Character Catalog

The founding text of the Circe myth, and the first complete account of the episode in which Odysseus's companions are transformed and the hero spends a year on the island of Aeaea.

The text that places Circe within the Greek divine genealogy, making her the daughter of the god Helios and the sister of Aeëtes, king of Colchis.

An Alexandrian epic poem in which Circe plays the role of a purifying priestess, cleansing Medea and Jason of their crime in a solemn ritual.

Virgil describes Circe's island as a land of transformations, which Aeneas sails past in the night, his companions hearing the groans of men changed into beasts.

Ovid develops new stories around Circe — her jealous passions, the transformations of Scylla and Picus — greatly enriching the character for the Latin and medieval traditions.

A philosophical dialogue in which Circe serves as a pretext for reflecting on animal virtue: one of Odysseus's companions, turned into a pig, refuses to return to human form, preferring his animal condition.

They came at once to the halls of Circe; she brought them in and seated them on chairs and thrones. Then she prepared for them a mixture of cheese, barley meal, and pale honey with Pramnian wine, and stirred into the drink baneful drugs to make them forget their homeland.

It was the divine Circe who revealed this to me — she who first warned me of all these perils. She said: you will go first to the house of Hades and dread Persephone, to consult the shade of the Theban prophet Tiresias.

Helios, the Sun, fathered Circe and Aeëtes, king of magnificent counsel, whose daughter was the lovely Medea of the slender ankles.

They came ashore on the island of Aeaea, the dwelling of Circe, and found her washing her hair in the sea. She had been tormented by a fearful vision in her sleep, and the walls of her chambers had been dripping with blood.

Circe, powerful in her herbs and magic spells, transformed Scylla into a hideous monster; and Picus, for having spurned her love, was turned into a woodpecker by the jealous sorceress.

The mythical home of Circe, described by Homer as a land surrounded by water and covered in dense forests. Traditionally identified with Cape Circeo on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy.

A promontory on the coast of Latium that the ancients associated with Circe's island. Circe's name is still embedded in Italian place names and ancient tradition.

The homeland of Medea, Circe's niece according to Greek mythology. A distant land east of the Black Sea, associated with eastern magic and the Golden Fleece sought by the Argonauts.

The dwelling of the sun god Helios, Circe's father. Homer and Hesiod place it in the east, where the sun rises, symbolizing the divine and radiant origins of the sorceress.