By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) To be ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’ is, if you will, to be caught between a rock and a hard place – in other words, between two equally unappealing dangers or prospects. But how did the phrase come into b
Scylla, inThe Odyssey, is a six-headed monster. Charybdis is a giant whirlpool. To avoid one, you must confront the other. Although the six men the Scylla devours would disagree, the crew wisely avoids Charybdis and sails on. Cattle of the Sun- ...
The Argonauts then had an eventful journey home, involving an encounter with the witch Circe and a brush with Scylla and Charybdis, the sharp rocks and deadly whirlpool off the coast of Sicily. They also encountered the Sirens (the legend of whom we have discussedhere), but Orpheus sang so ...
Advised once more by Circe on the remaining stages of their journey, they skirted the land of the Sirens, passed between the many-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and, blithely ignoring the warnings of Tiresias and Circe, hunted down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios....
Odysseus and his crew are faced with the prospect of the island of the Sun God, Helios, after barely escaping from the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. Odysseus – following Tiersias’ prophecy – tries to explain to his crew that it would be wise to avoid the island, knowing that it might...
of theharrowingjourney he and his crew endured as they tried to find their way home—including their encounters with the lotus-eaters,Laestrygonians, and the sorceressCirce, their narrow escape from thecaveof theCyclopsPolyphemus, their ordeal navigating betweenScylla and Charybdis, and the final ...
Alcinous, in Greek mythology, king of the Phaeacians (on the legendary island of Scheria), son of Nausithoüs, and grandson of the god Poseidon. In the Odyssey (Books VI–XIII) he entertained Odysseus, who had been cast by a storm onto the shore of the i
Lotus-Eater, in Greek mythology, one of a tribe encountered by the Greek hero Odysseus during his return from Troy, after a north wind had driven him and his men from Cape Malea (Homer, Odyssey, Book IX). The local inhabitants, whose distinctive practice