Talk:Charybdis

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[edit] Whirlpool

Wasn't the myth of Charybdis based upon a whirlpool that actually appears in the straits between Sicily and Italy?

I think it's the other way round - there were legends about the straits of Scylla and Charybdis that were applied to the Straits of Messina when the Greeks discovered it and applied existing myths to new areas - the text of the Odyssey suggests there was no significant knowledge of the Western Mediterranean at the time of the the Trojan War so it is more likely that legends associated with it and the hero' return home would have originated somewhere within the Greek's known world. (And in the Jason & the Argonauts story which also features Scylla, the Argo was sailing down the Adriatic sea.) The channel between the island of Levkas and the mainland of Greece has been suggested - the headland near the entrance is called Cape Skilla and there's a mountain overlooking the channel called Lamia - which was a long necked monster that attacked the hero... As the channel is now blocked up by a causeway it's impossible to tell if there was ever a whirlpool, but the local tides could have created one such as Homer describes.

[edit] Charybdis and Chalybes

It is possible that Charybdis was the mutation of Chalybians or Chalybes (a people lived at coast of northern Asia Minor, compare Halybe of Homer)).

Scylla was the mutation of Scolotians or Scoloti (a Schythian people lived at European-Thracian coast of Black Sea).

Both were the terror of sailors who have been travelled across Bosporus, in during of 2nd/1st millennium B.C.

--IonnKorr 15:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Odyssey

Is it worth mentioning that the Charybdis is one of the major trials faced by Odysseus? —Ilyanep (Talk) 01:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

"Odysseus was not so fortunate; he chose to risk Scylla at the cost of some of his crew rather than lose the whole ship to Charybdis. (Homer's Odyssey, Book XII)." It already has been.