The gardeners drove their spades into the earth. A wind blew through branches and became a voice, saying, “Stop … Stop …”
“Who speaks?” cried the princess.
“It is I, the dryad who dwells in this tree and is its spirit.”
“And I am Charybdis, the king’s daughter, to whom no one ever says ‘Stop!’”
“But your gardeners must not dig me up,” said the voice. “For you must know that I am sacred to Demeter, Goddess of Growing Things. No mortal is allowed to eat of my fruit, let alone transplant me.”
“I am a princess,” said Charybdis, “and not accustomed to denying myself anything I desire. Nor do I discuss my intentions with trees. Dig on!” she called to the gardeners.
“No, no, you don’t understand. Demeter is a kindly goddess but terrible in her wrath. She will do dreadful things to you if you dare to lay impious hands on me, her favorite tree.”
“Such threats do not faze me in the slightest,” said Charybdis. “I don’t believe in that fat old witch anyway. Nobody’s actually seen her. She’s nothing but an ignorant myth.” She turned upon the gardeners. “You there, what are you standing around for? Dig this thing up immediately or your heads will be on the chopping block before morning.”
Demeter had heard enough. She whistled up a hailstorm. It struck out of the cloudless sky; sharp chunks of ice rattled into the orchard, touching no tree, but lashing the princess and her gardeners—who fled across the field, whimpering with pain.
But Demeter’s wrath was not appeased. “She’s arrogant, that hussy,” the goddess said to herself. “And not used to being thwarted. She’ll be back with her gardeners and their spades … No, she won’t. I’ll give her something else to think about.”
Whereupon Demeter returned to Olympus and sent for one of her servants. This was a dreadful servant whom she employed only when people seemed to be losing respect for the Queen of Harvests. The servant’s name was Famine. She was an emaciated hag, almost a skeleton. Her flesh hung on her like rags on a scarecrow. The fleshy part of her nose was gone; her eye sockets gaped, and she had gnawed her lips away … so that her face was four holes and a hank of hair.
“Where have you been?” said Demeter sternly.
“In Persia, my lady, with your nephew, Ares.”
“Don’t talk to me about that murderous lout,” cried Demeter. “Look what he’s done to my crops with his damned wars.”
“I don’t mean to anger you, Goddess,” said the hag. “But you asked me where I was and I had to tell you. I was with Ares, as my duty demanded. For Famine follows War, you know.”
“Your first duty is to me.”
“Yes, my lady; that’s why I left Persia and hurried here at your first summons.”
“Enough of this. I have a special job for you.”
Charybdis awoke early the next morning. Something drew her to her window, and she gasped with pleasure. There in the orchard, twigs webbed with dew, was the fig tree she had failed to get the day before. It was stretching one branch toward her; on that branch grew a luscious fig.
“What magic is this?” murmured the princess. She had no way of knowing that the tree was a mirage planted by Demeter, and that the fig, the luscious fig was Famine itself, transformed.
Charybdis reached out, plucked the fig from the bough, and stuffed it into her mouth. It was sweet to chew; it went down smoothly. But when it hit her stomach it blossomed into hunger. More than hunger; it was a thirst, but for food. A thirst that dried every juice in her body, squeezing her entrails into one burning mandate—food!
It was early for breakfast. But roaring like a lioness, she stormed into the servants’ quarters and slapped the cook awake. He gathered the other servants and rushed to the kitchen. She sat in the great dining hall, pounding on the table, roaring with impatience.
The servants came in, bearing food. A tureen big as a trough, full of porridge. An enormous ham, smoked but not sliced. Forty eggs. A barrelful of milk. She devoured it all.
“Half-rations!” she bellowed, flinging the ham bone at the cook’s head. “Starvation fare! Bring food—fast!”
The cook scurried back to the kitchen and bade the undercooks serve what had been meant for lunch. Charybdis sat in her place, pounding at the table. Her father, a small man, quite mild mannered for a king, sat staring at her in amazement—which changed to horror when the servants piled food before her and she attacked it as if she hadn’t eaten for a month.
A haunch of roast ox, an immense platter, the size of a chariot wheel, loaded with barleycakes soaked in butter. A great glistening ball of cheese. Also cakes made of ground nuts and honey, and a peck of fruit.
Stupefied by food, she went back to her chamber and slept heavily … and awoke hungrier than ever. She charged into the dining hall, roaring for food. No one answered. The king had prudently decided that this was a good time to visit foreign lands, and had slipped away. And the servants, seeing the king go, had left also.
Silence hung over the castle. She rushed to the storeroom and studied the carcasses hanging from meat hooks. She lifted down an entire flayed sheep, sat on a keg and began to consume it. It wasn’t cooked, but she didn’t care. In a few hours, all the carcasses were gone, the sheep, and oxen, the dressed goats, the pigs; she had eaten them all.
She decided to take another nap before dinner. But when evening came, there wasn’t a scrap of food to be found in the castle. She thought for a moment, then went out to the field where the cattle grazed.
Charybdis grew huge on her gross diet, became a giantess with a bladder of a face, keglike arms and legs, and a quadruple paunch. But for all her size she was as swift-moving as an angry sow, and usually caught whatever or whomever she was chasing. Having eaten all the livestock—cows, calves, bulls, sheep, goats, and pigs, and swept the barnyard clean of hens and chicks and roosters and ducks and geese—she had to go far afield for her meat.
She visited farmhouses, snatched babies from their cradles, and ate them raw. And when the parents came to object, she ate them too, clothes and all—belching, and spitting buttons. The terrified people flocked to the temple of Zeus, and their prayers rose to Olympus.
Now, Zeus rarely heeded prayers. He enjoyed paeans of praise, but preferred to ignore unpleasant facts, and most prayers were complaints. Now, however, the special agony in these voices caught his attention, and he listened closely. Then seethed with rage. For he had recently passed an edict prohibiting cannibalism—with extra penalties for eating children.
He looked down and saw what Charybdis had become. He whirled her off her feet and out of Thessaly—across mountain and plain to the sea, and westward to the Strait of Messina, where he dropped her to the bottom, just opposite the place where Scylla squatted.
He penned her in an underwater cave, saying, “Your hunger shall become thirst. As you once devoured all within reach, now you shall drink the tides twice a day. Swallow them and spit them forth, and your name shall be cursed by sailors forever.”
And so it was. Twice a day, Charybdis burned with a terrible thirst and drank down the sea, shrinking the waters to a shallow stream—then spat the water out in a tremendous torrent, making a whirlpool near her rock in which no ship could live. Broken timbers floated up again and were washed onto the beaches, and became driftwood. The corpses sank to the bottom and were eaten by crabs and octopi and other creatures who dwelt in the sea.
The Strait of Messina became known as a deadly passage. But Sicily was a rich coast, and ships were sent there despite the peril. Vessels trying to steer away from the whirlpool as they passed through the strait would come too close to Scylla, who would turn her body in the water so that the wolves were uppermost. Six savage heads would sweep the deck, seizing sailors in their terrible jaws and devouring them on the spot.
And if a captain couldn’t stand the idea of six great sea wolves eating his men, and steered to the left, he would feel his ship spinning like a chip as Charybdis drank the tide and drew his v
essel out of sight forever …
12
Between Scylla and Charybdis
Ulysses was, by all accounts, the ablest captain ever to command a vessel on the Middle Sea. He was also the wiliest of the Greek battle-chiefs. He possessed absolute courage and extraordinary physical strength. All in all, he was perhaps the most resourceful hero of the ancient world. Yet, sailing home, victorious, from the Trojan War, he lost all the ships of his fleet and every man of their crews. And though he himself finally reached the shore of Ithaca, it was as a naked bleeding castaway, unrecognized, friendless, a beggar in his own kingdom.
Why did it take him ten years to make the two-month trip from Troy to Ithaca? Why so disastrous a voyage? Why so many storms, shipwrecks, fatal landfalls?
It is said that he attracted the hostility of several very vengeful gods and goddesses who spun sorceries about him and hurled monsters in his path. But why? How did this island king, reasonably pious, and worshipful of the power of the gods if not their goodness, manage to draw upon himself such a variety of divine disfavor?
The reasons are instructive, though frightening.
Some said that Ulysses had angered Poseidon by blinding his favorite Cyclopes, who had wrought gorgeous troughs for the sea-god’s string of green-maned stallions. But Poseidon, although quick to wrath, was not really vengeful. He sometimes feuded with his fellow gods, but thought humans too insignificant for his full displeasure.
Rather, it was Amphitrite, the sea-god’s wife, who sought to punish Ulysses, and her grudge was rooted in the way Poseidon had courted her. This joyous daughter of Oceanus had loved to frisk among the blue waves and come out at low tide to dance on the shore. Poseidon glimpsed her dancing on Naxos and fell violently in love with her. But she feared his stormy wooing and fled him to the depths of the sea. Whereupon he tried to woo her with gifts. Of coral and pearl and the bullion from sunken treasure ships he wrought her marvelous ornaments, but she spurned them all. Finally he created something entirely new for her, a talking, dancing fish. He dubbed the creature dolphin and sent it to Amphitrite. The dolphin pleaded Poseidon’s cause with such wit and eloquence that Amphitrite yielded. She reigned as queen of the sea for many centuries, but the dolphin remained always her favorite of all creatures of the deep and she employed a string of them to pull her crystal chariot.
Now, as is told, Ulysses was the finest archer since Hercules, and kept his skill polished by practicing with his bow whenever possible. Often, during the voyage, he would try to shoot seabirds and flying fish. This kind of archery was a special challenge to him because he had to gauge the wind exactly, but he rarely missed. One day, though, while aiming at a shark, a gust of wind made his arrow swerve and pierce a dolphin—which tried one last leap and sank in a bloody froth.
Amphitrite learned about this and never forgave Ulysses. As queen of the sea she was able to strew disaster along his route—whirlpools, riptides, hidden reefs, wandering rocks. And he never learned which god was tormenting him.
But his archery was to earn him another enemy, one even more dangerous. And this mischance too was rooted in events that happened long before Ulysses was born.
Alcyone was a daughter of the wind-god, Aeolus. She married Ceyx, son of the Morning Star. They were so happy they aroused the envy of the unhappily married Hera, who sent a storm to wreck the ship on which Ceyx was voyaging. When Alcyone learned of this she drowned herself to keep him company. But Zeus pitied them and turned them into a pair of kingfishers. Each winter thereafter Aeolus forbade his winds to blow for a space of seven days so that his daughter, now a beautiful white kingfisher, could lay her eggs in a nest which floated in the sea. It is from this episode that we derive the word halcyon, meaning a period of calm and golden days.
But one fair morning, Ulysses detected a speck in the sky. He couldn’t tell what bird it was and it seemed far out of bowshot. But he wanted to test his prowess to the utmost. He bent his bow almost double and loosed his shaft. It flew up, up, out of sight. When it fell, it carried a white kingfisher with it. The beautiful bird sank and Ulysses’ heart sank with it. Although he didn’t know why, he sensed that it was unlucky to kill this creature, and that somehow he would be made to suffer for what he had done.
Fortunately for him, however, he could not possibly guess how much suffering he was to do—he and his men also. For the wind-god now loathed him totally, and his power for mischief among mariners was matchless. He sent strong head winds when Ulysses tried to sail out of port, sent savage following winds when Ulysses approached a lee shore. And, finally, cruelest trick of all, when Ulysses’ ship was approaching Ithaca, coming so close the men could see the brown hills of home, Aeolus sent a gale that blew the ship hundreds of miles off its course. And it took Ulysses three years to get that close again.
And now Aeolus decided to destroy Ulysses and his crew altogether. He sent a strong east wind that drove the ship westward toward the coast of Sicily, which was called Thrinacia at that time. Now Ulysses, master seaman that he was, always knew the location of his ship even in the grip of a storm and in darkest night. So he knew that he was approaching the Strait of Messina. Although he did not know specifically about Scylla and Charybdis, he had heard that the strait was a graveyard for ships. The wind was driving him too fast, he would be entering the strait before he had made a plan. He shouted to his crew, bidding them drop sail, turn the bow into the wind, and cast out the anchor.
The bare-masted ship rode the chop uneasily, but the anchor held. Ulysses paced the deck, thinking hard. A bird coasted in and landed on the deck. Not a gull, but a hawk, a huge one, with a single golden plume among the black feathers of its head.
“Hail, Ulysses,” cried the hawk.
“Hail to you, whoever you are.”
“I am one who has come to counsel you about your passage through the Strait of Messina.”
“Indeed? I welcome any advice.”
“Hearken then. Where the strait narrows, two huge rocks sit facing each other. Under each of them lurks a monster.”
“Then the tales are true!” cried Ulysses. “I should have known that on this accursed voyage the worst is always true.”
“Long ago,” said the hawk, “in another incarnation, one of those monsters was my wife. Many years have passed since we were young and beautiful and celebrating our love in raptures of flight—many years, many murders, and many foul enchantments. I am as you see me—a hawk. And she is a sea monster, half nymph, half wolf pack, and wholly lethal. Her name is Scylla …”
The hawk paused. Tears dripped from his amber eyes. Ulysses stared; he had never seen a hawk weep.
“Good hawk,” cried Ulysses, “tell on! I must know about these monsters.”
“And I have come to instruct you, Captain. I have watched your career and learned to admire you. Also to pity you. For you, like me, have been pursued by vengeful gods and your life altered by their hatred. To resume, Scylla dwells under the right-hand rock. If you pass too close to her, six wolf-heads will sweep your deck, devouring at least six of your crew.”
“Then I must steer away from Scylla—toward the other rock.”
“But under the other rock lurks a thirsty monster named Charybdis who drinks the tide at one gulp, making a whirlpool that sucks down any ship within its swirl.”
“Monster to the right, monster to the left! How do I sail through?”
“Keep to the middle way,” said the hawk. “Exactly to the middle way, for it is not much wider than your ship. Indeed, it will be almost impossible to do unless you are sailing before a gentle wind, directly astern. If you must swerve, do it toward the right-hand rock and favor my former wife. For she will take only six or eight of your crew, but thirsty Charybdis will suck down your entire ship, drowning everyone on board.”
“Thank you,” said Ulysses.
Before he could finish saying it, however, the hawk had flown away.
The wind changed suddenly, and Ulysses was delighted. For it was a gentle wind
now, one that would take him into the strait and push him through with sufficient leeway so that he could steer his course, keeping exactly to the middle way, avoiding both monsters.
He shouted commands. The crew leapt to their places, shipped anchor, raised the sail, and turned the bow westward toward Thrinacia.
“My thanks to you, great Aeolus,” said Ulysses to the sky. “I’ve encountered so many contrary winds on this voyage that I was afraid I had displeased you in some way. But now I know that I enjoy your favor.”
But the wind-god deserved no gratitude. The gentle wind he had sent was a piece of treachery on his part. For he wanted Ulysses to enter the strait and be destroyed that very day. Had he sent a head wind or a crosswind, Ulysses, he knew, would have sheered off and tried another time.
Ulysses suspected nothing as the ship scudded easily toward the mouth of the strait. He took the helm himself, trusting no one else to steer with the precision that was needed. The roaring of the waters grew louder and louder; he saw spray flying as Charybdis swallowed the tide and spat it back, caught a shuddering glimpse of dry seabed and gasping fish—then the tide roared back, beating itself to a white foam. He looked at the other rock. Scylla was not in sight, but she was lurking underneath, he knew, ready to spring.
The gentle wind blew. Ulysses steered his course, keeping exactly to the middle way, and they were passing through, out of reach of both monsters.
He squinted, measuring distance, then heard an appalling sound—the sails flapping. He felt the ship shudder beneath him, and yaw slightly, and knew that the wind had fallen. What he did not know was that this was Aeolus’s plan: to call off the gentle east wind just when the ship was between the rocks, so that it must fall prey to one monster or the other.
“Drop sail! Start rowing,” shouted Ulysses. He turned over the helm to one of the men, instructing him that if he could not keep the middle way he must veer to the right rather than to the left. Then he drew his sword and stood at the starboard rail.
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two Page 35
