Charybdis
The Whirlpool
kuh-RIB-diss
Three times a day she swallows the sea and spits it back, the other half of the strait, and the half that takes everything.
Domains
The WhirlpoolThe TideTotal Loss
Symbols
WhirlpoolFig TreeBare Rock
The Story
A daughter of Poseidon and Gaia who flooded too much land for Zeus's liking and was thrown into the sea as a whirlpool. She sucks the water down three times a day and vomits it back up, and anything on the surface goes with it.
Scylla costs six men; Charybdis costs the ship. That asymmetry is why the phrase survives as a name for a choice between two bad outcomes, and Odysseus meets her twice, escaping the second time by clinging to a fig tree over the vortex until his raft comes back up.
Did You Know?
- Homer has her swallow and disgorge three times a day, which reads as a description of a tide seen by people who had never needed to explain one.
- She is barely a character. Homer gives her no face, no voice, and no motive, she is a hazard with a name.