Circe

Crewman of Odysseus turning into a beast

A new tale of Circe, told from the point of view of the daughter of Helios, is just out. It's by Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles.

The scope of the tale as told by Miller reckons with the reality of status as an immortal. Odysseus's visit to her isle, while memorable, is but a blip:

"In Ms. Miller’s version, Circe’s encounter with Odysseus is only a slice of her story, which unfolds over thousands of years and begins in the palace of her father, the sun god Helios. Her family members, who treat her with cruelty or indifference, become infamous in their own right: Her sister Pasiphae marries King Minos and gives birth to the Minotaur, a bullheaded, man-eating monster; while her brother Aeetes grows up to rule Colchis, the land of the Golden Fleece, and fathers Medea, who later murders her children." NYT

Myths as the ancients told them were galaxies filled with tales, stretching through generations, with cities and kings rising and falling. Miller seems alive  to that scale of things. Her blog, enriched by her Greek and Latin, is titled "Myths."

And, as noted in reading the Metamorphoses, Ovid's wit is urbane and literary. In his telling, the myths are changed, at points with parodic effect. Understandably, Miller doesn't draw upon his version of the enchantress.

deliberately omitting a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses where Circe punishes a king who spurns her advances by turning him into a woodpecker. 

Madeline Miller

Circe, Odysseus, Telegonus, Penelope, Telemachus

For Mario ~

Having murdered her husband, the prince of Colchis, she was expelled by her subjects and placed by her father on the solitary island of Aeaea

Circe

A not atypical intro to Circe, daughter of Helios and Perse, or of Hecate. She is prominent in Metamorphoses 13 - 14, using her power to disrupt the love of Glaucus for Scylla, and of Picus for Canens, as well as to turn Macareus and Odysseus's other men into boars. 

But her involvement with Odysseus goes much further, according to some ancient sources:

Towards the end of Hesiod's Theogony (1011f), it is stated that Circe bore Odysseus three sons: Ardeas or Agrius (otherwise unknown); Latinus; and Telegonus, who ruled over the Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans. The Telegony (Τηλεγόνεια), an epic now lost, relates the later history of the last of these. Circe eventually informed him who his absent father was and, when he set out to find Odysseus, gave him a poisoned spear. With this he killed his father unknowingly. Telegonus then brought back his father's corpse, together with Penelope and Odysseus' other son Telemachus, to Aeaea. After burying Odysseus, Circe made the others immortal. According to Lycophron's Alexandra (808) and John Tzetzes' scholia on the poem.

Even that's not enough:

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.72.5) cites Xenagoras, the second century BC historian, as claiming that Odysseus and Circe had three sons: Romus, Anteias, and Ardeias, who respectively founded three cities called by their names: Rome, Antium, and Ardea.

The stories link Circe to Odysseus and to Rome, one way or another.

Apollonius Rhodius tells of Jason and Medea seeking purification from Circe for the murder of Medea's brother, Absyrtus. Medea was the witch of the East responsible for the utter destruction of Jason, his children, his new wife, and father in law, King Creon. Her aunt, Circe is the witch of the West, who apparently meets her match in Odysseus. Thanks to Macareus, Aeneas never meets her at all.

The union of Circe and Odysseus bred Telegonus, who according to some stories killed his father and married his mother. Pseudo-Hyginus claims that from these unions came Italus and Latinus:

Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 127 :
"Telegonus, son of Ulysses [Odysseus] and Circe, sent by his mother to find his father, by a storm was carried to Ithaca . . . Telegonus with Telemachus and Penelope returned to his home on the island of Aeaea by Minerva’s [Athena's] instructions. They brought the body of Ulysses to Circe, and buried it there. By the advise of Minerva [Athena] again, Telegonus married Penelope, and Telemachus married Circe. From Circe and Telemachus Latinus was born, who gave his name to the Latin language."

From Circe and Telemachus Latinus was born, who gave his name to the Latin language; from Penelope and Telegonus Italus was born, who called the country Italy from his own name.

The tale of Telgonus, Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus and Circe apparently was the subject of the Telegony.

Mapping Jason, Odysseus, Aeneas

The three great voyages of the ancient Mediterranean, in order of occurrence - click to enlarge:

Jason

Odysseus

Aeneas

Also under construction: a digital atlas of ancient waters, showing multi-layered maps of land, sea, shipwreck sites and more. Found it here via the remarkable rogueclassicism.

Monkey mimes and other tales of "Campania felix"

Heracles and the Cercopes

One of the many pleasures of the Metamorphoses comes in using the book as a travelogue - a sort of Rough Guide to the Lands of Myth and Fable.

In the speedy summary of Aeneas's wanderings in book 14 we move from Sicily to Cumae, via islands off the coast of Naples. One of them, Pithecusae, we now call Ischia, and Ovid is pleased to tell us in a philological note how it was populated by deceitful humans who were turned into monkey mimics:

Pithecusae, on its barren hill, named after its inhabitants, from pithecium, a little ape. For the father of the gods, Jupiter, hating the lying and deceit of the Cercopes, and the crimes of that treacherous people, changed them into disgraceful creatures, so that, though unlike men, they should seem like them. He contracted their limbs, turned up and blunted their noses, and furrowed their faces with the wrinkles of old age. Their bodies completely covered by yellow hair, he sent them, as monkeys, to this place, but not before he had robbed them of the power of speech, and those tongues born for dreadful deceit, leaving them only the power to complain in raucous shrieks. (Kline)

The Cercopes are the stuff of various stories, including the fine tale of how they annoyed Heracles, and what he did to them, and how, hanging upside down on his shoulder pole and beholding the far side of the hero's posterior, their captivity ended in a liberating explosion of laughter. The above image is of that tale, and is a metope found at Paestum, one of the ancient cities of Magna Graecia, dating back to the 7th century BC.

The tale reminds us that much of what is now southern Italy was essentially an extension of the Greek world for quite a bit longer than the US has been a nation.  As his poem passes through the region of Campania -- the Romans called it campania felix, "fertile (fortunate, happy) countryside," Ovid is doubtless mindful of its history, dutifully composed by Livy, including the Samnite Wars that led to eventual Roman rule.

Whether or not the Romans came from Troy, it is the case that southern Italy was Italian before it was Greek, and the eventual hegemony of Rome over Italy was a reversal and a return. We might bear this in mind as we look at the relationship of Aeneas's journey to that of Odysseus which brought both of them into touch with Polyphemus, Scylla, Aeolus, Sirens, and Circe.

Myth vs. story: A monster who inhabits both modes

In his celebrated essay entitled The Storyteller, Walter Benjamin tells us that one of the functions of fairy tales was to enable us to deal with myth:

The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was the need created by the myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which the myth had placed upon its chest.

Decamps: Polyphemus attacking sailors in their boat

If myth concerns the unspeakable, the monstrous, then the character that can outwit its forces or see through its fearsome exterior can be said to be "liberated" from myth. Benjamin elaborates this idea:

In the figure of the fool it shows us how mankind ”acts dumb” toward the myth; in the figure of the youngest brother it shows us how one’s chances increase as the mythical primitive times are left behind; in the figure of the man who sets out to learn what fear is it shows us that the things we are afraid of can be seen through; in the figure of the wiseacre it shows us that the questions posed by the myth are simple-minded, like the riddle of the Sphinx; in the shape of the animals which come to the aid of the child in the fairy tale it shows that nature not only is subservient to the myth, but much prefers to be aligned with man. The wisest thing—so the fairy tale taught mankind in olden times, and teaches children to this day—is to meet the forces of the mythical world with cunning and with high spirits. (This is how the fairy tale polarizes Mut, courage, dividing it dialectically into Untermut, that is, cunning, and Ubermut, high spirits.) The liberating which the fairy tale has at its disposal does not bring nature into play in a mythical way, but points to its complicity with liberated man. A mature man feels this complicity only occasionally, that is, when he is happy; but the child first meets it in fairy tales, and it makes him happy.

The contrast is between a mythic power stronger than nature and a mode of story that gives us tools to deal with mythic horror. No time to get into all that here, but for our purposes, Benjamin's thought might suggest another way to view Ulysses in Metamorphoses 13-14. The Greek hero  finds the wits to escape myth's dominion, making his way back to the domestic world after having encountered and eluded a fair sampling of mythic beings, powers, and forces.

One example of those fearsome mythic beings is, of course, the cyclops Polyphemus. Ovid manages to give him two very different appearances in these books -- one as Homeric monster, the other as the violently disappointed lover of Galatea. What is Ovid up to?

Poussin: Landscape with Polyphemus

Bringing back Philoctetes

Sophocles' Philoctotes offers the confrontation of two modes of getting things done - (via Parada's entry on Neoptolemus):

Neoptolemus: It is not in my nature to achieve anything by means of evil cunning ... But I am ready to take the man by force and without treachery.

Odysseus: I, too, in my youth once had a slow tongue and an active hand. But now I see that the tongue, not action, is what masters everything among men... I command you to take Philoctetes by deceit.

Neoptolemus: Then you think it brings no shame to speak what is false?

Odysseus: No, not if the falsehood yields deliverance.

Hand and Mind: Ajax vs. Ulysses

After Ajax has scornfully cast Ulysses as the son of Sisyphus (which was a rumor), that is, a sneaky cowardly fellow who can't be trusted, let alone rewarded with the greatest honor of the Trojan War (the arms of Achilles, the god-crafted, physical embodiment of his glory), Ulysses sums his view of why he, and not Ajax, merits the prize:

tibi dextera bello
utilis, ingenium est, quod eget moderamine nostro;
tu vires sine mente geris, mihi cura futuri;
tu pugnare potes, pugnandi tempora mecum
eligit Atrides; tu tantum corpore prodes,
nos animo; quantoque ratem qui temperat, anteit
remigis officium, quanto dux milite maior,
tantum ego te supero. nec non in corpore nostro
pectora sunt potiora manu: vigor omnis in illis. (13.361-69)

Here's a slightly modified version of Kline's translation:

Your right hand, useful in war, needs the guidance of my intellect (ingenium). You have power (vires) without mind (mente), mine is the care for the future. You can fight, but Atrides, with me, chooses the time to fight. You only display the flesh (corpora), I the spirit (animo: "mind," "soul"). By as much as he who steers the ship is superior to him who rows, by as much as the general exceeds the soldier, by that much I surpass you. No less is the head (pectora: "heart, mind") more powerful than the hand, in our body: the energy of the whole (vigor omnis) is within it.

If Ajax's speech was entirely pragmatic, Ulysses's vocabulary borders on the metaphysical. Part of the irony here is that neither the hand nor the mind is willing to acknowledge the necessity of belonging to a larger whole. Without the mind, a hand is merely an aimless instrument. Without the hand, the mind's strategic powers reside feckless in a vacuum. Execution requires both hand and mind, and the greatest honors are given to artists, athletes, surgeons, craftsmen, etc. who possess and use intelligent fingertips.

In Ovid's scene in Metamorphoses 13, hand and mind are at war -- so passionate are both to claim the honor of being the sole agent of victorious warcraft that the matter of agency is itself put in question. If we can't agree on which of the executants should be credited, then we can't authoritatively say who did what. When agency is suspended, so is the glory of having acted. The very thing that makes the prize shield and helmet so valuable -- kleos, glory -- has gotten lost, unassignable, thanks to the debate that was supposed to assign it.

Detail of Achilles' shield, Kathleen A. Vail

Another part of the irony lies in what has caused this fight: bella movet clipeus - "even his shield makes war," Ovid says. If Ulysses and Ajax have blurred agency, then it's quite possible for the shield to turn into the actual agent of their conflict. Something that is normally considered a tool of war is now its cause. This kind of reversal is a recurrent phenomenon in the Metamorphoses. 

We might argue that this sort of statement -- "the shield makes war" -- is merely a shorthand way of saying that the desires of the two men for the shield and what it represents caused them to fight (and, ultimately, resulted in the suicide of one of them). But it is agency itself that's been put in question. If one cannot decide whether the mind or the hand is acting, then it's equally plausible to say that the shield moved the war as it is to say their desire for the shield was the cause. Agent and instrument can be reversed like cause and effect. When we hear someone say that "_____ made me do it" -- (if you google that expression, the results are quite interesting), they are entering into a willing suspension, not of disbelief, but of will itself, i.e., of agency.

Ulysses plays with the notion of agency in his speech. While Ajax emphasized how he stood against Hektor while Ulysses was nowhere to be found, Ulysses himself  says things like:

Why does Ulysses dare to go through the sentries and commit himself to night; to enter not only the walls of Troy but also the heights of the citadel, past the sharp swords; and to snatch the goddess from her temple, and carry her captive through the enemy ranks? If I had not done it, the son of Telamon would have carried the seven-layered bull’s-hide shield on his left arm in vain. That night the victory over Troy was established: I defeated Pergama then, when I secured the possibility of her defeat.

For Ajax, the practical, direct model of cause and effect is the only model. For Ulysses, war is like a game of chess. A move might not directly cause the end, but indirectly it can be decisive. Once he and Diomedes have stolen the Palladium, "I defeated Pergama." There are actually many more steps before the war is done -- he will, for instance, have to persuade Philoctetes to return, the wounded hero who is destined to kill Paris with the arrows of Heracles. But Ulysses can elide all those intervening causes and effects, because his strategic actions "established" the fall of Troy.

When the mind dismisses a cause that has to occur because it is only "a" cause, not THE cause, there's a contempt for the hand that's at least equal to the hand's blindness to the role of the mind. Mind and hand are mutually necessary, but also, it seems, incapable of sharing honor and responsibility. They are jealous of their own rights and agencies to the exclusion of each other (Ajax ultimately excludes himself from existing). With the obliteration of agency, instead of history we have mystery.

This framing of the problem of agency might be worth keeping "in mind" as we look at Ovid's approach to the story of Aeneas and the founding of Rome, the new Troy.

A contest of fact and interpretation

The old saying goes: "To the victor belong the spoils," but what if there are two victors? After the battle of weapons comes the war of words, wits, and rhetorical skill.

The debate between Ajax and Odysseus for the armor of Achilles is a case study in contested facts, insinuated opinions, and skillful use of emphasis, tone, and manipulative deviance from the truth.

If Nestor exemplified the motivations of a speaker of history, the contestations manifest in the debate of the two Greek heroes are a catalog of interpretive strategies the day after an event has occurred. (See, for example, the imaginative tales told by each side after the recent US presidential election.)

A detailed analysis of the speeches is beyond the scope of this entry. But given the claims made by each party as to his relative merits as the cause of the fall of Troy, just note that a while back, we talked about some of the conditions needing to be met for Troy to fall.

It turns out our list was not complete -- thanks to the comic Roman playwright Plautus, we've found more elements, and they've now added to the post. Eventually we'll get them all.

Debate of Odysseus and Ajax

After the Iliad

Metamorphoses 12 gave us a sideways glimpse of Troy through the lens of Nestor, the voice of the epic past, featuring a pre-Iliadic battle over a stolen bride.

Book 13 begins at Troy after the death of Achilles. The scene unfolds as drama as Odysseus and Ajax debate their relative merits for deserving to be awarded the armor of Achilles.

Homer

For more information about Troy, a good source is found here on Livius.org -- at the top of the page are links to the various layers of Troy's archaeological remains, as well as to ancient texts that completed the Iliad's story, including the Cypria and the Little Iliad.

The general site entitled Livius.org is a superb encyclopedia of illustrated, brief articles on the ancient world. I've put a link to it on the right.

Contextual notes for Metamorphoses 12

A few notes on the context for Metamorphoses book 12:

Ixion, notorious fellow and begetter, one way or another, of the Centaurs:

Ixion married Dia, daughter of Eioneus 5; but since the groom would not hand over the gifts of wooing to his wife, Eioneus 5 took his mares as security for these. Ixion then summoned his father-in-law to his home, promising him to comply in every respect; but when Eioneus 5 arrived, he cast him into a pit which he had filled with fire, thus killing him. By Dia, Ixion became father of Pirithous and Phisadie, a woman who was given in servitude to Helen by the DIOSCURI (see also CONSTELLATIONS). But, having committed an enormous crime against a relative (for some have said that Ixion was the first to stain mortal men with kindred blood), there was no one in the world willing to purify him, except Zeus himself, who out of pity, cleansed him at last.

The Cloud 

But then, ungrateful Ixion fell in love with Hera, and made advances to her. And Zeus, having heard Hera's report on this matter, made a Cloud Resembling Hera (Nephele 1) so as to confirm his wife's words by deluding the man's temerity. This is how Ixion lay with a cloud; and believing that he had enjoyed Hera's love, he went around boasting that he had slept with the goddess. From the union of Ixion with the Cloud, some say, the CENTAURS were born; but others say instead that Centaurus was born

"without the blessing of the Graces" (Pindar, Pythian Odes 2.46). 

... and that this monstrous offspring later mated with mares, from whom the CENTAURS were born.

How Pelops won Hippodamia 3

Pirithous defending his bride, Hippodamia 4, from Centaurs

The suitors of Helen - busloads of them.

The oath of Tyndareus. Tyndareus was the husband of Leda. After the Swan visited her and Helen had become a beautiful young woman, he took advice from Odysseus on how to handle the question of her myriad suitors. Note how the fate of Odysseus (via his marriage to Penelope, daughter of Icarius, brother of Tyndareus) is intertwined with his scheme to protect the integrity of Helen's marriage:

War threatened again when SUITORS came from many kingdoms of Hellas to compete for the hand of Helen. And Tyndareus, seeing such a multitude, feared that choosing one of them might provoke the others to start quarrelling. Noticing his plight, Odysseus (who was among the SUITORS) promised that if Tyndareus would help him to win the hand of his niece Penelope (daughter of Icarius 1), he in return would reveal a way by which any trouble could be prevented. Tyndareus accepted the bargain, and Odysseus told him to exact an oath from the SUITORS that they should defend and protect the one chosen as Helen's husband against any wrong done against him in regard to his marriage. This is how the curse known as "The Oath of Tyndareus" came about—the SUITORS being sworn by the king, and Odysseus receiving Penelope from a reluctant Icarius 1. 

[For it is told that Icarius 1 tried to make the couple settle in Lacedaemon. And when he could not persuade them, and they set forth to Ithaca, he followed their chariot begging her daughter to stay. Finally, as Odysseus could no longer endure so much fatherly love and devotion, he bade Penelope either to come with him willingly, or else go back with her father to Lacedaemon, if she so preferred. She did not reply but indicated, by covering her face with a veil, that she wished to depart with her husband. The Oath of Tyndareus proved to be a curse also for its inventor. Odysseus remained bound to the oath he himself had conceived, and when time came he was forced to go to war. Furthermore, an oracle had declared that if he sailed to Troy he would be away twenty years, and he would lose everything. So, being reluctant to join the alliance, Odysseus feigned madness, but Palamedes, seeing through the deception, forced him to desist and join.]

The ceremony of the oath was performed in a place later called "The Tomb of the Horse," on the road from Sparta to Arcadia. For before administrating the oath to the SUITORS, Tyndareus sacrificed a horse, and after they had been sworn standing upon the pieces of the horse, the animal was buried in the same place. The Oath of Tyndareus had the value of a defence pact, for later, when the seducer Paris came to Sparta and abducted Helen taking her to Troy, the oath was invoked by her husband Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon in order to force the kings of Hellas to join the coalition that sailed against Troy in order to demand the restoration of both wife and treasures.

Short version of the Oath story:

Odysseus promised to solve the problem in a satisfactory manner if Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. Tyndareus readily agreed and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with the chosen one. This stratagem succeeded and Helen and Menelaus were married.

Setting and background in Metamorphoses 7

In the latter half of Metamorphoses 7, Ovid pointedly stage manages meetings between Aeacus and Minos, and then Aeacus and Cephalus. These latter happen to be ancestors, respectively, of Achilles and Odysseus -- the chief heroes of the Homeric epics.

Aeacus, son of Zeus and father of Peleus, was the king of Aegina - an island to the west of Athens - and grandfather of Achilles. Cephalus, grandson of Aeolus, was the great-grandfather of Odysseus through Clymene, the woman he married after the death of Procris. The line (known as "the line of only sons") is Cephalus -> Arcesius -> Laertes -> Odysseus -> Telemachus.

Aeacus while he reigned in Aegina was renowned in all Greece for his justice and piety, and was frequently called upon to settle disputes not only among men, but even among the gods themselves.[12][13] He was such a favourite with the latter, that, when Greece was visited by a drought in consequence of a murder which had been committed, the oracle of Delphi declared that the calamity would not cease unless Aeacus prayed to the gods that it might.[2][14] Aeacus prayed, and it ceased in consequence. (Aeacus)