In Greek mythology, Circe was a goddess of
magic.
By most accounts, Circe was the daughter of
Helios, the god of the sun, and Perse, an
Oceanid.
Her brothers were Aeetes, the keeper of the
Golden Fleece, and Perses.
Her sister was Pasiphaë, the wife of King
Minos and mother of the Minotaur.
Other accounts make her the daughter of Hecate,
the goddess of witchcraft herself.
Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge
of potions and herbs.
Through the use of magical potions and a wand
or a staff, she transformed her enemies, or
those who offended her, into animals.
Some say she was exiled to the solitary island
of Aeaea by her subjects and her father for
ending the life of her husband, the prince
of Colchis.
Later traditions tell of her leaving or even
destroying the island and moving to Italy,
where she was identified with Cape Circeo.
In ancient literature
Homer's Odyssey
In Homer's Odyssey, Circe is described as
living in a mansion that stands in the middle
of a clearing in a dense wood.
Around the house prowled strangely docile
lions and wolves, the drugged victims of her
magic; they were not dangerous, and fawned
on all newcomers.
Circe worked at a huge loom.
She invited Odysseus' crew to a feast of familiar
food, a pottage of cheese and meal, sweetened
with honey and laced with wine, but also laced
with one of her magical potions, and drunk
from an enchanted cup.
Thus so she turned them all into swine with
a wand after they gorged themselves on it.
Only Eurylochus, suspecting treachery from
the outset, escaped to warn Odysseus and the
others who had stayed behind at the ships.
Odysseus set out to rescue his men, but was
intercepted by the messenger god, Hermes,
who had been sent by Athena.
Hermes told Odysseus to use the holy herb
moly to protect himself from Circe's potion
and, having resisted it, to draw his sword
and act as if he were to attack Circe.
From there, Circe would ask him to bed, but
Hermes advised caution, for even there the
goddess would be treacherous.
She would take his manhood unless he had her
swear by the names of the gods that she would
not.
Odysseus followed Hermes's advice, freeing
his men and then remained on the island for
one year, feasting and drinking wine.
According to Homer, Circe suggested two alternative
routes to Odysseus to return to Ithaca: toward
Planctae, the "Wandering Rocks", or passing
between the dangerous Scylla and the whirlpool-like
Charybdis, conventionally identified with
the Strait of Messina.
She also advised Odysseus to go to the Underworld
and gave him directions.
Later Greek literature
Towards the end of Hesiod's Theogony, it is
stated that Circe bore Odysseus three sons:
Ardeas or Agrius; Latinus; and Telegonus,
who ruled over the Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans.
The Telegony, an epic now lost, relates the
later history of the last of these.
Circe eventually informed him who his absent
father was and, when he set out to find Odysseus,
gave him a poisoned spear.
With this he killed his father unknowingly.
Telegonus then brought back his father's corpse,
together with Penelope and Odysseus' other
son Telemachus, to Aeaea.
After burying Odysseus, Circe made the others
immortal.
According to Lycophron's Alexandra and John
Tzetzes' scholia on the poem, however, Circe
used magical herbs to bring Odysseus back
to life after he had been killed by Telegonus.
Odysseus then gave Telemachus to Circe's daughter
Cassiphone in marriage.
Some time later, Telemachus had a quarrel
with his mother-in-law and killed her; Cassiphone
then killed Telemachus to avenge her mother's
death.
On hearing of this, Odysseus died of grief.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus cites Xenagoras,
the second century BC historian, as claiming
that Odysseus and Circe had three sons: Romus,
Anteias, and Ardeias, who respectively founded
three cities called by their names: Rome,
Antium, and Ardea.
In a very late Alexandrian epic from the 5th
century AD, the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, her
son by Poseidon is mentioned under the name
of Phaunos.
In the 3rd century BC epic, the Argonautica,
Apollonius Rhodius relates that Circe purified
the Argonauts for the death of Absyrtus, maybe
reflecting an early tradition.
In this poem, the animals that surround her
are not former lovers transformed but primeval
‘beasts, not resembling the beasts of the
wild, nor yet like men in body, but with a
medley of limbs.’
Three ancient plays about Circe have been
lost: the work of the tragedian Aeschylus
and of the 4th century BC comic dramatists
Ephippus of Athens and Anaxilas.
The first told the story of Odysseus' encounter
with Circe.
Vase paintings from the period suggest that
Odysseus' half-transformed animal-men formed
the chorus in place of the usual Satyrs.
Fragments of Anaxilas also mention the transformation
and one of the characters complains of the
impossibility of scratching his face now that
he is a pig.
Latin literature
The theme of turning men into a variety of
animals was elaborated by later writers, especially
in Latin.
In the Aeneid, Aeneas skirts the Italian island
where Circe now dwells, and hears the cries
of her many victims, who now number more than
the pigs of earlier accounts:
The roars of lions that refuse the chain,
The grunts of bristled boars, and groans of
bears,
And herds of howling wolves that stun the
sailors' ears.
Ovid's Metamorphoses collects more transformation
stories in its 14th book.
The fourth episode covers Circe's encounter
with Ulysses, with the detail that he too
is changed to a pig and only Eurylochus remains
to rescue the men.
The first episode in that book deals with
the story of Glaucus and Scylla, in which
the enamoured sea-god seeks a love filtre
to win Scylla's love, only to have the sorceress
fall in love with him.
When she is unsuccessful, she takes revenge
on her rival by turning Scylla into a monster.
The story of the Latin king Picus is told
in the fifth episode.
Circe fell in love with him too; when he preferred
to remain faithful to his wife Canens, she
turned him into a woodpecker.
The gens Mamilia - described by Titus Livius
as one of the most distinguished families
of Latium - claimed descent from Mamilia,
a granddaughter of Odysseus and Circe through
Telegonus.
One of the most well known of them was Octavius
Mamilius, princeps of Tusculum and son-in-law
of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus the seventh
and last king of Rome.
Retellings from the middle ages to modern
times
Giovanni Boccaccio provided a digest of what
was known of Circe during the Middle Ages
in his De mulieribus claris.
While following the tradition that she lived
in Italy, he comments wryly that there are
now many more temptresses like her to lead
men astray.
There is a very different interpretation of
the encounter with Circe in John Gower's long
didactic poem Confessio Amantis.
Ulysses is depicted as deeper in sorcery and
readier of tongue than Circe and through this
means leaves her pregnant with Telegonus.
Most of the account deals with the son's later
quest for and accidental killing of his father,
drawing the moral that only evil can come
of the use of sorcery.
The story of Ulysses and Circe was retold
as an episode in Georg Rollenhagen's German
verse epic, Froschmeuseler.
In this 600-page expansion of the pseudo-Homeric
Batrachomyomachia, it is related at the court
of the mice and takes up sections 5-8 of the
first part.
In Lope de Vega's miscellany La Circe - con
otras rimas y prosas, the story of her encounter
with Ulysses appears as a verse epic in three
cantos.
This takes its beginning from Homer’s account,
but it is then embroidered; in particular,
Circe’s love for Ulysses remains unrequited.
As "Circe's Palace", Nathaniel Hawthorne retold
the Homeric account as the third section in
his collection of stories from Greek mythology,
Tanglewood Tales.
The transformed Picus continually appears
in this, trying to warn Ulysses, and then
Eurylochus, of the danger to be found in the
palace, and is rewarded at the end by being
given back his human shape.
In most accounts Ulysses only demands this
for his own men.
In the arts
Scientific interpretations
In botany the Circaea are plants belonging
to the enchanter's nightshade genus.
The name was given by botanists in the late
16th century in the belief that this was the
herb used by Circe to charm Odysseus' companions.
Medical historians have speculated that the
transformation to pigs was not intended literally
but refers to anticholinergic intoxication.
Symptoms include amnesia, hallucinations,
and delusions.
The description of "moly" fits the snowdrop,
a flower of the region that contains galantamine,
which is an anticholinesterase and can therefore
counteract anticholinergics.
Other influence
The "Circe effect", coined by the enzymologist
William P. Jencks, refers to a scenario where
an enzyme lures its substrate towards it through
electrostatic forces exhibited by the enzyme
molecule before transforming it into product.
Where this takes place, the catalytic velocity
of the enzyme may be significantly faster
than that of others.
Linnaeus named a genus of the Venus clams
after Circe in 1778.
Her name has been given to 34 Circe, a large,
dark main-belt asteroid first sighted in 1855.
There are a variety of chess variants named
Circe in which captured pieces are reborn
on their starting positions.
The rules for this were formulated in 1968.
Indian author Nirad C. Chaudhuri named his
1965 book of essays The Continent of Circe,
using the Greek mythological character as
a metaphor for his interpretation of India's
history.
References
Sources
Ancient
Hesiod.
The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English
Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White.
Theogony, Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University
Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
Homer.
The Odyssey with an English Translation by
A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes, Cambridge,
MA., Harvard University Press; London, William
Heinemann, Ltd. 1919.
Lactantius Placidus, Commentarii in Statii
Thebaida
Ovid, Metamorphoses xiv.248-308
Servius, In Aeneida vii.190
Modern
Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical
Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, ISBN 978-0-631-20102-1.
"Circe" p. 104
Milton, John, A Masque Presented at Ludlow
Castle [Comus] line 153 "mother Circe"
Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Biography and Mythology, London.
"Circe"
External links
The Theoi Project, "KIRKE"
