Circe is the goddess and witch of the island of Aiaia, who meets Odysseus's men with a smile and a wand and sends them to the pigsty. Then, just as suddenly, she turns into the guide who shows him the way home. She is the poem's great transformer, posted at the threshold where beast and human, danger and wisdom, keep changing places.
In Book 10, Odysseus and his crew land on the island of Aiaia, home to Circe, a goddess and daughter of the sun-god Helios. She drugs a scouting party and turns them into pigs; Odysseus, protected by the herb moly from Hermes, resists her magic, forces her to restore his men, and stays roughly a year. Before he leaves, she sends him to the land of the dead to consult the prophet Tiresias and arms him with warnings for the trials ahead.
Odysseus splits the crew and sends half of them inland to scout. Circe receives them warmly, feeds them, and stirs a drug into the food; then she touches them with her wand, and they are swine. Bristled, penned, grunting in the mud — and aware of it, their human minds trapped behind the snouts. One man hangs back at the door, sees the whole thing, and runs to bring the news.
On his way to confront her, Odysseus is stopped by Hermes, who presses a herb into his hand: moly, black at the root and white at the flower, proof against her magic. Eat it, the god tells him; endure her potion, and the moment she strikes you with the wand, draw your sword and rush her. He does exactly that. For the first time her spell finds nothing to hold, and the goddess who has never met her match gives way — and gives his men their bodies back.
What began as a trap softens into a long welcome. Circe becomes his lover and his host, and a year slips past on the island, the crew fed and rested and slowly going slack, until at last the men have to remind their captain that there is still a home out there waiting for him.
The enchantress who nearly erased his men becomes the one who saves them. She does not simply let Odysseus go. She tells him that before he can sail home he must first sail down to the land of the dead and put his questions to the ghost of the prophet Tiresias — a journey no living man makes lightly — and she tells him how it can be done.
When he comes back up from the underworld, she turns navigator. One by one she names what waits ahead: the Sirens and their killing song, the narrow water held by Scylla and Charybdis. In Jung's terms she is the keeper of the threshold, the anima — the figure who must be faced before the self can go any further, and who, once faced, turns the danger into a way through.
Circe has always been the pattern for the enchantress: the beautiful, dangerous woman on her island who tames the men who land there. Madeline Miller's 2018 novel Circe revived her for a new generation by giving her something Homer never does — an inner life and a voice of her own. That is a modern reimagining, not the Homer. In the Odyssey her thoughts stay her own, unspoken, hers alone.
What did Circe do to Odysseus's men?
She gave a scouting party a drugged potion and touched them with her wand, turning them into swine who kept their human minds. Odysseus later forced her to change them back.
How did Odysseus resist Circe's magic?
Hermes gave him the herb moly, which made him immune to her potion. When her spell failed and he drew his sword, Circe submitted and freed his crew.
How long did Odysseus stay with Circe?
About a year. He became her lover and his men rested on Aiaia until they urged him to resume the voyage home — after which Circe sent him to consult the dead.