Charybdis
Charybdis · Oceanic Monster — The Devouring Whirlpool
A monstrous sea-creature of Greek myth who lives at the foot of a narrow cliff in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Daughter of Poseidon and Gaia in the later tradition, she was changed into a creature by the wrath of Zeus; three times a day she draws the dark sea down into a vast whirlpool and again belches it back, swallowing every ship and creature that comes too near. In Homer's Odyssey book 12 (c. eighth century BCE) Odysseus must pass between Charybdis and the six-headed Skylla on the opposite cliff, and from that ordeal comes the English idiom 'between Scylla and Charybdis' for an unwinnable choice.
