Charybdis

Sea-monster of the Sicilian side of the same strait as Scylla — a great whirlpool that thrice each day swallowed and spat out the sea, drowning whole ships in a single suck. Later scholia make her a daughter of Poseidon and Gaia, punished by Zeus for her father's flooding raids — a mythographer's expansion of the Homeric monster, who in the *Odyssey* itself is unnamed by parentage. Circe warned Odysseus to keep clear of her at all costs and accept Scylla's six-man toll instead.

Associated Places