Scylla and Charybdis

The strait first appears in a speech, not on a voyage. After the Sirens, Circe tells Odysseus that two courses lie ahead. One passes the Planctae, the Wandering Rocks. Circe says only the Argo has ever sailed through them, and only because Hera loved Jason (Homer, Odyssey 12.55-72). The other course runs between two cliffs, and she describes both in turn (Homer, Odyssey 12.73-110).

The first cliff is a smooth rock wrapped in cloud. A dim cave opens in it, and Circe says Scylla lives there, yelping terribly. She has twelve misshapen feet and six long necks. Each neck ends in a head with three rows of teeth. From the cave she reaches out, and every head snatches a man from any ship that passes (Homer, Odyssey 12.73-100).

The second cliff is lower and lies close to the first, with a wild fig tree over the water. Under it Charybdis sucks down the dark water three times a day and gives it back three times. Circe warns Odysseus not to be there when she gulps (Homer, Odyssey 12.101-107). Her advice follows from the two dangers.

Odysseus asks whether he can escape Charybdis and also fight off Scylla when she attacks his men (Homer, Odyssey 12.111-114). Circe answers that Scylla is no mortal. She calls her an immortal bane, dread and fierce and not to be fought with. The bravest course is flight. He must row past with all his strength and call on Scylla's mother Crataeis to stop her striking a second time (Homer, Odyssey 12.115-126).

On the ship Odysseus tells his men about Charybdis but not about Scylla, for fear they will stop rowing (Homer, Odyssey 12.223-225). The episode follows Odysseus and the Sirens in his own telling. The ship goes up the narrow strait with wailing. Charybdis gulps the sea down and boils it up again, and spray falls on both cliffs. When she swallows, the seabed shows, and the crew look at her in terror (Homer, Odyssey 12.234-244).

While they watch Charybdis, Scylla seizes six men, the strongest and best of the crew, from the hollow ship. Odysseus looks back and sees their hands and feet high above him. They call him by name for the last time. Scylla drags them up the cliff like a fisherman landing small fish, and eats them at her cave mouth while they scream and stretch out their hands to him. Odysseus says it was the most pitiful sight he saw on all his sea voyages (Homer, Odyssey 12.245-259).

Odysseus reaches the strait a second time, and now he is alone. His men eat the cattle of Helios, and Zeus smashes the ship with a thunderbolt. Odysseus lashes the keel and mast together, and a south wind carries the raft back toward Charybdis at sunrise (Homer, Odyssey 12.403-429).

Charybdis sucks the raft down. Odysseus springs up and clings to the fig tree like a bat. He cannot get a foothold or reach the branches, so he hangs there until she gives back the mast and keel. When they rise he drops onto them and rows away. The father of gods and men does not let Scylla see him, and he drifts nine days to Ogygia (Homer, Odyssey 12.430-453).