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Key Details
Type
IslandMythology
Greek Pantheon
Coordinates
41.2°N, 13°E
About This Location
Aeaea, the house in the glade
Circe's Aeaea in Odyssey 10 is a stone house, wolves and lions under spell, and a drug that turns men into pigs. Hermes gives moly; Odysseus beds the goddess, stays a year, and leaves with instructions for the dead and for the sea-road home. There is no civic cult of Aeaea. Later poets put the island off Italy. The stop is pharmacological and didactic: the witch becomes a guide.
Primary Sources
“She struck them with her wand and penned them in sties. They had the heads and voice and bristles of swine, but their minds were as before.”
More from Greek Pantheon
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River Styx
Body Of WaterThe principal river of the underworld, upon which even the gods swore binding oaths. Charon ferried the dead across its dark waters.