Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Circe sets the choice: the Planctae (Clashing Rocks) Odysseus will avoid; between Scylla’s cliff and Charybdis’s thrice-daily whirl he must hug Scylla’s side and lose six men rather than risk the whole ship. Scylla is a twelve-footed, six-headed yelping horror; Charybdis swallows and vomits the sea under a fig tree. Odysseus arms anyway—against Circe’s advice—and steers close; Scylla snatches six of his best as they row, and he hears them cry his name as they are eaten alive against the cliff. After the later wreck at Zeus’s hand, Odysseus alone rides wreckage past Charybdis again: she gulps the mast; he clings to the fig tree until she vomits the timber back, then paddles on toward Ogygia. The strait is the ethics of calculated loss: six lives chosen over total ruin, and later solitary survival under the same jaws.