Scylla and Charybdis: The Two Terrors of the Strait, Between Devouring and Drowning
Scylla — Attic red-figure calyx-krater, Louvre CA1341, c. 450–425 BCE. The upper body of a woman, the lower body ringed with dogs' heads: the beautiful monster of the strait in its earliest surviving image. The Strait of Messina — the narrow channel of water between Sicily and the Italian mainland — is in reality no more than three kilometers wide at its narrowest point. Yet for the ancient Greeks, this strip of sea was the location of one of the most terrifying passages in all of mythology: the strait between Scylla and Charybdis , the two monsters that no navigator could pass without loss. Scylla on one side: a creature of six long necks and six heads, each with three rows of teeth, living in a cave high in the cliff face, reaching down to snatch sailors from passing ships — six at a time, one per head. Charybdis on the other: a whirlpool-monster that sucked down the entire sea three times a day and belched it back up, capable of destroying not just sailors but entire s...