In Greek mythology, Charybdis a terrible sea monster who, three times each day, sucked in the sea and discharged it again in a whirlpool. Charybdis was supposed to have been a daughter of Poseidon and Gaea, whom Zeus in anger had hurled into the sea. There she became a whirpool and swallowed up ships that came too near. Charybdis was located in the Straits of Messina, on the Italian side. Navigators striving to escape the fate of being sucked into the whirlpool were likely to run into danger from Scylla, another monster on the opposite shore. The words Scylla and Charybdis came to be used proverbially to signify opposite dangers that beset one's path. The poet Horace says that an author striving to avoid Scylla often drifts into Charybdis; that is, in trying to avoid one fault, he falls into some other. In Shakespeare's
Merchant of Venice, Launcelot, the clown, says to Jessica, "Thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother."
