Characters
- Circe — enchantress; drugs fail; swears and restores
- Eurylochus — escapee who warns; later resists return
- Lyssa — giver of moly; instructor on the path
- Odysseus — receives moly; overpowers Circe; wins the crew’s restoration
- Transformed crew — swine, then men again
Places
- Circe’s land — Circe’s island and hall
- Circe’s sties — temporary prison of the crew
- Path inland from the shore — Hermes’ meeting place
Themes
Narrative
On Aeaea, Eurylochus’s party found Circe’s hall among tame wolves and lions. She mixed drugs in their cup, struck them with her wand, and drove them into sties as swine—human minds in swine bodies. Eurylochus alone fled to warn Odysseus.
Going alone to rescue them, Odysseus met Hermes in a youth’s likeness. The god gave him the herb moly—black root, milk-white flower, hard for mortals to dig—as antidote, and coached him: when Circe struck, draw the sword, rush her, and exact an oath before accepting her bed. Circe’s drugs failed; she recognized the man of many turns, swore the great oath of the gods, and restored the crew with wand and ointment so that they became younger and taller than before. The moly episode thus marks Hermes’ crucial aid and Circe’s turn from destroyer to hostess—before the year-long stay and the order to seek Tiresias.