Circe
What is Circe the goddess of?
Who is Circe’s husband?
What role does Circe play in the Odyssey?
Circe, in Greek mythology, a sorceress feared for her ability to cause metamorphosis. She was able, by means of drugs and incantations, to change humans into wolves, lions, and other animals. In Homer’s Odyssey she famously changes the companions of the Greek hero Odysseus into swine. Her magic fails against Odysseus himself, with whom she falls in love. Circe has been traditionally regarded as a dangerous embodiment of female sexuality, but modern feminist interpretations represent her as a symbol of feminine autonomy. In the Odyssey she serves as both an obstacle and a guide during Odysseus’s wanderings after the Trojan War.
Family and powers
Circe was a daughter of Helios, the sun god, and the Oceanid Perse. She was one among three sorceresses in the family, the other two being her sister Pasiphae, who was the wife of King Minos and mother of Ariadne and the Minotaur, and her niece Medea, who was the daughter of Circe’s brother Aeëtes, king of Colchis. Of the three women, Circe was regarded as the most powerful and as the goddess of magic. In some traditions the mother of both Circe and Medea is given as Hecate, goddess of witchcraft.
Circe’s enchantments originated in her knowledge of herbs, which she used in transmutations as well as in healing potions. She was able to cast illusions to obscure the sun and the moon; could invoke dark powers such as Nyx, the Greek personification of night; and was skilled in necromancy. Circe made her home on the island of Aeaea, where she was taken by her father in his chariot. She maintained a menagerie of wild animals, which may have been men she had transformed or beasts she had tamed. Greco-Roman tradition placed her island near Italy or located her on Mount Circeo.
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Role in the Odyssey
The most famous myth about Circe is her encounter with Odysseus, who arrived at Aeaea after losing 11 of his 12 ships and most of his men to the cannibalistic Laestrygones. Odysseus sent some of his remaining men to forage for food on the island, which was inhabited by several wild animals. Circe then appeared before them and supplied them with food and drink, which were laced with a potion. Once Circe cast her spell all the men except one were changed into swine. Only Odysseus’s brother-in-law Eurylochus, who had been suspicious of Circe and refused to partake of the feast, escaped and reported back to Odysseus. On his way to confront Circe, Odysseus consumed the herb moly on the advice of Hermes and was consequently protected from transformation when she gave him a share of the repast.
Immune to Circe’s magic, Odysseus compelled her to restore his men to their original form and proceeded to stay with her for a year. In other stories he stayed longer or returned to Aeaea later, and he had three sons with Circe: Telegonus, Agrius, and Latinus. When he left Aeaea to resume his journey home to Ithaca, Circe shared crucial knowledge that helped Odysseus enter the underworld to consult the ghost of Tiresias, escape the lure of the Sirens, and navigate the strait between Scylla and Charybdis.
Circe in other myths
In one version of Odysseus’s death he was accidentally killed in Ithaca by Telegonus, who had failed to recognize his father. In this tradition Telegonus returned to Aeaea with Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, and her son, Telemachus, who married Circe while Telegonus married Penelope. The transformation of Scylla, once a beautiful nymph or human, into a monster is sometimes attributed to Circe, who was jealous of the sea deity Glaucus’s love for Scylla. Her banishment to Aeaea was a consequence of this transgression. In a legend from Roman mythology she is also said to have turned a mortal named Picus (or Pico) into a woodpecker after he rejected her advances. In another myth she hosted Jason, the Argonauts, and Medea after they fled Colchis with the Golden Fleece. She also administered purifying rites to expiate Medea for the sin of murdering her brother, Apsyrtus, in order to delay her father, King Aeëtes, when he pursued them.
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