Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Back at Aeaea Circe warned Odysseus of the Sirens, of the Clashing Rocks (which he would avoid), and of the choice between Scylla and Charybdis: better lose six men to Scylla’s six heads than risk the whole ship in Charybdis’s whirl. She forbade touching Helios’s cattle on Thrinacia. Odysseus plugged his crew’s ears with wax and had himself bound to the mast to hear the Sirens’ song of knowledge and glory; he begged release, but they only tightened the ropes until the danger passed. They hugged Scylla’s cliff; she snatched six of his best men as they rowed. Odysseus did not warn them in advance—Circe had said fighting was useless—and he heard their cries as they were eaten. At Thrinacia Eurylochus overrode Odysseus’s wish to sail past; contrary winds pinned them. While Odysseus slept, the starving crew slaughtered Helios’s cattle despite oaths. Helios demanded vengeance from Zeus; after they sailed, Zeus shattered the ship with a thunderbolt. All drowned but Odysseus, who rode the keel past Charybdis again—losing the mast to her gulp, clinging to the fig tree on the cliff, then recovering wreckage—and drifted alone to Ogygia and Calypso. The wandering’s crew is ended; only the hero remains for the gods’ last trials and the Phaeacian homecoming.