10.302-344

The poet might have simply skipped the first expedition under Eurylochus and passed directly to the encounter with Hermes, which would still provide the hero with the requisite defense against the witch’s magic. But while this version would get Odysseus where he has to go, it would forfeit the shock of witnessing the crewmen’s transformation from human to animal. (Homer’s version of “show, don’t tell.”) Lost too would be the underlying message about the cost to men of giving over control of their bodies to a seductive woman, a concrete realization of the threat that we see Odysseus guarding himself against all through the story. His own meeting with the witch will focus on this peril.

Hermes harvests some moly for Odysseus but offers no instruction on how to use the magic herb. As the god wafts away toward Olympus, Odysseus makes his way through the dark woods to Circe’s house. In case we had any doubt about the nature of the coming encounter, the poet once again sounds the fateful phrase, θύρας ὤιξε φαεινὰς (312), as the witch welcomes the hero into her lair. Following the correct protocol for entertaining guests, the Circe offers refreshment before asking any questions. The next six verses take us to the heart of the encounter: moly blocks the witch’s potion, Odysseus whips out his sword, and Circe kneels, grasping the hero’s knees. The symbolism of these acts signals a straightforward power negotiation. Having offered herself by opening up her “shining doors,” a powerful female tries to negate the hero’s masculine force with magic; the hero responds with his own power move, wielding his phallic sword and reducing the dangerous witch to the position of supplicant; that she eventually invites him to bed makes the connection between power and sex explicit.

Hovering behind the overt symbolism of these verses lies another potent thematic paradigm. The offer of a seat and a drink is the first part of a traditional sequence of gestures in early Greek hexameter poetry associated with the representation of grief. The person grieving is shown to be refusing to accept the finality of her/his loss by abstaining from the tokens of participation in the ongoing processes of the life cycle, forgoing food, sleep, and sex. Those who would console the suffering person offer a seat and a drink. Acceptance of both tokens signals a readiness to let go of the dead and reenter the flow of life. The pattern plays a crucial role in the thematic resolution of the Iliad in Book 24, when Achilles and Priam console each other for the death their loved ones, Patroclus and Hector (Il. 24.477–643). The full sequence also appears in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a hexameter poem probably composed soon after the Odyssey, focusing on the rape of Persephone by Hades and its cosmic repercussions (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 188–211).

The sequence can also appear in a slightly altered form, while still carrying its core significance. When Zeus decides to prod Priam and Achilles toward reconciliation in Book 24, he summons Thetis to Olympus. The goddess is given a seat and offered a drink, both of which she accepts. Here the symbolism of the gestures is proleptic—a preview of something that has not yet happened—since the loss she is prompted to accept is the coming death of her son Achilles, whom she has hoped would somehow escape the limits of mortality (Il. 24.93–140). When Hector returns to Troy in Book 6, the elements of the sequence are separated. First, he meets his mother, who offers him wine. He refuses, saying that wine would rob him of his fighting spirit and in any event, he could not offer a libation to Zeus with the blood of battle on his hands. Later, as he stands on the threshold of Paris’s bedroom, Helen urges him to sit and rest, a gesture carrying the fragrance of seduction (Il. 6.251–68, 342–62). He refuses, citing his need to return to the battlefield. Again, the symbolism of the sequence points forward. When Hector leaves his mother, his brother and sister-in-law, and his wife, each parting has an air of finality. As the consolation motif suggests, these will be his last goodbyes to those he loves. The death he refuses to accept for now is his own and by extension, Troy’s.

If we assume the consolation pattern is active in Odysseus’s negotiations with Circe, then what is the loss he is invited to accept? Given the fate of his crew members, what is at stake here is not only the hero’s masculine power, but his every existence as a human being. The orchestration of the exchange reflects the narrative goals of the Odyssey as opposed to the Iliad. In the latter poem, the acceptance of mortality generates the thematic synthesis that brings the story to a satisfying—if melancholy—conclusion. Here, the survival of the hero is prerequisite to the restoration of order, the ultimate goal of the poem’s narrative. Though Odysseus seems to accept Circe’s offer, with all it portends for his identity as hero and human being, Hermes’ preemptive intervention shields him from the outcome the narrative pattern usually forecasts.

The particular form of Odysseus’s brush with oblivion here once again prompts comparison with the Calypso episode. In both cases, a seductive goddess would control the hero, erasing his very identity as hero, Hermes plays the role of divine liberator, and a negotiation over power occurs that is represented as fundamentally sexual. The crucial difference between the two episodes is the order in which these elements appear. Calypso has already kept Odysseus for seven years when Hermes arrives to set him free. She reluctantly obeys Zeus’s command to release Odysseus, helping him build a boat and giving him supplies for the journey, including some “fragrant clothing” (5.264). Poseidon sends a storm that breaks up his boat, ripping off the sails and upper decks and throwing Odysseus into the sea. He struggles to surface again, because the cloak that Calypso gave him is pulling him down under the water. After he finally surfaces and grabs onto what is left of the boat, a friendly nymph, Ino, comes to him in the shape of a bird and gives him lifesaving advice: he should throw away Calypso’s clothing and instead tie the nymph’s κρήδεμνον, “veil” (5.346), around his chest. He does so and manages to survive another storm, struggling to the shore of Scheria (Od. 5.282–493).

Calypso’s clothing drags him down toward nameless oblivion, a concrete representation of the “covering up” her name implies, then Ino’s veil saves him. A woman’s veil is the symbol in Homeric poetry for her modesty or chastity. When Andromache sees Hector’s corpse being dragged around the walls of Troy, she tears off her veil and throws it over the walls, a symbol of her coming violation and the penetration of Troy’s battlements, κρήδεμνα, “head binders” (Il. 22.467–72). When Nausicaa and her maids decide to play catch by the shore, they throw off their veils, making themselves vulnerable to strange men (6.99–100). What we see, then, in Odysseus’s exchanges with Calypso and Ino is the same kind of symbolic power negotiation as we find in Odysseus’s conquering of Circe: The sacrifice of Ino’s modesty counterbalances the sexual hold of Calypso.

In the Circe encounter, Odysseus is protected in advance from the erasure that we have witnessed him undergoing at the hands of Calypso. This preemptive strike sets the stage for the entire episode. Once the threat of being unmanned is removed, Odysseus and his men will spend an entirely serene interlude with Circe, a benign helper in the mold of Siduri the barkeep.

Further Reading

Nagler, M. 1974. Spontaneity and Tradition: The Oral Art of Homer,174–198. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic, 76–77. New York: Oxford University Press.