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Charybdis (a whirpool) and Scylla (a multi-headed monster) was the same episode in Homer's Odyssey. That was the whole point of the episode: Ulysses had to decide whether to risk his entire ship and crew or definitely sacrificing a few for guaranteed passage of the rest. The classic trolley dilemma for an audience of bronze-age seafarers.

Or perhaps I read a completely different "Odyssey" by a different "Homer"?

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Your memory is likely faulty, or you may have read an abridged version.

Odysseus first has to choose between Charybdis and Scylla. He and his (surviving) crew pass Scylla and reach the isle of the sun-god. There, the crew kill and eat the cattle, angering the gods. When they depart, a storm pushes their foundering ship back to Charybdis, which only Odysseus escapes, drifting while clinging to the remains of his ship's mast.

You might have? Odysseus chooses Scylla, but then is punished by Zeus after his crew slaughters the Oxen of the Sun; his ship is destroyed and he is sent on its timbers back to Charybdis.

I wonder if there's a good term for when people confuse what an element in a popular work is most famous for for the actual details of that work. Call it the "Play it again, Sam" fallacy.

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