page_title: Charybdis
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Charybdis / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: A map of the wanderings of Aeneas, showing the positions of Charybdis and Scylla (underlined in red), from an edition of The Aeneid of Virgil, Book III, edited by Philip Sandford, London: Blackie &amp; Son. 1900
context_page_description: Charybdis is a sea monster in Greek mythology. Subsequent scholarship has suggested that it was based on a whirlpool in the Strait of Messina.
context_section_description: The sea monster Charybdis was believed to live under a small rock on one side of a narrow channel. Opposite her was Scylla, another sea monster, that lived inside a much larger rock. The sides of the strait were 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. Three times a day, Charybdis swallowed 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 was 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. Through the descriptions of Greek mythical chroniclers and Greek historians such as Thucydides, modern scholars generally agree that Charybdis was said to have been located in the Strait of Messina, off the coast of Sicily and opposite a rock on the mainland identified with Scylla. Were Charybdis to be located in the Strait of Messina, it would in fact have the size to accommodate the whirlpool. A whirlpool does exist there, caused by currents meeting, but it is dangerous only to small craft in extreme conditions.
caption: The Strait of Messina, with Scylla (underlined in red) and Charybdis on the opposite shores
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