Charybdis

CharybdisCharybdis was a sea monster, once a beautiful naiad and the

daughter Poseidon and Gaia.She takes forms as a huge creature whose face was all

mouth and whose arms were all flippers. She swallows huge amounts of water 3 times a day before belching them back out again, creating whirlpools.

The myth has Charybdis lying on one side of a narrow channel of water while Scylla (another sea monster) was on the other side of the strait.

They were so close together that when sailors used to sail through there, they sailed away trying to avoid Scylla and got to close to Charybdis. The phrase “between Scylla and Charybdis” is said to be the origin of the phrase “between a rock and a hard place”.