Īccording to Greek legend, Circe lived on the island of Aeaea. She was often confused with Calypso, due to her shifts in behavior and personality, and the association that both of them had with Odysseus. 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. Her sister was Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos and mother of the Minotaur. Her brothers were Aeëtes, keeper of the Golden Fleece and father of Medea, and Perses. In Orphic Argonautica, her mother is called Asterope instead. The episodes of Scylla and Picus added the vice of violent jealousy to her bad qualities and made her a figure of fear as well as of desire.Ĭlassical literature Family and attributes īy most accounts, she was the daughter of the sun god Helios and Perse, one of the three thousand Oceanid nymphs. 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. She has been frequently depicted as such in all the arts from the Renaissance down to modern times. In 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. Circe was also taken as the archetype of the predatory female. 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. In revenge, Circe poisoned the water where her rival bathed and turned her into a dreadful monster.ĭepictions, even in Classical times, diverged from the detail in Homer's narrative, which was later to be reinterpreted morally as a cautionary story against drunkenness. Another story tells of her falling in love with the sea-god Glaucus, who prefers the nymph Scylla to her. Her ability to change others into animals is further highlighted by the story of Picus, an Italian king whom she turns into a woodpecker for resisting her advances. 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.

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. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. She is a daughter of the Sun god Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse. Circe ( / ˈ s ɜːr s iː/ Ancient Greek: Κίρκη, pronounced ) is an enchantress and a minor goddess in ancient Greek mythology and religion.

Circe novel