Circe - Modern interpretations

In the Odyssey, an enchantress who detained Odysseus and his followers on the island of Aeaea. Her house was full of wild beasts. She transformed Odysseus's men into swine with a magic drink, but he was able to defeat her charms through the protection of the herb moly.

In Greek mythology, Circe or Kírkē (Greek Κίρκη) was a goddess (or sometimes nymph or sorceress) living on the island of Aeaea.

Circe's father was Helios, the pre-Olympic titan of the Sun, and her mother was Perse, an Oceanid;

In Homer's Odyssey, her home is described as a stone mansion standing in the middle of a clearing in a dense wood. Circe worked at a huge loom. Odysseus set out to rescue his men, but was intercepted by Hermes and told to procure some of the herb moly to protect him from the same fate. Odysseus and Circe made love in her "flawless bed of love" as well.

According to Homer, she suggested to Odysseus two alternative routes to return to Ithaca: either toward the "Wandering Rocks" (possibly the pumiceous Lipari Islands;

Towards the end of Hesiod's Theogony (1011f) we find that Circe bore of Odysseus three sons: Agrius (otherwise unknown), Latinus, and Telegonus who ruled over the Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans.

Later poets generally only speak of Telegonus as Odysseus' son by Circe. When grown to manhood, later poets reported, she sent him to find Odysseus, who had long since returned to his home on Ithaca, but on arrival Telegonus accidentally killed his father. Circe made them immortal and married Telemachus, while Telegonus made Penelope his wife.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.72.5) cites Xenagoras the 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.

That Circe also purified the Argonauts for the death of Apsyrtus may be early tradition.

In later tales Circe turned Picus into a woodpecker for refusing her love, and Scylla into a monstrous creature with six dogs' heads when Glaucus (another object of Circe's affection) declared his undying love for her.

Modern interpretations

Medical historians have speculated that the transformation to pigs was not intended literally but refers to anticholinergic intoxication.

Nathaniel Hawthorne retold the story of Circe in his Tanglewood Tales.

In the second book of the epic poem The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser based Sir Guyon's antagonist Acrasia on Circe;