Circe lays it out at her table. The strait is two cliffs. Under one, a whirlpool that swallows ships whole. Above the other, a cave where a six-headed monster waits. Sail the middle and the whirlpool takes everything. Sail close to the cave and you lose six men. That’s the math. There is no clever angle, no third route, no way to thread it that costs nothing. Choose your tragedy. He chooses Scylla, because six is less than fifty, and he doesn’t tell the crew, because telling them would not save the six and might cost more. This is the moral architecture of the back half of the journey. Not heroism, not victory, just two bad outcomes and the burden of picking one. The mark of the man, by the end, is that he can pick at all.
The Choice of One Tragedy over Another
Charybdis or Scylla. Lose the ship and everyone, or sail close to the cave and lose six men. There is no third door.