Circe

Where Homer places her

The poet Homer, whose Odyssey follows the hero Odysseus home from the war at Troy, brings him to an island called Aeaea. Circe lives there. Homer calls her a dread goddess of human speech and the sister of Aeetes, the king of Colchis. Both, he says, are sprung from Helios, who gives light to mortals, and from their mother Perse, a daughter of the Titan Oceanus.

The early Greek poet Hesiod repeats that descent and calls the mother Perseis. Apollodorus, who set the myths out in prose, gives the same father, the Sun, names the mother Perse, and calls Circe skilled in all enchantments. He also makes Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, a daughter of the Sun, which puts her and Circe in one family.

The house in the glades

Odysseus sends 22 comrades inland to find out who lives on the island. Within the forest glades they come on a house built of polished stone in a place of wide outlook. Mountain wolves and lions are around it. Circe had given the beasts evil drugs, so instead of rushing the men they prance about them and wag their tails.

From the gateway the men hear her singing at a great loom. She opens the bright doors and asks them in, and all of them go except Eurylochus, who suspects a snare and waits outside. She seats them and mixes a potion of cheese, barley meal and yellow honey with Pramnian wine, and into the food she puts drugs that will make them forget their own country. Then she strikes them with her wand and pens them in the sties. They take the heads, the voice, the bristles and the shape of swine. Their minds, Homer says, remain unchanged.

The herb called moly

Odysseus goes up to the house alone. On the way the god Hermes meets him in the likeness of a young man and draws a herb out of the ground for him. It is black at the root and its flower is like milk. The gods call it moly, Homer says, and mortal men find it hard to dig.

Hermes also tells him what will happen. Circe will mix a potion and cast drugs into the food, and the herb will stop the charm working. When she strikes him with her long wand he is to draw his sword and rush at her as though he means to kill her. She will then ask him to her bed, and before he goes he must make her swear a great oath by the blessed gods that she will plot no fresh harm against him.

It goes as Hermes says. Circe hands Odysseus the cup, the drug fails, and when he comes at her with the sword she clasps his knees and asks who he is, because no other man has ever withstood that charm. He refuses the bed until she swears.

The word for her craft

The Greek text of the Odyssey has one word for Circe’s craft. At line 276 of the tenth book she is polypharmakos, which means knowing many drugs or charms. The word is not reserved for her. The Iliad, Homer’s poem of the war at Troy, uses it of physicians. The poet Apollonius of Rhodes, in his poem on the voyage of the Argo, uses it later of Medea, the daughter of Aeetes.

That makes Medea Circe’s niece. Hesiod gives the same parentage, so the two women who work with drugs in these stories are aunt and niece, and both descend from the sun. The Greek form of Circe’s name is Kirke.

The children Homer never names

Homer gives Circe no child at all. Hesiod’s Theogony gives her three sons by Odysseus: Agrius, Latinus and Telegonus. Apollodorus has Odysseus throw the moly among her enchantments, make her restore his comrades, take the oath, share her bed, and father Telegonus on her.

The spear from Ithaca

In Apollodorus, Telegonus learns his father’s name from Circe and sails in search of him. He lands on Ithaca and drives off some of the cattle. Odysseus comes out to defend them, and Telegonus wounds him with the spear he has in his hands. The spear is barbed with the spine of a stingray, and Odysseus dies of the wound.

Telegonus then carries the body, and Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, back to Circe. She sends Penelope and Telegonus away to the Islands of the Blest.

Where Aeaea lies

Homer gives one direction for the island, in the twelfth book, as the ship leaves it. The Aeaean isle is where early Dawn dwells, where her dancing lawns are, and where the sun rises. That puts Aeaea in the east.