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127-511: The best known of her legends is told in Homer 's Odyssey when Odysseus visits her island of Aeaea on the way back from the Trojan War and she changes most of his crew into swine . He manages to persuade her to return them to human shape, lives with her for a year and has sons by her, including Latinus and Telegonus . Her ability to change others into animals is further highlighted by

254-453: A canonical text. The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles . Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows

381-610: A clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs. It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet. Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to

508-531: A discredited dead end. Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord , after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas. This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance and explained many previously puzzling features of

635-426: A faithful depiction of the painting's Pre-Raphaelite mannerism but its description of Circe's potion as "distilled of death and shame" also accords with the contemporary (male) identification of Circe with perversity. This is further underlined by his statement (in a letter) that the black panthers there are "images of ruined passion" and by his anticipation at the end of the poem of passion's tide-strown shore / Where

762-544: A horse. By the 19th century, Circe was ceasing to be a mythical figure. Poets treated her either as an individual or at least as the type of a certain kind of woman. The French poet Albert Glatigny addresses "Circé" in his Les vignes folles (1857) and makes of her a voluptuous opium dream, the magnet of masochistic fantasies. Louis-Nicolas Ménard 's sonnet in Rêveries d'un païen mystique (1876) describes her as enchanting all with her virginal look, but appearance belies

889-423: A magic potion to make Scylla fall in love with him too. But Circe was smitten by Glaucus herself, and fell in love with him. Glaucus did not love her back, and turned down her offer of marriage. Enraged, Circe used her knowledge of herbs and plants to take her revenge; she found the spot where Scylla usually took her bath, and poisoned the water. When Scylla went down to it to bathe, dogs sprang from her thighs and she

1016-571: A night of love with him, she explains the characteristics of the animals in her charge: the lions are the brave, the bears are the violent, the wolves are those forever dissatisfied, and so on (Canto 6). In Canto 7 he is introduced to those who experience frustration: a cat that has allowed its prey to escape; an agitated dragon; a fox constantly on the look-out for traps; a dog that bays the moon; Aesop's lion in love that allowed himself to be deprived of his teeth and claws. There are also emblematic satirical portraits of various Florentine personalities. In

1143-415: A phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling. Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to

1270-760: A pottage of cheese and meal, sweetened with honey and laced with wine, but also mixed with one of her magical potions that turns them into swine. Only Eurylochus , who suspects treachery, does not go in. He escapes to warn Odysseus and the others who have remained with the ship. Before Odysseus reaches Circe's palace, Hermes , the messenger god sent by the goddess of wisdom Athena , intercepts him and reveals how he might defeat Circe in order to free his crew from their enchantment. Hermes provides Odysseus with moly to protect him from Circe's magic. He also tells Odysseus that he must then draw his sword and act as if he were going to attack her. From there, as Hermes foretold, Circe would ask Odysseus to bed, but Hermes advises caution, for

1397-440: 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 (1.72.5) cites Xenagoras , the 2nd-century BC historian, as claiming that Odysseus and Circe had three different sons: Rhomos , Anteias , and Ardeias , who respectively founded three cities called by their names: Rome , Antium , and Ardea . In

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1524-629: A ride in my father Helios' chariot, when he was taking my sister Circe to the western land and we came to the coast of the Tyrrhenian mainland, where she dwells to this day, very far from the Colchian land." A scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius claims that Apollonius is following Hesiod 's tradition in making Circe arrive in Aeaea on Helios' chariot, while Valerius Flaccus writes that Circe was borne away by winged dragons. Roman poets associated her with

1651-569: A series of poetic dialogues, in the first of which, after a long series of incantations to the seven planets of the Hermetic tradition , most humans appear changed into different creatures in the scrying bowl. The sorceress Circe is then asked by her handmaiden Moeris about the type of behaviour with which each is associated. According to Circe, for instance, fireflies are the learned, wise, and illustrious amidst idiots, asses, and obscure men (Question 32). In later sections different characters discuss

1778-416: A white-coloured flower, either for the white Sun who had killed Picolous or the terrified Circe who turned white; the very plant, which mortals are unable to pluck from the ground, that Hermes would later give to Odysseus in order to defeat Circe. In Homer's Odyssey , an 8th-century BC sequel to his Trojan War epic Iliad , Circe is initially described as a beautiful goddess living in a palace isolated in

1905-423: A woodpecker. His wife Canens eventually wasted away in her mourning. During the war between the gods and the giants , one of the giants, Picolous , fled the battle against the gods and came to Aeaea, Circe's island. He attempted to chase Circe away, only to be killed by Helios, Circe's ally and father. From the blood of the slain giant, a herb came into existence; moly , named thus from the battle (malos) and with

2032-477: Is H.D. 's "Circe", from her collection Hymen (1921). In her soliloquy she reviews the conquests with which she has grown bored, then mourns the one instance when she failed. In not naming Ulysses himself, Doolittle universalises an emotion with which all women might identify. At the end of the century, British poet Carol Ann Duffy wrote a monologue entitled Circe which pictures the goddess addressing an audience of "nereids and nymphs". In this outspoken episode in

2159-592: Is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally . Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter . Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato , Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" ( τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν , tēn Helláda pepaídeuken ). In Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy , Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in

2286-632: Is a mirror image of the Classical story. In place of the witch who easily seduces the men she meets, a male enchanter is resisted by female virtue. In the 20th century, the Circe episode was to be re-evaluated in two poetic sequels to the Odyssey . In the first of these, Giovanni Pascoli 's L'Ultimo Viaggio ( The Last Voyage , 1906), the aging hero sets out to rediscover the emotions of his youth by retracing his journey from Troy , only to discover that

2413-463: Is a very different interpretation of the encounter with Circe in John Gower 's long didactic poem Confessio Amantis (1380). Ulysses is depicted as deeper in sorcery and readier of tongue than Circe and through this means he 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

2540-566: Is called parataxis . The so-called ' type scenes ' ( typische Szenen ), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, praying , fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures. 'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when

2667-604: Is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek , in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems. The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter ; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus ', 'rosy-fingered Dawn ', 'owl-eyed Athena ', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when

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2794-472: Is more a matter of allusion and is nowhere overtly stated beyond the title. It is a reflection on contemporary gender politics that scarcely needs the disguises of Augusta Webster's. With two other poems by male writers it is much the same: Louis Macneice 's, for example, whose "Circe" appeared in his first volume, Poems (London, 1935); or Robert Lowell 's, whose "Ulysses and Circe" appeared in his last, Day by Day (New York, 1977). Both poets have appropriated

2921-431: Is one of the characters, the power of her potion is differently interpreted. The inner tendencies unlocked by it are not the choice between animal nature and reason but between two types of impersonality, between divine clarity and the poet's participatory and tragic vision of life. In the poem, Circe discovers a youth laid asleep in the portico of her temple by a draught of her ivy-wreathed bowl. On awaking from possession by

3048-590: Is questioned and beasts are proved to be of superior wisdom and virtue. Strabo writes that a tomb-shrine of Circe was attended in one of the Pharmacussae islands, off the coast of Attica , typical for hero-worship. Circe was also venerated in Mount Circeo , in the Italian peninsula , which took its name after her according to ancient legend. Strabo says that Circe had a shrine in the small town, and that

3175-469: Is transformed into his true animal likeness. It has further been suggested that John Milton 's Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634) is a sequel to Tempe Restored , a masque in which Circe had figured two years earlier, and that the situation presented there is a reversal of the Greek myth. At the start of the masque , the character Comus is described as the son of Circe by Bacchus , god of wine, and

3302-505: The Capture of Oechalia , and the Phocais . These claims are not considered authentic today and were not universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture. Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer

3429-562: The Harvard Advocate . Circe herself does not appear, her character is suggested by what is in the grounds and the beasts in the forest beyond: panthers, pythons, and peacocks that look at us with the eyes of men whom we knew long ago . Rather than a temptress, she has become an emasculatory threat. Several female poets make Circe stand up for herself, using the soliloquy form to voice the woman's position. The 19th-century English poet Augusta Webster , much of whose writing explored

3556-521: The Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000. In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems. The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of

3683-897: The Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns , the Contest of Homer and Hesiod , several epigrams , the Little Iliad , the Nostoi , the Thebaid , the Cypria , the Epigoni , the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites ,

3810-443: The Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors. After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities. Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences. Within

3937-462: The Muse . In the Iliad , the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles", and in the Odyssey , he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways". A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid . The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by

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4064-639: The Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics , who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom. Perhaps partially because of

4191-574: The Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors. Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about

4318-427: The Trojan War ; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards. Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems. A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date. At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics. Barry B. Powell dates

4445-545: The Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs, and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey , which later poets expanded and revised. A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw

4572-800: The Bronze Age Aegean civilisation , which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up; for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold. It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles. Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed. The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but

4699-418: The Circe episode among them. The two most common representations have Circe surrounded by the transformed sailors and Odysseus threatening the sorceress with his sword. In the case of the former, the animals are not always boars but also include, for instance, the ram, dog and lion on the 6th-century BC Boston kylix . Often the transformation is only partial, involving the head and perhaps a sprouting tail, while

4826-500: The Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus ' time, about 500 Years after." Friedrich August Wolf 's Prolegomena ad Homerum , published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs, which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of

4953-711: The Gryllus episode in Plutarch occurs as a chapter of Thomas Love Peacock 's late novel, Gryll Grange (1861), under the title "Aristophanes in London". Half Greek comedy, half Elizabethan masque, it is acted at the Grange by the novel's characters as a Christmas entertainment. In it Spiritualist mediums raise Circe and Gryllus and try to convince the latter of the superiority of modern times, which he rejects as intellectually and materially regressive. An Italian work drawing on

5080-476: The Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance . Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance , Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens. In 1664, contradicting

5207-433: The Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate. Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher. Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century. Eustathius's commentary on

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5334-563: The Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features. Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered. Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge. Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of

5461-557: The Italian island where Circe dwells and hears the cries of her many male 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. In Ovid's 1st-century poem Metamorphoses , the fourth episode covers Circe's encounter with Ulysses (the Roman name of Odysseus), whereas book 14 covers

5588-689: The Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans . The Telegony , an epic now lost, relates the later history of the last of these. Circe eventually informed her son who his absent father was and, when he set out to find Odysseus, gave him a poisoned spear. When Telegonus arrived in Ithaca, Odysseus was away in Thesprotia , fighting the Brygi. Telegonus began to ravage the island; Odysseus came to defend his land. With

5715-464: The accursed reality. Poets in English were not far behind in this lurid portrayal. Lord de Tabley 's "Circe" (1895) is a thing of decadent perversity likened to a tulip, A flaunting bloom, naked and undivine... / With freckled cheeks and splotch'd side serpentine, / A gipsy among flowers . That central image is echoed by the blood-striped flower of T.S.Eliot 's student poem "Circe's Palace" (1909) in

5842-474: The beasts of the wild, nor yet like men in body, but with a medley of limbs." Circe invites Jason, Medea and their crew into her mansion; uttering no words, they show her the still bloody sword they used to cut Absyrtus down, and Circe immediately realizes they have visited her to be purified of murder. She purifies them by slitting the throat of a suckling pig and letting the blood drip on them. Afterwards, Medea tells Circe their tale in great detail, albeit omitting

5969-410: 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. The theme of Circe turning men into a variety of animals was elaborated by later writers. In his episodic work The Sorrows of Love (first century BC), Parthenius of Nicaea interpolated another episode into

6096-482: The composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus , who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" ( καὶ οὐ πλέοσι ) and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation , or literacy. Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes

6223-594: 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 her survey of the Transformations of Circe , Judith Yarnall comments of this figure, who started out as a comparatively minor goddess of unclear origin, that "What we know for certain – what Western literature attests to – is her remarkable staying power…These different versions of Circe's myth can be seen as mirrors, sometimes clouded and sometimes clear, of

6350-544: The days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor ) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus ) were the parents of Homer. The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod . Homer

6477-567: The development of the mediaeval legend of Morgan le Fay . In addition, it has been argued that the fairy Titania in William Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600) is an inversion of Circe. Titania (daughter of the Titans ) was a title by which the sorceress was known in Classical times. In this case the tables are turned on the character, who is queen of the fairies. She is made to love an ass after, rather than before, he

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6604-716: The disheveled seaweed hates the sea . The Australian A. D. Hope 's "Circe – after the painting by Dosso Dossi", on the other hand, frankly admits humanity's animal inheritance as natural and something in which even Circe shares. In the poem, he links the fading rationality and speech of her lovers to her own animal cries in the act of love. There remain some poems that bear her name that have more to do with their writers' private preoccupations than with reinterpreting her myth. The link with it in Margaret Atwood 's "Circe/Mud Poems", first published in You Are Happy (1974),

6731-488: The divisions back further to the Classical period. Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions. In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension". The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during

6858-479: The early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile , type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique

6985-474: The eighth and last canto he has a conversation with a pig that, like the Gryllus of Plutarch, does not want to be changed back and condemns human greed, cruelty and conceit. The other Italian author was the esoteric philosopher Giordano Bruno , who wrote in Latin. His Cantus Circaeus ( The Incantation of Circe ) was the fourth work on memory and the association of ideas by him to be published in 1582. It contains

7112-432: The end it is only the horse, formerly a courtesan, who wants to return to her former state. The same theme occupies La Fontaine's late fable, "The Companions of Ulysses" (XII.1, 1690), which also echoes Plutarch and Gelli. Once transformed, every animal (which includes a lion, a bear, a wolf and a mole) protests that their lot is better and refuses to be restored to human shape. Charles Dennis shifted this fable to stand at

7239-511: The epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey . These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of

7366-422: The equal of his mother in enchantment. He too changes travelers into beastly forms that "roll with pleasure in a sensual sty". Having waylaid the heroine and immobilized her on an enchanted chair, he stands over her, wand in hand, and presses on her a magical cup (representing sexual pleasure and intemperance), which she repeatedly refuses, arguing for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity. The picture presented

7493-551: The eyes of those from a later age, this behaviour made her notorious both as a magician and as a type of sexually free woman. She has been frequently depicted as such in all the arts from the Renaissance down to modern times. Western paintings established a visual iconography for the figure, but also went for inspiration to other stories concerning Circe that appear in Ovid 's Metamorphoses . The episodes of Scylla and Picus added

7620-401: The fantasies and assumptions of the cultures that produced them." After appearing as just one of the characters that Odysseus encounters on his wandering, "Circe herself, in the twists and turns of her story through the centuries, has gone through far more metamorphoses than those she inflicted on Odysseus's companions." One of the most enduring literary themes connected with the figure of Circe

7747-415: The female condition, has a dramatic monologue in blank verse titled "Circe" in her volume Portraits (1870). There the sorceress anticipates her meeting with Ulysses and his men and insists that she does not turn men into pigs—she merely takes away the disguise that makes them seem human. But any draught, pure water, natural wine, / out of my cup, revealed them to themselves / and to each other. Change? there

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7874-435: The first two sections. The Circe episode is viewed by him as a narrow escape from death of the spirit: With twisted hands and thighs we rolled on burning sands, / a hanging mess of hissing vipers glued in sun!... / Farewell the brilliant voyage, ended! Prow and soul / moored in the muddy port of the contented beast! / O prodigal, much-traveled soul, is this your country? His escape from this mire of sensuality comes one day when

8001-432: The genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad ." Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows

8128-502: The gods, return home safely and recover his kingdom. Circe also advises him on how this might be achieved and furnishes him with the protections he will need and the means to communicate with the dead. On his return, she further advises him about two possible routes home, warning him, however, that both carry great danger. Towards the end of Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC), it is stated that Circe bore Odysseus three sons: Agrius (otherwise unknown); Latinus ; and Telegonus , who ruled over

8255-587: The head of his translation of La Fontaine, Select Fables (1754), but provides his own conclusion that When Mortals from the path of Honour stray, / And the strong passions over reason sway, / What are they then but Brutes? / 'Tis vice alone that constitutes / Th'enchanting wand and magic bowl, The exterior form of Man they wear, / But are in fact both Wolf and Bear, / The transformation's in the Soul. Louis Fuzelier and Marc-Antoine Legrand titled their comic opera of 1718 Les animaux raisonnables . It had more or less

8382-539: The incident as described in Homer has her use the wand only to bewitch the sailors after they have refreshed themselves. One exception is the Berlin amphora on which the seated Circe holds the wand towards a half transformed man. Homer This is an accepted version of this page Homer ( / ˈ h oʊ m ər / ; Ancient Greek : Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros] , Hómēros ; born c.  8th century BCE )

8509-522: The intervention of Circe, the victims find their natural condition as soon as they set foot on the island. The philosopher here is not Gelli's elephant but the bat that retreats from human contact into the darkness, like Bruno's fireflies (VI). The only one who wishes to change in Gozzi's work is the bear, a satirist who had dared to criticize Circe and had been changed as a punishment (IX). There were two more satirical dramas in later centuries. One modelled on

8636-469: The island of Aeaea . Although Homer is vague when it comes to the island's whereabouts, the early 3rd BC author Apollonius of Rhodes 's epic poem Argonautica locates Aeaea somewhere south of Aethalia ( Elba ), within view of the Tyrrhenian shore (that is, the western coast of Italy). In the same poem, Circe's brother Aeëtes describes how Circe was transferred to Aeaea: "I noted it once after taking

8763-502: The island of Eea is deserted. What in his dream of love he had taken for the roaring of lions and Circe's song was now no more than the sound of the sea-wind in autumnal oaks (Cantos 16–17). This melancholy dispelling of illusion is echoed in The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938) by Nikos Kazantzakis . The fresh voyage in search of new meaning to life recorded there grows out of the hero's initial rejection of his past experiences in

8890-434: The judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry , he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter. The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as

9017-598: The knowledge of herbs and potions from her mother Perse, who seems to have had similar skills. In the Argonautica , Apollonius relates that Circe purified the Argonauts for the murder of Medea's brother Absyrtus , possibly reflecting an early tradition. In this poem, the Argonauts find Circe bathing in salt water; the animals that surround her are not former lovers transformed but primeval "beasts, not resembling

9144-545: The last animal, a philosopher in its former existence, wants to. The work was translated into English soon after in 1557 by Henry Iden . Later the English poet Edmund Spenser also made reference to Plutarch's dialogue in the section of his Faerie Queene (1590) based on the Circe episode which appears at the end of Book II. Sir Guyon changes back the victims of Acrasia's erotic frenzy in the Bower of Bliss, most of whom are abashed at their fall from chivalric grace, But one above

9271-535: The later Iron Age during which they were composed; yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age). In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period , but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during

9398-439: The later 5th-century CE epic Dionysiaca , its author Nonnus mentions Phaunus, Circe's son by the sea god Poseidon . 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

9525-603: The later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet. By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question". Following World War I , the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars. It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as

9652-476: The medieval vulgate. Others, such as Martin West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen , fall somewhere between these two extremes. Him with that falchion in his hand behold, ⁠Who comes before the three, even as their lord. That one is Homer, Poet sovereign; This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . Argonautica Orphica Too Many Requests If you report this error to

9779-411: The midst of a dense wood on her island of Aeaea. Around her home prowl strangely docile lions and wolves. She lures any who land on the island to her home with her lovely singing while weaving on an enormous loom, but later drugs them so that they change shape. One of her Homeric epithets is polypharmakos , "knowing many drugs or charms". Circe invites the hero Odysseus' crew to a feast of familiar food,

9906-462: The most ancient traditions of Latium, and made her home to be on the promontory of Circeo . Homer describes Circe as "a dreadful goddess with lovely hair and human speech". Apollonius writes that she (just like every other descendant of Helios) had flashing golden eyes that shot out rays of light, with the author of Argonautica Orphica noting that she had hair like fiery rays. Ovid 's The Cure for Love implies that Circe might have been taught

10033-535: The myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries. Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history. For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than

10160-466: The myth to make a personal statement about their broken relationships. Several Renaissance epics of the 16th century include lascivious sorceresses based on the Circe figure. These generally live in an isolated spot devoted to pleasure, to which lovers are lured and later changed into beasts. They include the following: Later scholarship has identified elements from the character of both Circe and especially her fellow enchantress Medea as contributing to

10287-557: The new title of Homines voluptatibus transformantur , men are transformed by their passions. This explains her appearance in the Nighttown section named after her in James Joyce 's novel Ulysses . Written in the form of a stage script, it makes of Circe the brothel madam, Bella Cohen. Bloom, the book's protagonist, fantasizes that she turns into a cruel man-tamer named Mr Bello who makes him get down on all fours and rides him like

10414-416: The other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC. "'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage

10541-466: The part of Absyrtus' murder; nevertheless Circe is not fooled, and greatly disapproves of their actions. However, out of pity for the girl, and on account of their kinship, she promises not to be an obstacle on their way, and orders Jason and Medea to leave her island immediately. The sea-god Glaucus was in love with a beautiful maiden, Scylla , but she spurned his affections no matter how he tried to win her heart. Glaucus went to Circe, and asked her for

10668-596: The people there kept a bowl they claimed belonged to Odysseus. The promontory is occupied by ruins of a platform attributed with great probability to a temple of Venus or Circe. Giovanni Boccaccio provided a digest of what was known of Circe during the Middle Ages in his De mulieribus claris ( Famous Women , 1361–1362). 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

10795-527: The poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the Greek alphabet . Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria , in Egypt. Some trace

10922-429: The poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral. The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories . The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures. They were the first literary works taught to all students. The Iliad , particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than

11049-457: The poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts. Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating. Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down. Other scholars hold that, after

11176-428: The poetic frenzy it has induced, he craves for it to be continued. With the Renaissance there began to be a reinterpretation of what it was that changed the men, if it was not simply magic. For Socrates , in Classical times, it had been gluttony overcoming their self-control. But for the influential emblematist Andrea Alciato , it was unchastity. In the second edition of his Emblemata (1546), therefore, Circe became

11303-486: The poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later. He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC. At

11430-420: The preface to his translation of the Iliad , Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film. The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard

11557-600: The reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer . From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the Library of Alexandria , Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish

11684-459: The rest in speciall, / That had an hog beene late, hight Grille by name, / Repined greatly, and did him miscall, / That had from hoggish forme him brought to naturall. Two other Italians wrote rather different works that centre on the animal within the human. One was Niccolò Machiavelli in his unfinished long poem, L'asino d'oro ( The Golden Ass , 1516). The author meets a beautiful herdswoman surrounded by Circe's herd of beasts. After spending

11811-471: The rest of the body is human. In describing an otherwise obscure 5th-century Greek bronze in the Walters Art Museum that takes the form of a man on all fours with the foreparts of a pig, the commentator asks in what other way could an artist depict someone bewitched other than as a man with an animal head. In these scenes Circe is shown almost invariably stirring the potion with her wand, although

11938-412: The sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa c. 1220 BC was the origin of

12065-451: The same scenario transposed into another medium and set to music by Jacques Aubert . Circe, wishing to be rid of the company of Ulysses, agrees to change back his companions, but only the dolphin is willing. The others, who were formerly a corrupt judge (now a wolf), a financier (a pig), an abused wife (a hen), a deceived husband (a bull) and a flibbertigibbet (a linnet), find their present existence more agreeable. The Venetian Gasparo Gozzi

12192-405: The sight of some fishermen, a mother and her baby enjoying the simple comforts of food and drink, recalls him to life, its duties and delights. Where the attempt by Pascoli's hero to recapture the past ended in failure, Kazantzakis' Odysseus, already realising the emptiness of his experiences, journeys into what he hopes will be a fuller future. Scenes from the Odyssey are common on Greek pottery,

12319-516: The society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterranean , with some scattered references to Egypt , Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition. In ancient Greek chronology,

12446-431: The stories of Picus and Glaucus. Plutarch took up the theme in a lively dialogue that was later to have several imitators. Contained in his 1st-century Moralia is the Gryllus episode in which Circe allows Odysseus to interview a fellow Greek turned into a pig. After his interlocutor informs Odysseus that his present existence is preferable to the human, they engage in a philosophical dialogue in which every human value

12573-458: The story of Picus , an Italian king whom she turns into a woodpecker for resisting her advances. Another story tells of her falling in love with the sea-god Glaucus , who prefers the nymph Scylla to her. In revenge, Circe poisoned the water where her rival bathed and turned her into a dreadful monster. Depictions, even in Classical times, diverged from the detail in Homer's narrative, which

12700-487: 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 (1853). The transformed Picus continually appears in this, trying to warn Ulysses, and then Eurylochus, of

12827-529: The ten-year journey of Odysseus , king of Ithaca , back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek , also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence

12954-477: The time that Odysseus was staying with Circe. Pestered by the amorous attentions of King Calchus the Daunian , the sorceress invited him to a drugged dinner that turned him into a pig and then shut him up in her sties. He was only released when his army came searching for him on the condition that he would never set foot on her island again. Among Latin treatments, Virgil 's Aeneid relates how Aeneas skirts

13081-432: The time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age. In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks . Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of

13208-629: The transformation of Odysseus' companions when, though Head, face and members bristle into swine, / Still cursed with sense, their mind remains alone . Dobson's " The Prayer of the Swine to Circe " (1640) depicts the horror of being imprisoned in an animal body in this way with the human consciousness unchanged. There appears to be no relief, for only in the final line is it revealed that Odysseus has arrived to free them. But in Matthew Arnold 's dramatic poem "The Strayed Reveller" (1849), in which Circe

13335-663: The transformation theme was the comedy by Ettore Romagnoli, La figlia del Sole ( The Daughter of the Sun , 1919). Hercules arrives on the island of Circe with his servant Cercopo and has to be rescued by the latter when he too is changed into a pig. But, since the naturally innocent other animals had become corrupted by imitating human vices, the others who had been changed were refused when they begged to be rescued. Also in England, Austin Dobson engaged more seriously with Homer's account of

13462-476: The treacherous goddess could still "unman" him unless he has her swear by the names of the gods that she will not take any further action against him. Following this advice, Odysseus is able to free his men. After they have all remained on the island for a year, Circe advises Odysseus that he must first visit the Underworld , something a mortal has never yet done, in order to gain knowledge about how to appease

13589-419: The two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity , the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia , a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary . Today, only

13716-410: The type of the prostitute . His Emblem 76 is titled Cavendum a meretricibus ; its accompanying Latin verses mention Picus, Scylla and the companions of Ulysses, and concludes that "Circe with her famous name indicates a whore and any who loves such a one loses his reason". His English imitator Geoffrey Whitney used a variation of Alciato's illustration in his own Choice of Emblemes (1586) but gave it

13843-418: The use of images in the imagination in order to facilitate use of the art of memory , which is the real aim of the work. French writers were to take their lead from Gelli in the following century. Antoine Jacob wrote a one-act social comedy in rhyme, Les Bestes raisonnables ( The Reasoning Beasts , 1661) which allowed him to satirise contemporary manners. On the isle of Circe, Ulysses encounters an ass that

13970-480: The use of sorcery. The story of Ulysses and Circe was retold as an episode in Georg Rollenhagen's German verse epic, Froschmeuseler ( The Frogs and Mice , Magdeburg, 1595). 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 (1624),

14097-463: The vice of violent jealousy to her bad qualities and made her a figure of fear as well as of desire. By most accounts, she was the daughter of the sun god Helios and Perse , one of the three thousand Oceanid nymphs . In Orphic Argonautica , her mother is called Asterope instead. Her brothers were Aeëtes , keeper of the Golden Fleece and father of Medea , and Perses . Her sister

14224-427: The war between the sexes, Circe describes the various ways in which all parts of a pig could and should be cooked. Another indication of the progression in interpreting the Circe figure is given by two poems a century apart, both of which engage with paintings of her. The first is the sonnet that Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote in response to Edward Burne-Jones ' "The Wine of Circe" in his volume Poems (1870). It gives

14351-726: The weapon Circe gave him, Telegonus killed his father unknowingly. Telegonus then brought back his father's corpse to Aeaea, together with Penelope and Odysseus' son by her, Telemachus . After burying Odysseus, Circe made the other three immortal. Circe married Telemachus, and Telegonus married Penelope by the advice of Athena. According to an alternative version depicted in Lycophron 's 3rd-century BC poem Alexandra (and John Tzetzes ' scholia on it), 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. Sometime later, Telemachus had

14478-440: The widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs. Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he

14605-466: Was Pasiphaë , the wife of King Minos and mother of the Minotaur . Other accounts make her and her niece Medea the daughters of Hecate , the goddess of witchcraft by Aeëtes, usually said to be her brother instead. She was often confused with Calypso , due to her shifts in behavior and personality, and the association that both of them had with Odysseus . According to Greek legend, Circe lived on

14732-462: Was an Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature . Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War . The Odyssey chronicles

14859-532: Was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down. According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in

14986-441: Was another Italian who returned to Gelli for inspiration in the 14 prose Dialoghi dell'isola di Circe ( Dialogues from Circe's Island ) published as journalistic pieces between 1760 and 1764. In this moral work, the aim of Ulysses in talking to the beasts is to learn more of the human condition. It includes figures from fable ( The fox and the crow , XIII) and from myth to illustrate its vision of society at variance. Far from needing

15113-509: Was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he resided at Chios , that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs , that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" ( Ὅμηρος , Hómēros ). Another tradition from

15240-477: Was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days : "When the Pleiades born of Atlas  ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad . Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor,

15367-552: Was her ability to change men into animals. There was much speculation concerning how this could be, whether the human consciousness changed at the same time, and even whether it was a change for the better. The Gryllus dialogue was taken up by another Italian writer, Giovan Battista Gelli , in his La Circe (1549). This is a series of ten philosophical and moral dialogues between Ulysses and the humans transformed into various animals, ranging from an oyster to an elephant, in which Circe sometimes joins. Most argue against changing back; only

15494-472: Was included in her collection The Path of Dreams (1900), the first stanza of which relates the usual story of men turned into swine by her spell. But then a second stanza presents a sensuous portrait of an unnamed woman, very much in the French vein; once more, it concludes, "A Circe's spells transform men into swine". This is no passive victim of male projections but a woman conscious of her sexual power. So too

15621-403: Was later to be reinterpreted morally as a cautionary story against drunkenness. Early philosophical questions were also raised about whether the change from being a human endowed with reason to being an unreasoning beast might not be preferable after all, and the resulting debate was to have a powerful impact during the Renaissance . Circe was also taken as the archetype of the predatory female. In

15748-468: Was no change; / only disguise gone from them unawares . The mythological character of the speaker contributes at a safe remove to the Victorian discourse on women's sexuality by expressing female desire and criticizing the subordinate role given to women in heterosexual politics. Two American poets also explored feminine psychology in poems ostensibly about the enchantress. Leigh Gordon Giltner's "Circe"

15875-403: Was once a doctor, a lion that had been a valet, a female doe and a horse, all of whom denounce the decadence of the times. The ass sees human asses everywhere, Asses in the town square, asses in the suburbs, / Asses in the provinces, asses proud at court, / Asses browsing in the meadows, military asses trooping, / Asses tripping it at balls, asses in the theatre stalls. To drive the point home, in

16002-449: Was to the Greek ὅμηρος ( hómēros ' hostage ' or ' surety ' ). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies. Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent

16129-565: Was transformed into the familiar monster from the Odyssey . In another, similar story, Picus was a Latian king whom Circe turned into a woodpecker. He was the son of Saturn , and a king of Latium . He fell in love and married a nymph , Canens , to whom he was utterly devoted. One day as he was hunting boars, he came upon Circe, who was gathering herbs in the woods. Circe fell immediately in love with him; but Picus, just like Glaucus before him, spurned her and declared that he would remain forever faithful to Canens. Circe, furious, turned Picus into

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