla, another sea monster, that lives inside a much larger rock. The sides of the strait are 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.

Thrice a day, Charybdis swallows 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 is simply a large whirlpool instead of a sea monster.

The theoretical size of Charybdis remains unknown, yet in order to consume Greek ships the whirlpool can be estimated to about 23 meters (75 ft) across, so the creature must have considerable musculature to be able to fit under a small rock and a whirlpool of that size (which, to clarify, the Strait of Messina is wide enough to accommodate).

Odysseus faced both Charybdis and Skylla while rowing through the strait. He ordered his men to avoid Charybdis (the small problem), thus forcing them to pass near Skylla (the big problem), 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.

The Argonauts were able to avoid both dangers because Hera ordered the nereid nymph Thetis, Achilleus's mother, to guide them through the perilous passage.

Aristotle mentions in his Meteorologika that Aesop once teased a ferryman, frightening him with a foreboding story about 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.

In some accounts Charybdis is the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia and living as a loyal servant to her father. She 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 for the land she stole from him, captured and chained her to the sea-bed. Charybdis was then cursed by the god into becoming a hideous bladder-shaped monster, with flippers for arms and legs, and an uncontrollable thirst for the sea. As such, she drinks the water from the sea thrice a day to quench that thirst, which creates the whirlpool. She lingers on a rock with Skylla facing her directly on another rock when they emerge to drink.