Source Verification: Circe
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
Why did Circe turn Odysseus's men into pigs?
Homer's Odyssey gives no motive beyond her established practice: Circe lives alone on Aeaea and habitually drugs and transforms any men who reach her house, keeping the resulting animals, who retain their human minds, around her grounds. Odysseus's landing party is simply the latest crew to fall for her hospitality.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 10.135-139
How did Odysseus resist Circe's magic?
Hermes met him on the way to her house and gave him an herb called moly, black-rooted with a milk-white flower, which made him immune to her drugged food and wine. When her wand failed to transform him, Circe recognized him as the one man a prophecy had warned her about.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 10.302-306
Did Odysseus and Circe have a relationship?
Yes. After forcing Circe to swear an oath not to harm him, Odysseus accepted her offer and stayed on Aeaea as her lover for a full year, until his own men eventually urged him to remember his voyage home and pressed him to leave.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 10.480-486
What did Circe tell Odysseus about Scylla and Charybdis?
She told him plainly that the two dangers were not equal: hugging Charybdis's side of the strait risked losing the entire ship to the whirlpool, while passing close to Scylla's cliff would cost only six men, one for each of her heads. Circe's advice was to accept the smaller, survivable loss.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 12.101-110
Is Circe responsible for what happened to Scylla?
In one tradition, yes. Ovid's Metamorphoses tells a story in which Circe, jealous over the sea-god Glaucus's love for the nymph Scylla, poisons Scylla's bathing pool and transforms her into a monster. Homer's earlier Odyssey never mentions this and treats Scylla as a monster with no such backstory.
Source: Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 14
Where Accounts Differ
- whether Circe caused Scylla's transformation
- Homer's Odyssey never connects Circe to Scylla's transformation; that link comes only from Ovid's later Metamorphoses, writing centuries afterward.
Sources
- Homer, Odyssey 10.135-139
- Homer, Odyssey 10.302-306
- Homer, Odyssey 10.480-486
- Homer, Odyssey 12.101-110
- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 14
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)