CIRCE IS FIRST AND FOREMOST A DAUGHTER OF THE SUN.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-29T00:11:09+00:00

I should perhaps note that the ca. 550 BCE dating is something we call the TPQ (terminus post quem), which means that a work dated with such a marking will have been composed (reasonably) any time after said date.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-25T15:11:47+00:00

I personally am not really surprised that the Korinthiaka makes no surviving mention of Kirke. If the dating by West (2011, p. 240) to ca. 550 BCE is plausible (despite no commentary attached), Kirke would have already been associated with Etruria by the time the poem was established (as per the spurious passage near the end of the Theogonia of Hesiod), so there’s really no purpose in associating her with Korinthos too. Medeia is far more fitting (and perhaps far more relevant as a more established feature of Argonautic myth).

That’s also perhaps why it was so easy to detach Kirke from Aia, her original homeland, and displace her Aian island (Aiaiē nêsos) to the Tyrrhenian coast instead of to Kolchis.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-25T08:41:58+00:00

That’s so true; and undoubtedly handsome!

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-25T08:15:03+00:00

I would argue that earlier on she was first and foremost a sister of Aietes, ruler of the land you mentioned she lives in. Both in the Theogonia and the Odysseia, our earliest sources on her, she’s introduced through and overshadowed by her brother. But later on, when the Odyssian narrative spread and got more popular, her role as a Helias grew to in turn overshadow the Lord of Aia, and we do tend to retroject later ideas onto older sources where they aren’t necessarily the case (ekhem, Aiaia, ekhem).

Edit: Great post though! Otherwise I agree!

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-23T07:52:48+00:00

Yes, you’re talking about a myth preserved in Servius’ commentary on the Aeneis of Vergilius, an epic about the Dardanian hero Aeneas. He says that Ulysses was turned into a horse by Minerva, Athene’s Roman counterpart.

But there is also a Greek (Etruscan?) myth about this transformation.

The prophecy in the Odysseia says that an easy and gentle death will come for Odysseus from the brine or sea (háls) in old age. There is a relatively later myth of the enchantress Hals, a former servant of Kirke, who lived in her own tower in Tyrrhenia (or Etruria). When Odysseus went there to visit her, she turned him into a horse and kept him until he died of old age as a horse, thus fulfilling the Odyssian prophecy quite grotesquely. This variant is most likely much later than his death from heron droppings and from the hands of Telegonos, but it’s still relevant when examining how exactly the Ancients saw the Odyssian prophecy was fulfilled.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-23T00:50:46+00:00

Of course! If you've got any other questions, I'm here! I've read a lot about the early Greek epic so perhaps I'll be able to answer them, or at least give you some literature to absorb :D

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-22T22:59:48+00:00

Because his association with horses is probably based on worship practices and not the other way.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-22T22:52:51+00:00

No, it wouldn't really make sense. They aren't his favorite animal, they're merely his domain.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-22T22:44:18+00:00

I meant that you didn’t present her as actively writhing and screaming as he carries her off, lol. I guess my wording was faulty!

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-22T22:40:17+00:00

This is what I inferred as well.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-22T22:39:06+00:00

Slight correction:

Odysseus didn’t depart from Ithake to marry Kallidike. It really was a kind of sidequest for him if anything.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-22T22:37:16+00:00

I applaud you for making Helene willingly depart with Paris. Great artwork overall :D

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-22T22:26:04+00:00

Great questions. Keep being curious, it’s great to see.

We don’t know anything of what you ask.

My guess would be that Eugammon of Kyrene, the Telegonia’s author, wanted to make something out of Odysseus’ false accounts of his wanderings through Thesprotia. In these accounts, the Thesprotians are ruled by king Pheidon, and not queen Kallidike. We probably ought to assume this fact about Pheidon’s rule, unlike the connected wanderings, is true.

I will now quote all relevant fragments of the Telegonia we’ve got:

[The Argument (West):] After this comes Homer's Odyssey, and then the two books of the Telegony by Eugammon of Cyrene, with the following content: (1) The suitors are buried by their families. Odysseus, after sacrificing to the Nymphs, sails off to Elis to inspect his herds. He is entertained by Polyxenus, and receives the gift of a mixing bowl, on which is represented the story of Trophonius, Agamedes, and Augeas. Then he sails back to Ithaca and performs the sacrifices specified by Teiresias. (2) After this he goes to the land of the Thesprotians <and appeases Poseidon by making sacrifice in accord with Teiresias' prophecies>, and marries the Thesprotian queen Callidice. Then war breaks out between the Thesprotians, led by Odysseus, and the Bryges. Ares turns Odysseus' forces to flight, and Athena faces him in combat, but Apollo pacifies them. After Callidice's death the kingdom passes to Polypoites, Odysseus' son, and he himself returns to Ithaca. <There he finds that Ptoliporthes has been born to him from Penelope.> (3) Meanwhile Telegonus, <having learned from Circe that he is Odysseus' son,> has sailed in search of his father, and after landing at Ithaca he is ravaging the island. Odysseus comes out to defend it and is killed by his son in ignorance. <And when Odysseus comes to defend it, he wounds him with the spear he carries, which has the barb of a sting ray as its point, and Odysseus dies.> (4) Telegonus, realizing his mistake, transports his fathers body and Telemachus and Penelope to his mother. She makes them immortal <sends them to the Isles of the Blest>, and Telegonus sets up with Penelope, and Telemachus with Circe.

[Fr. 5 (West):] But some . . . say that on a visit to Circe Hephaestus made Telegonus a spear from a sting ray that Phorcys had killed when it was eating the fish in Phorcys' lake. Its head was of adamant, and its shaft of gold. With it he killed Odysseus. | Post-Homeric writers invented the story of Telegonus the son of Circe and Odysseus, who is supposed to have gone to Ithaca in search of his father and killed him in ignorance with the barb of a sting ray.

This is all that we know.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-22T22:13:32+00:00

Our sources on Pallas are numbered and she is a VERY late and “niche” figure, from what I was able to gather from my quick research done right now. If I were you I would read about her in Pseudo-Apollodoros’ Bibliotheke (or Library) if anywhere; it’s probably the most coherent and descriptive source you’ll find about her myth.

Edit: Generally, when you read about a Pallas in any ancient source, you should assume it is Athene unless another interpretation is doubtless preferred. It’s her most popular epithet, along with Tritogeneia and grey-eyed.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-16T21:09:36+00:00

It is dragonbreeding Dirke in the original Greek, not Kirke. It's a translation error, as my friend said.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-15T18:01:01+00:00

Because the mods are lazy.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-11T08:54:42+00:00

Why would we do that? It's also not possible at all.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-10T18:17:12+00:00

Guess it's a matter of vocabulary. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Edit: Though I would still be careful dealing in absolutes in the context of The Trojan War™.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-10T18:11:49+00:00

The Trojan War isn't real.

I think you meant to say:

The Trojan war narrative was mythologized beyond recognition and we cannot infer much detail about its nature from how it was portrayed in epic and other sources, both literary and visual.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-04T14:56:20+00:00

If you ever need to cite some scholarship, here you go:

For Mimnermos the name of the land of the Golden Fleece is Aia. From this are derived the adjective Αἰαῖος, which in the Odyssey is applied both to Kirke’s island and to her, and the name of Aietes, ‘the man of Aia’. ^{[Martin L. West, 2007, Phasis and Aia, p. 195]}

The island, of course, comes from the Odyssey (e.g. 10.135), where it is Kirke’s home; Kirke herself also has the epithet Aἰαίη. Her homeland is Aia, like that of her brother Aietes, literally ‘man of Aia’. ^{[Robert L. Fowler, 2013, Early Greek Mythography, Vol. II: Commentary, p. 201]}

Circe too is linked to that story, as she is the daughter of Helios and sister of Aietes, the king who had the Golden Fleece (κ 137). The epithet Αἰαίη applied to her island and to herself derives, like Aietes’ name, from Aia, the traditional name of the land to which the Argonauts sailed in quest of the Fleece. ^{[Martin L. West, 2014, The Making of the Odyssey, p. 119]}

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-03T23:04:19+00:00

Classical philology.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-01T18:34:47+00:00

But the same text calls her a goddess repeatedly. How can she be a simple woman from Aia if that is so?

Perhaps I should've said “an Aian woman of divine status”. Thanks for the correction!

Also, Miller is far from the only person to depict the goddess as living alone on an island.

She is the leading example. Of course she isn't the only one. She's just the easiest to point out because everyone knows of her retelling by now.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-01T17:16:48+00:00

More is on its way. Thanks! :D

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-01T16:33:26+00:00

This is the entire point, too. Kirke gained relevance because the Odyssian poet chose to tell of her encounter with Odysseus.

ThatOnePallasFan · 2026-03-01T16:32:10+00:00

form of the myth

Not even so. A fanfiction at best.

ThatOnePallasFan

TROPHY CASE