If we take as the foundation ancient mythology, then Scylla and Charybdis are two terrible monsters, living on two different sides of the sea strait. This location was small in width and seafarers often died there. It was believed that these monsters were the cause of many shipwrecks.
Scylla and Charybdis - what is this?
The sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis are the characters of ancient Greek mythology. By giving, they threatened all the mariners and cross their strait was very difficult. They lured people into their networks, and then they ate them in their caves. It is important that they did not immediately become so, for their external beauty they were enraged by other gods and poisoned the waters in which Scylla and Charybdis lived. Then there were those changes, which resulted in the subsequent deaths.
Scylla
According to legend, Scylla is a beautiful nymph who spent a lot of time at sea, having fun with her own kind. Sea King Glaucus was in love with her without love, but she did not respond to him in kind. This upset the deity, and he decided to seek help from the sorceress Kirk, for making a love potion. Kirk, all her life dreamed of being with the Glaucus and therefore decided to lime the rival and instead of love water, gave a modifying to the monster. The disfigured beauty could not survive her grief and began to kill both the people and the gods swarming into its territory.
Charybdis
Taking a great interest in the life of Scylla, many forget who the Charybdis are. Some claimed that she was born of a sea monster that lived on the seabed. But this is not entirely true, because she was the child of two gods - Gaia and Poseidon. For disobeying celestial laws, Zeus himself became angry and turned her into a terrible monster, in addition throwing from Olympus into the sea. From that moment, Charybdis absorbs the abyss of the sea and spits it out, creating large whirlpools.
What does Scylla and Charybdis look like?
Mythology says that Scylla and Charybdis were terrible monsters, but in reality only one of them had an outward appearance - this is Scylla. In front of her were twelve paws, which were constantly moving and trampled on the spot. Her shoulders were covered with thick and black bristles and six mutilated canine heads grew from there. Each mouth was filled with curved and razor-sharp fangs in three rows, and saliva constantly drained from them into the sea waters.
The terrible monster of Charybdis did not have an exact appearance. She just imagined herself in the form of a large whirlpool, which three times a day sucked into the ships that swam past. Some artists represented it as:
- a large open mouth in the middle of the strait;
- the abyss with bloody edges;
- a terrible woman who is trying to eat a ship.
The Myth of Scylla and Charybdis
Many people confuse two myths about these monsters and think that Hercules saved Odysseus from Scylla, but this is not so. The monsters were located on two banks of a narrow strait and thus, deviating from one, people involuntarily fell into captivity to another. At one time, Odysseus with his team had to swim between Italy and Sicily, where these monsters lived. He chose the lesser of two evils and decided to sacrifice six crew members, rather than the entire ship.
So, how did Odysseus escape Charybdis? Scylla stole six of the best sailors from the ship and retired to her cave to eat them. He was not worried about the cries for help, he moved on, saving the rest of the crew. Having overcome the monsters, he followed his path, but not for long. Approximately two days later, his sailer still picked up one of her whirlpools and crashed. Odysseus himself could escape, clinging to the branches of a tree hanging over the sea. There he waited for Charybdis to spit out the water and swam to the shore on the wreckage of the ship.
What does it mean to be between Scylla and Charybdis?
On the way to his native land, the city of Troy, Odysseus let into the world the phrase: to be between Scylla and Charybdis. This symbolizes the emergence of a complex situation on both sides of an almost equal scale of distress. This definition is also used today, and they call this strait a habitat for monsters. Skeptics, however, argue that there were no monsters, just frequent swirls and a rocky terrain prompted the peoples of that time to come up with legends about the mysterious disappearance of sea travelers.