Odysseus and Circe — The Enchantress Who Turned Men Into Swine and the One Man She Couldn't
After the Cyclops, after Aeolus and the bag of winds that his own men opened within sight of Ithaca, after cannibal giants who smashed ships like eggs against cliffs — Odysseus landed on one more island. This one had lions and wolves that wagged their tails like dogs, a woman singing inside who made men walk toward her without thinking, and a magic that turned everyone who drank her wine into something that grunted. Everyone except him.
By BookOfWorldHistory·May 8, 2026·History·12 min read · 2,382 words
Originally published at: https://www.bookofworldhistory.com/blog/odysseus-circe-aeolus-winds-giants-greek-mythology-odyssey
After the Cyclops, after Aeolus and the bag of winds that his own men opened within sight of Ithaca, after cannibal giants who smashed ships like eggs against cliffs — Odysseus landed on one more island. This one had lions and wolves that wagged their tails like dogs, a woman singing inside who made men walk toward her without thinking, and a magic that turned everyone who drank her wine into something that grunted. Everyone except him.
The trouble with following Odysseus through the Odyssey is that just when you think things have reached their lowest point, they find a way to get worse. He had already survived the Cyclops. He had already watched Ithaca appear on the horizon, close enough that his men could see people tending beacon fires on the shore, only to have everything blown away in an instant by the bag of winds his own crew opened while he slept. He had already faced cannibal giants.
And yet each disaster led to another shore, another landing, another unknown island with smoke rising through the trees. What the story keeps demonstrating, through one reversal after another, is that Odysseus's particular talent — the many counsels, the quick thinking, the refusal to stay down — was not a skill that got him home quickly. It was a skill that kept him alive long enough to eventually get there.
This stretch of his journey runs through three encounters that couldn't be more different from each other: a god who gave a gift, a race of monsters who destroyed nearly everything, and a woman who was more dangerous than either — and who, in the end, let him go.
Circe — the golden-haired enchantress of the island palace — became one of the most painted and retold figures from Homer's Odyssey, the woman whose drugged wine turned men into swine and whose magic finally met something it couldn't overcome in the form of Odysseus armed with the plant the god Hermes gave him.
Aeolus and the Bag of Winds — A Gift That Became a Catastrophe
After leaving the Land of the Lotus Eaters, the ships of Odysseus came eventually to a floating island ringed with bronze walls and sheer cliffs dropping straight into the sea. This was the home of Aeolus, keeper of the winds — not a minor god, not a monster, but a host who received Odysseus with genuine warmth.
For a full month Odysseus and his men rested there, feasting with Aeolus and his sons and daughters. When it was time to leave, Aeolus gave Odysseus a parting gift that should have solved every navigational problem for the rest of the voyage home: a great leather bag, tightly sealed with a silver cord, containing every wind he ruled except one. The West Wind he left free, blowing soft and steady, to carry the ships straight to Ithaca. With every other wind locked in the bag, nothing could blow them off course.
For nine days and nine nights they sailed smoothly. On the tenth, they could see Ithaca — hills, forests, people moving on the shore tending fires. Home was an hour away. Maybe less.
Odysseus had been awake at the sail for all nine days, not trusting the moment to anyone else. At last, with the destination in sight, he lay down and slept.
His men had been watching the leather bag in the hold the whole voyage. They talked themselves into certainty that it held gold and silver — treasure from Aeolus that Odysseus was keeping for himself while they who had fought just as hard at Troy received nothing. The greed built slowly and then it tipped. They loosened the silver cord.
Every wind in the world rushed out at once. The hurricane hit the ships and drove them back across the sea. The men of Odysseus watched their own homeland shrink behind them until it was a blue speck and then nothing at all, and they wept at what their own hands had done.
Odysseus woke to the sound of the storm and understood immediately what had happened. For a moment, the story says, his heart failed him and he wanted to throw himself into the waves. Then his courage came back — that particular stubbornness that defines him — and he made his men row back to Aeolus's island to try again.
Aeolus refused. He was not angry exactly, but he was finished helping. A man the gods themselves were against, he said — because what else could explain this? — was not a man he would help again. He told Odysseus to leave.
So they left, rowing by hand against winds that pushed back against them, worn out and sick at heart, for six days and nights before another shore appeared ahead.
Aeolus gave Odysseus a gift that should have made the rest of the voyage home simple — all the winds locked in a leather bag except the West Wind, which would carry the ships straight to Ithaca — but the greed of his own crew destroyed that chance within sight of their homeland.
The Island of Giants — The Harbour That Looked Safe and Wasn't
On the seventh day they found land — an island where a race of giants lived, though they didn't know that yet. What they saw from the water was a harbour that looked like a gift after everything they had been through. Narrow entrance, steep cliffs on either side, the water inside smooth and flat as a pond with barely a ripple on it. Every ship steered into that haven, grateful and exhausted.
Every ship except Odysseus's. He moored his outside the harbour mouth, tied to a rock, and climbed a crag above with some of his men to look at the land before committing to it. He saw no people, no cattle — just smoke rising above the trees in the direction of a town. He sent three men to investigate.
They followed a track worn by cart wheels down from the hills and came near a town. At a spring outside it they met a princess drawing water — the king's daughter, who pointed them toward the palace without giving any hint of what was inside. The queen of the island was there. She was enormous, the story says, the size of a mountain peak, and so horrible to look at that the men felt sick with fear the moment they saw her.
She called her husband. He came in, seized one of the three men, and ate him. The other two ran.
The giant raised a war cry that brought every other giant on the island out and running for the cliffs above the harbour. They broke off rocks and rained them down on the ships below. The ships that had seemed so safely sheltered were trapped. One by one they were crushed, the timbers splintering, the men in the water grabbed by the giants like fish on spears and carried off.
Odysseus heard the noise from outside the harbour. He drew his sword, cut the rope holding his ship to the rock, and ordered his crew to row. They rowed. The ship cleared the cliffs and made open water while behind them the harbour that had looked so peaceful filled with the sound of breaking wood and men dying.
His ship was the only one that got out. Every other vessel and most of the men were gone.
The harbour of the Laestrygonian giants looked like shelter after days of hard rowing against the wind — smooth water, enclosed walls, no waves — but it became a trap that destroyed every ship except Odysseus's, which survived only because he had moored outside and cut free the moment he heard what was happening.
Circe — The Singing, the Swine, and the Sword
One ship. Whatever men had survived of his original fleet. They landed on the next island they found and lay on the beach for two full days and nights, too worn down and grief-struck to move.
On the third morning Odysseus climbed a hill above the harbour to look at the land. He saw smoke rising above thick woods — a palace somewhere in the trees. Coming back down, he killed a large stag he crossed on the path, slung it across his shoulders, and carried it back to the men. He put food in front of them, told them to eat, and they did. They slept. When morning came he told them plainly that he didn't know where the sun rose or set from here, that they were surrounded by sea on all sides, and that they needed to find out who lived in those woods.
The men wept when they heard this. They had no courage left for another unknown shore. But Odysseus divided them into two groups and drew lots to decide who would go inland to look. The lot fell to a man named Eurylochus, who went with twenty-two men.
Deep in the forest they found the palace of Circe, built of polished stone, set in a clearing. Around the clearing roamed lions and wolves — not threatening, but fawning. Wagging their tails and jumping up on the men like dogs greeting their owner. The wrongness of that was obvious and unsettling. Wild animals don't behave that way. These had been enchanted.
From inside the palace came a voice singing — a woman's voice, silvery and sweet, singing while she wove something of extraordinary beauty. The sound pulled at the men. The one Odysseus loved most among his crew called out to her. She came to the doors and opened them, and with the light of her face on them she gently invited them in. All but Eurylochus went. He held back — he had been at the giant princess's house and he remembered how that started.
Inside, Circe gave them food and wine, drugged with something that made them forget entirely that they had a home or wanted to return to it. Then she struck them with her wand and they became swine. Four-footed, bristled, snout-faced — but with their human minds still inside, aware of everything, locked in pig bodies in a sty.
Eurylochus waited. When nobody came back out, he went back to the ship and could barely speak for grief. When he finally got the story out, Odysseus slung his sword over his shoulder, picked up his bow, and told Eurylochus to lead him back.
Eurylochus grabbed his knees. He begged him not to go. Odysseus would not come back, he said. None of them would. Odysseus looked at him with contempt and told him to stay by the ship if he wanted. Then he walked into the woods alone.
Hermes in the Forest — The Plant That Changed Everything
Halfway through the woods, a young man appeared on the path in front of him. He was carrying a golden wand, and he took Odysseus by the hand and spoke plainly: he was Hermes, messenger of the gods, and he had come to tell Odysseus what was waiting for him and what to do about it.
Circe would feed him drugged food and wine. She would strike him with her wand expecting him to become a pig like his men. But Hermes had something that would prevent it.
He held out a plant — black root, white flower, hard enough to dig that ordinary men could barely pull it from the ground. Its name was Moly. If Odysseus carried it, the drugs in Circe's food and wine would have no effect. When she struck him with the wand and nothing happened, he should draw his sword and rush at her as if to kill her. That, Hermes told him, would break her composure entirely. She would back down, swear to do him no harm, and treat him and his men well from that point forward. But he had to make her swear the oath before he put the sword away.
Hermes disappeared back into the trees. Odysseus walked on to the palace.
Circe received him the way she received everyone — beautifully, welcoming, pouring wine into a golden cup and watching as he drank it. He ate what she offered. He sat in the carved silver-studded chair and waited.
She struck him with the wand and told him to go join the others in the sty.
Odysseus drew his sword.
Circe dropped to the floor and wrapped herself around his knees. She knew him — Hermes had described him, she said, had told her that a man named Odysseus from Troy in a black ship would come to her one day, the one man who would be proof against her drugs. She asked him to put the sword away and be at peace.
Odysseus asked, reasonably enough, how he was supposed to trust the person who had just turned his men into pigs. She swore an oath. He sheathed the sword.
Hermes appearing in the forest to give Odysseus the moly plant — black-rooted, white-flowered, nearly impossible for ordinary men to pull from the ground — was the pivotal moment that shifted the encounter with Circe from certain defeat to something Odysseus could actually navigate.
The Men Restored — and a Year That Passed Too Easily
Her servants laid out linen and purple, set silver tables with golden dishes and wine in golden cups. They drew a bath for him and brought clean clothes. Circe asked why he wasn't eating.
Odysseus told her. He couldn't sit at a table while his men were penned in a sty. If she wanted him to eat, she should let them out first.
She went to the sty, opened the doors, waved her wand, and touched each pig with a counter-charm. The bristles and snouts and four-footed bodies fell away. The men came out looking, the story says, even stronger and better than they had before — and when they saw Odysseus standing there they rushed to him, took his hands, and wept for joy. Even Circe, watching this, found something shifting in her. Her hard heart softened. She told Odysseus to bring the rest of his men up from the shore.
He went down, found them grieving, expecting never to see him again. They were so glad when he appeared unhurt that they wept all over again — the story says they were as happy as if they had themselves reached home. He told them to drag the ship ashore, hide the supplies in sea caves, and come up to the palace.
Eurylochus tried to stop them. He stood in front of the men and called Odysseus reckless, named him responsible for the Cyclops disaster, warned them that Circe would turn them all into wolves or lions or swine to guard her gates. Odysseus was so furious he put his hand on his sword. The others stepped between them, pleaded for Eurylochus, suggested he stay and guard the ship.
Eurylochus, shamed, came with them anyway.
Circe gave the tired and hungry men baths and warm clothes and a great feast. When Odysseus saw his men safe and eating well, he finally ate too.
They stayed for a year. The palace was comfortable, the food was good, and Circe proved a generous host once the matter of the sword and the oath was settled. A full year went by before the men came to Odysseus and pointed out, quietly but firmly, that it might be time to remember Ithaca.
That night he asked Circe to let them go. She had promised, and she kept the promise. She warned him of the dangers still ahead on the voyage — detailed, specific warnings about what he would encounter and how best to survive it — and then sent them off with a wind from her own hand to fill the sails.
As the ship moved through the water she walked back through the trees to her palace, and the story says her heart was sad at the parting. Whether she regretted the evil she had done to men before Odysseus came, or simply regretted that this particular man was leaving — the story doesn't say. It just notes the sadness, and moves on with the ship.
When Circe restored the men from pig to human — touching each with her counter-charm, watching them emerge from the sty looking stronger than before — even she was moved by the reunion with Odysseus that followed, a rare crack in the composure of a woman who had spent considerable time turning visitors into livestock.