The Odyssey's Insatiable Monster: Charybdis

Natalie Lawrence
Jul 27
3 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Part 5 of my Odyssey Monsters: Afterlives series, tracking their evolutions across art and literature.

Previous posts: Polyphemus, The Laestrygonians, The Sirens, Scylla

Ulysses and the Scylla, wood engraving, published 1880

The sister peril to Scylla that Odysseus faces is Charybdis. On the opposite side of the narrow strait through which he had to pass was a monstrous whirlpool that swallowed and regurgitated the sea three times a day. Faced with the choice between them, Circe’s advice to Odysseus was brutal:

"You will find the other rocks lie lower, but they are so close together that there is not more than a bowshot between them… under it lies the sucking whirlpool of Charybdis. Three times in the day does she vomit forth her waters, and three times she sucks them down again; see that you be not there when she is sucking, for if you are, Neptune himself could not save you; you must hug the Scylla side and drive ship by as fast as you can, for you had better lose six men than your whole crew."

Like Scylla, Charybdis did acquire a life beyond Homer, but of a far more limited sort. Ancient geographers identified both monsters with the dangerous waters of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and mainland Italy, where powerful currents and submerged rocks made navigation notoriously hazardous.

Homer leaves Charybdis’ origins unexplained, but later mythographers made her the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia. One tradition claimed that, after greedily stealing land for her father’s realm by flooding the coastline, she was struck down by Zeus and condemned to become the eternally devouring whirlpool.

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Charybdis, statue of the Fountain of Neptune, 1557, by Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli (1506-ca 1563), Messina, Sicily. Italy, 16th century.

In medieval moral thought, the pair also came to represent different kinds of spiritual peril: Scylla’s beautiful but monstrous form embodied the dangers of lust and temptation, while Charybdis’ insatiable maw became a symbol of greed and gluttony.

Over time, Scylla and Charybdis became as much geographical landmarks as mythological creatures, their names attached to a real place where sailors confronted genuine peril.

Yet while Scylla continued to evolve in art and literature, Charybdis remained largely what Homer had imagined: the terrifying, insatiable whirlpool.

Charybde et Scylla. 1894, Ary Ernest Renan

References

Homer. The Odyssey, Book XII, trans. Samuel Butler (c. 800 BCE).
Ovid. Metamorphoses, Book XIII (lines 898–968) and Book XIV (lines 1–74), trans. A. S. Kline.
Axel, E. (2025). Mermaids: Art, Symbolism, and Mythology. MUSE / Johns Hopkins.
Aguirre Castro, Mercedes (2002). “Scylla: Hideous Monster or Femme Fatale?” Cuadernos de Filología Clásica: Estudios Griegos e Indoeuropeos, Vol. 12, pp. 319–328.
Bain, Frederika (2023). “The Tail of Melusine: Hybridity, Mutability, and the Accessible Other.” In Melusine’s Footprint. Chapter 1. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Govers Hopman, Marianne (2012). Scylla: Myth, Metaphor, Paradox. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Segal, Charles (1998). “Punishing the Asexual Maiden: Scylla’s Transformation as a Mechanism of Reintegrating the Sexually Disobedient Virgin into ‘a Man’s World’ (Met. 13.888–14.74).” Arethusa, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 339–371.