Circe

When Odysseus’s crew reaches Aeaea, Circe welcomes them and gives them a drugged meal. She strikes them with her wand and turns them into pigs, and only Odysseus, who has been warned by Hermes and given the herb moly, is able to resist. He forces her to restore his men and to swear an oath not to harm him.

The episode is a test of cunning and self-control. Odysseus’s victory is not military but magical and sexual: he must sleep with the goddess to break her power. The poem treats the encounter with a mixture of comedy and unease, and Circe’s hospitality is both a relief and a danger.

Odysseus and his men stay with Circe for a year, feasting and resting. When they want to leave, she tells Odysseus that he must first consult the shade of Tiresias in the underworld, and she gives him instructions for the journey and the sacrifices. Her advice makes the necromancy of Book XI possible.

Circe is therefore not simply an obstacle. She is one of the poem’s threshold figures: she marks the passage from the world of adventure to the world of the dead, and her knowledge is necessary for Odysseus’s return. Later tradition makes her the mother of Telegonus, who kills Odysseus; the Odyssey does not go that far.