Scylla and Charybdis are two monsters set on opposite shores of one narrow strait, and Homer's ship has to pass between them. There is no third way. Their names have outlived the poem as the phrase for exactly that bind — caught “between Scylla and Charybdis,” forced to choose the less ruinous of two ruins.
In Book 12, the sorceress Circe warns Odysseus that his ship must thread a strait flanked by two horrors: Scylla, a six-headed monster perched on a high cliff, and Charybdis, a whirlpool that swallows the sea whole. Steering too near Charybdis would doom the entire ship, so Circe counsels hugging Scylla's side and accepting the loss of a few men. To be “between Scylla and Charybdis” means to be caught between two grave dangers, where every path costs something.
Scylla waits high on a cliff face, half-hidden in a permanent grey mist. Six necks, six heads, each mouth a thicket of teeth. She does not give chase; she strikes downward, plucking men off the deck of any ship that drifts within reach. She cannot be killed and cannot be fought. She can only be survived.
Charybdis sits low across the channel, close enough that the two are nearly a single trap. Three times a day she swallows the whole sea down into a black, roaring funnel, and three times heaves it back up in a boil of foam. Scylla takes a few. Charybdis takes everything — the ship, the cargo, every last man, gone under at once.
Circe's counsel is hard and clear. There is no clean passage, and no heroics that bring everyone through. Scylla is deathless; stopping to fight her only buys a second pass of those six heads. Better to lose six men than the whole crew, she says. Drive hard under the cliff, and do not slow down.
He obeys. He steers for Scylla, and she takes her six, one to a head, lifting them off the deck still screaming his name. He calls it the most pitiful thing his eyes saw in all his wanderings. This is the underside of command: the leader who cannot save everyone has to choose, on purpose, who will be lost, and then carry it. The strait becomes an image of every passage where something must be paid simply to get through.
Today the phrase marks any spot where both ways out are dangerous and standing still is not an option: escape one peril and you drift toward the other. It runs close to “between a rock and a hard place” and “between the devil and the deep blue sea,” but it carries an extra weight — the sense of a forced choice that costs something no matter how you choose.
What does “between Scylla and Charybdis” mean?
It means being caught between two dangers, where avoiding one pushes you toward the other. The phrase usually points to choosing the lesser of two evils, much like “between a rock and a hard place.”
What are Scylla and Charybdis?
They are two monsters from the Odyssey set on opposite sides of a narrow strait. Scylla is a six-headed creature on a high cliff who snatches sailors, and Charybdis is a whirlpool that swallows and disgorges the sea.
Why did Odysseus choose Scylla over Charybdis?
Circe advised it: Charybdis could destroy the entire ship, while Scylla would seize only a few men. Odysseus steered closer to Scylla and lost six sailors — a deliberate sacrifice to save the rest of the crew.