|
|
Hey it's Damound again and
I am going to tell you about Charybdis. In Greek mythology, Charybdis
was a sea monster, and the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia. She takes form
as a huge bladder of a creature whose face was all mouth and whose arms
and legs were flippers and swallows huge amounts of water three times
a day before belching them back out again, creating whirlpools. Charybdis
was very loyal to her father in his endless feud with Zeus, it was she
who rode the hungry tides after Poseidon had stirred up a storm, and led
them onto the beaches, gobbling up whole villages, submerging fields,
drowning forests, claiming them for the sea. She won so much land for
her father's kingdom that Zeus became enraged and changed her into a monster.
The myth has Charybdis lying on one side of a blue, narrow channel of
water. On the other side of the strait was Scylla, another sea-monster.
The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's range of each other,
so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis will pass too close
to Scylla and vice versa. The phrase "between Scylla and Charybdis"
has come to mean being in a state where one is between two dangers and
moving away from one will cause you to be in danger of the other. "Between
Scylla and Charybdis" is the origin of the phrase "between the
rock and the whirlpool" (the rock upon which Scylla dwelt and the
whirlpool of Charybdis) and may also be the genesis of the phrase "between
a rock and a hard place".
According to Thomas Bulfinch, Charybdis stole the oxen of Geryon from
Hermes, in whose possession they had been at the time, and was transformed
into a sea monster as a punishment.

|