Circe

The daughter of Helios and Perse, Circe was a powerful enchantress versatile in the arts of herbs and potions and capable of turning human beings into animals. She did just that to Odysseus’ sailors when they reached her dwelling place, the secluded island of Aeaea. Odysseus, however, managed to overcome her with the help of Hermes and, instead of becoming an animal, he became her lover for a year. According to Hesiod, the couple had three sons, one of whom, Telegonus, eventually killed Odysseus.

Who Was Circe in Greek Mythology?

Circe was an immortal enchantress, the daughter of the sun god Helios, who lived on the island of Aeaea and could transform men into animals with her drugs and her wand. She is best known from Homer’s “Odyssey,” where she turns Odysseus’ crew into pigs and then becomes his ally and lover for a year (Homer, Odyssey 10.135–574).

• Parents: Helios, the sun god, and Perse, daughter of Oceanus (Homer, Odyssey 10.135–139; Hesiod, Theogony 956–957)
• Home: Aeaea, a wooded island where her house stands in a glade, surrounded by wolves and lions that she had bewitched with drugs (Odyssey 10.210–219)
• Powers: drugs (pharmaka), spells and a wand (Odyssey 10.213, 10.238, 10.293)
• Best known for: the pigs, the herb moly, and the year she kept Odysseus on her island

Was Circe a Goddess or a Witch?

Circe was both. Homer calls her a goddess outright, “a dread goddess of human speech” and “fair-tressed” (Odyssey 10.135–136), and she is immortal and divinely descended, but everything she actually does in the poem is sorcery: mixing drugs, striking with a wand and working transformations.

• Her power comes from knowledge of pharmaka – herbs and drugs – and from her wand, not from a divine office like that of Athena or Apollo
• The ancient sources assign her no sphere such as a “goddess of magic”; she is a minor goddess defined by her story
• Her sister Pasiphae and her niece Medea are of the same family, descended from Helios (Apollodorus, Library 3.1.2, 1.9.23)

What Does the Name Circe Mean?

Circe is the Latin form of the Greek Kirke (Κίρκη). Homer joins it to the name of her island, so that she is “Aeaean Circe” in the Odyssey (Odyssey 12.268), where she is also called Kirke of the lovely locks (Odyssey 10.136). In Greek it is pronounced roughly KEER-keh. No ancient author explains the name itself.

Circe’s Family and Lineage

Circe was the daughter of Perse, one of the Oceanids, and Helios, the sun god; Homer makes her the full sister of Aeetes (Odyssey 10.135–139), and Hesiod names the two as children of Perse, daughter of Oceanus (Theogony 956–957). Her sister was Pasiphae, who married Minos of Crete (Apollodorus, Library 3.1.2), and her niece was the sorceress Medea, daughter of Aeetes, the king of Colchis who guarded the Golden Fleece (Apollodorus, Library 1.9.23). Circe had another brother, Perses, who deposed Aeetes from the throne of Colchis and was later slain by Medea, who restored the kingdom to her father (Apollodorus, Library 1.9.28); in another account it was Medea’s son Medus who killed Perses (Diodorus Siculus 4.56).

• Father: Helios; mother: Perse, daughter of Oceanus
• Siblings: Aeetes, king of Colchis; Pasiphae, wife of Minos and mother of the Minotaur; and Perses
• Niece: Medea, daughter of Aeetes; nephew: Absyrtus, Medea’s brother
• Children: Agrius, Latinus and Telegonus, by Odysseus (Hesiod, Theogony 1011–1014)

Circe and Odysseus in the Odyssey

Circe is best known from the following episode from Homer’s “Odyssey.”

Who Was Circe in the Odyssey?

In the “Odyssey,” Circe is the enchantress of Aeaea who turns Odysseus’ men into pigs, is overcome by Odysseus with the help of the god Hermes, and then becomes his host, lover and guide for a full year. She is the figure in the poem who is first an enemy and then an indispensable ally.

• Her episode occupies Book 10, immediately after the disaster with the Laestrygonians (Odyssey 10.80–132)
• She tells Odysseus that he must first travel to the house of Hades and consult the soul of the prophet Teiresias (Odyssey 10.488–495)
• When he returns, she warns him about the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the cattle of Helios – the advice that shapes the rest of his voyage (Odyssey 12.36–141)
• She is often confused with Calypso, who keeps Odysseus for seven years on a different island, Ogygia (Odyssey 7.259); Calypso is the daughter of Atlas (Odyssey 1.52), so the two are not sisters

Reaching Circe’s Island

Disheartened and dispirited from their horrendous encounter with the man-eating Laestrygonians – after which only the ship of Odysseus was left of the fleet – Odysseus and his remaining men land on Aeaea, Circe’s island (Odyssey 10.133–135).

At first glance, it seems to them like a desolate island, since the only visible sign of life is a column of smoke rising from somewhere deep in the woods. Odysseus divides his men into two parties by lot: he leads one, and Eurylochus, a kinsman by marriage, leads the other, which is chosen to go to the house (Odyssey 10.203–209, 10.441).

Who Turned Odysseus’ Men into Pigs?

Circe turned Odysseus’ men into pigs. She welcomed the scouting party into her house, gave them a mixture of cheese, barley, honey and Pramnian wine into which she had stirred her drugs, and then struck them with her wand and shut them in the pigsty, leaving their minds as they had been (Odyssey 10.230–243).

• Twenty-two men went with Eurylochus; only Eurylochus, who suspected a trap and waited outside, escaped to tell Odysseus (Odyssey 10.208, 10.232)
• They had the heads, voices, bristles and bodies of pigs, but their minds stayed unchanged (Odyssey 10.239–240)
• The wolves and lions around her house had been bewitched by her drugs and fawned on the visitors like dogs (Odyssey 10.212–219)
• When Circe restored the men with another drug, Homer says they became younger, taller and more handsome than before (Odyssey 10.388–396)

The Transformation of Odysseus’ Men

After some time, the men reach Circe’s house and are surprised to find many fearsome beasts – wolves and lions – fawning on them as domestic dogs would. From the inside, they hear a woman’s voice: it is Circe singing beautifully as she moves at her great loom (Odyssey 10.210–223).

Eurylochus suspects a trick, so he stays outside as Circe comes out of her house and invites the others in (Odyssey 10.230–232). They are seated and given the drugged mixture. As soon as they drink, Circe strikes them with her wand and drives them into the sties, where she throws them acorns, mast and cornel fruit to eat, as is given to pigs. They weep as they are shut in (Odyssey 10.233–243).

Odysseus Tricks Circe

Eurylochus runs back to Odysseus and tells him the whole story, and Odysseus decides to go to Circe alone. On his way he is met by Hermes, disguised as a young man, who gives him a herb called moly, with a black root and a flower like milk, which the gods call moly and which is hard for mortal men to dig up (Odyssey 10.277–306). Hermes also tells him what to do: when Circe strikes him with her wand, he is to draw his sword and rush at her, and then to accept her bed but make her swear a great oath not to plot any other harm against him (Odyssey 10.290–301).

As Hermes foretold, Circe’s drugs have no effect on Odysseus. When she strikes with her wand, Odysseus draws his sword and runs at her, and she cries out, clasps his knees and asks who he is, amazed that he is not bewitched. She recognizes him as Odysseus, whom Hermes had always told her would come (Odyssey 10.316–332). She invites him to her bed, and Odysseus first makes her swear the great oath, and then goes to her bed (Odyssey 10.333–347). At his request she frees his men from the sty and restores them (Odyssey 10.383–397).

Odysseus and his men then stay on Aeaea for a full year, feasting on meat and sweet wine, until his companions remind him of his homeland and Odysseus asks Circe to let them go (Odyssey 10.467–486). She tells him that he must first go to the house of Hades to consult Teiresias (Odyssey 10.490–495).

Did Odysseus and Circe Have a Child?

Yes – according to Hesiod, Circe bore Odysseus three sons: Agrius, Latinus and Telegonus (Hesiod, Theogony 1011–1014). Telegonus is the one who later went looking for the father he had never met (Apollodorus, Epitome 7.36).

• Homer never mentions these children; they appear in the Theogony and in the Epic Cycle poem called the Telegony
• Telegonus killed Odysseus with a spear tipped with the spine of a stingray, which fulfilled Teiresias’ prophecy that death would come to Odysseus “from the sea” (Odyssey 11.134–136; Apollodorus, Epitome 7.36)
• In Hesiod, Agrius and Latinus rule over the Tyrrhenians (Theogony 1015–1016)

Odysseus’ and Circe’s Offspring

If we are to believe Hesiod’s genealogies, we must conclude that Odysseus stayed with Circe for longer than a year, or returned to her. In the version in Apollodorus’ Epitome, Telegonus learned from Circe that he was a son of Odysseus and sailed in search of him. He came to Ithaca, drove off some cattle, and when Odysseus defended them Telegonus wounded him with the spear he was carrying, which was barbed with the spine of a sting-ray, and Odysseus died of the wound (Apollodorus, Epitome 7.36).

Circe in Other Myths

Circe plays a smaller part in a few other myths: she purifies Jason and Medea from a murder, and in Ovid she transforms Picus into a woodpecker and Scylla into a monster.

Jason and Medea

Circe shows up in the second most famous Ancient Greek story of sea adventures, the voyage of the Argonauts. According to Apollonius, after Jason and Medea kill Medea’s brother Absyrtus, Zeus orders that they be cleansed of the blood by Aeaean Circe (Apollonius, Argonautica 4.557–561). They reach her island, where she is bathing her head in the sea after a night of terrifying dreams, and they sit silently at her hearth as suppliants. Circe performs the purification (Argonautica 4.659–717), but when she learns the whole story of the murder, she tells Medea to leave her house with the stranger; because Medea is a suppliant and her kinswoman, Circe does her no other harm (Argonautica 4.741–752).

Circe, a Vengeful Lover

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Circe desires two other men: the first one a mortal king of Italy, and the second one a god.

The mortal was Picus, who was too faithful to his wife Canens for his own good: after he rejected Circe’s advances, she struck him with her wand and sang three charms, and he was turned into a woodpecker. Canens searched for him for six days and nights without food or sleep, and at last, grieving on the bank of the Tiber, she melted away into thin air (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.320–434).

In the other story the sea-god Glaucus came to Circe asking for a potion which would make the beautiful nymph Scylla love him. Circe, however, wanted Glaucus for herself, so, when he refused her, she poisoned the pool in which Scylla bathed and turned her into the monster that sailors fear (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.1–74). Odysseus and his crew met this monster after leaving Circe’s island, as she had warned him (Odyssey 12.73–126).

How Did Circe Die?

Circe did not die in the ancient sources. She was immortal, the daughter of a god, and the surviving Greek accounts give her no death.

• In the Telegony, after Odysseus is killed, Telegonus brings his father’s body, Penelope and Telemachus to his mother’s island, where Circe makes them immortal; Telegonus then marries Penelope and Telemachus marries Circe (Epic Cycle, Telegony, in Proclus’ summary)
• In Apollodorus, Telegonus marries Penelope on Circe’s island, and Circe sends the two of them away to the Islands of the Blessed (Apollodorus, Epitome 7.37)
• In the mainstream tradition Circe remains on Aeaea, ageless and unharmed

Sources

The story of Circe and Odysseus is told by Homer in the tenth and twelfth books of the “Odyssey” (Odyssey 10.133–574, 12.1–143), with Teiresias’ prophecy of Odysseus’ death at Odyssey 11.134–136. Her family is given by Hesiod (Theogony 956–957, 1011–1016) and Apollodorus (Library 1.9.23, 1.9.28, 3.1.2; Epitome 7.36–37), together with the summary of the Telegony in the Epic Cycle, with a variant on Perses in Diodorus Siculus 4.56. For the episode with Jason and Medea, see the fourth book of Apollonius’ “Argonautica” (4.557–752). Her transformations of Picus and Scylla are in Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.

See Also: Odysseus, Medea, Pasiphae, Scylla, Helios, Aeetes, Telegonus, Hermes, Calypso