Charybdis
Charybdis ( Greek Χάρυβδις ) is a shapeless sea monster from Greek mythology that is said to have lived on a strait together with the Scylla .
myth
In Homer's Odyssey, the monster Scylla dwells on the larger of two opposing rocks of the strait and Charybdis below the smaller rock on which a large fig tree stands. She sucks in the sea water three times a day, only to then shout it out again with a roar. Ships caught in the suction are lost, not even the sea god Poseidon can save these ships. On Kirke's advice , Odysseus avoids the Charybdis, but inevitably gets so close to Scylla that she kills and eats six of the companions. After leaving Thrinakia , the island of Helios, the other companions are killed in a storm, as they slaughtered some of Helios' cattle despite urgent warnings. Odysseus, sitting on the keel of his wrecked ship, is driven back to the strait. When Charybdis sucks the ship in, he clings to the fig tree until it is spat out again and rowed away on the rubble with his hands.
In the saga of the Argonauts, Jason sails with the Argo undamaged between Scylla and Charybdis, supported by Thetis and the Nereids . According to other versions and also according to Homer's Odyssey, the Argonauts sailed through the plankton , an alternative, no less dangerous route.
Even in antiquity, many authors suspected Scylla and Charybdis - despite Homer's remark that the Kirk island Aiaia is at the daily rise of Helios - on the Strait of Messina , with Charybdis on the Sicilian side near Messene .
“This sound is the sea between Rhegion and Messene, where Sicily has the shortest distance from the mainland. This is also the so-called Charybdis, through which Odysseus is said to have passed. The narrowness, where the waters of further seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Sicilian, collide and form currents, was considered dangerous with good reason. "
In the Aeneid , the meeting with the Charybdis is accordingly avoided by Aeneas bypassing the island of Sicily.
In the 12th century, the Norwegian monk Theodoricus Monachus believed that the Pentland Firth was the strait of Scylla and Charybdis.
In his book Homer's Wild West , published in 2008, the historian Heinz Warnecke assumes that the real place for Charybdis is the Strait of Rhion between the Gulf of Patras and the Gulf of Corinth. Current phenomena still occur here today, because the strait with around 70 m water depth forms a kind of threshold between the 4000 m deep ditch near the west side of the Gulf of Patras and the Gulf of Corinth with a water depth of up to 900 m. When spring tide and certain weather and wind conditions coincide, this can cause unusual shapes of the water current and its intensity in the strait.
There is only late news about the origin of the Charybdis that she was the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia . As a voracious woman, she had stolen the cattle of Heracles , which is why she was banished into the sea by a lightning bolt from Zeus , but retained her voracity.
reception
In Schiller's ballad The Diver , the king throws a cup into the charybdis' throat:
“The King speaks it and throws the cup in the Charybde howl from the height of
The cliff, which
hangs steeply and steeply into the infinite sea
.
'Who is the brave one, I ask again,
To dive into this depth?' "
Also Fulda lamented the monster in his quatrains If Scylla Charybdis left right ... ready . Here he addresses the danger of people straying from the right path:
"If Scylla is on the left, Charybdis on the right,
what can the poor man on earth be successful?
The wrong path is miles wide,
the right is narrower than the back of a knife."
Phrase
In everyday language, Charybdis appears in the phrase "between Scylla and Charybdis". This denotes a dilemma in which one is faced with a hopeless choice between two evils or between two inevitable dangers. It is impossible to get out of this dilemma without harm.
literature
- Otto Waser : Charybdis. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 2, Stuttgart 1899, Col. 2194 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Charybdis . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 887 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Heinz Warnecke: Homer's Wild West: The historical-geographical rebirth of the Odyssey. Stuttgart, 2008, ISBN 978-3-515-11621-3 .
Web links
- Charybdis in the Theoi Project (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12, 101 ff; 12, 235 ff.
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12, 108 ff.
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12, 245 ff.
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12, 426 ff.
- ↑ Apollonios of Rhodos , Argonautika 4, 789 f; 825 f; 926.
- ↑ Orphic Argonautica 1251 ff.
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12, 55-72.
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12, 3f.
- ↑ z. B. Thucydides 4, 24, 5.
- ↑ Scholion to Apollonios of Rhodes 4, 825.
- ^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, dtv, Vol. 1, p. 292, IV 24
- ↑ Virgil , Aeneis 3, 420 ff; 3, 554 ff.
- ↑ Lars Ivar Hansen and others: Nordens plass i middelalderens nye Europa: Samfunnsomdanning, sentralmakt and periferier. In: Nordens plass i middelalderens nye Europa: Samfunnsomdanning, sentralmakt og periferier. Rapporter to the 27. nordiske historikermøte, Tromsø 11. – 14. august 2011. Tromsø 2011.
- ^ Servius , Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid 3, 420.
- ↑ Speech project Skylla and Charybdis ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file)
- ↑ Quotations - idiom - between Scylla and Charybdis. In: seefelder.de. February 25, 2008, accessed October 6, 2016 .
