When Men Become Swine

[Strange Children on the Streets of Edinburgh - St Mary's Street, Feb 2012]

Then Polites the dearest and most trusted of my friends, a man of initiative, spoke:

“Friends, a woman, a goddess perhaps, is singing sweetly within, walking to and fro in front of a great tapestry, and the whole place echoes. Let’s call out to her, now.”

          At that, they shouted, and called to her, and Circe came to open the shining doors, and invite them to enter: and so they innocently followed her inside. Eurylochus alone, suspecting it was a trap, stayed behind. She ushered the rest in, and seated them on stools and chairs, and mixed them a brew of yellow honey and Pramnian wine, with cheese and barley meal. But she mixed in wicked drugs, as well, so they might wholly forget their native land. When they had drunk the brew she gave them, she touched them with her wand, and herded them into the pigsties. Now they had the shape and bristly hide, the features and voice of pigs, but their minds were unaltered from before. There they wept in their pens, and Circe gave them acorns, beech mast, and cornel fruit to eat, such as pigs feed on as they churn the mud.

[Homer, The Odyssey, X]

The Sound of Sirens

[Crumbling stone siren - from the Imperial mother's garden, Kinross 2011]

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"But listen while I tell you what follows - and the gods themselves will see that my words keep fresh in your mind. Your next encounter will be with the Sirens, who bewitch everybody that approaches them. There is no home-coming for the man who draws near them unawares and hears the Siren's voices; no welcome from his wife, no little children brightening at their father's return. For with the music of their song the Sirens cast their spell upon him, as they sit there in a meadow piled high with the mouldering skeletons of men, who's withered skin still hangs upon their bones." 

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Warning of the Goddess Circe to Odysseus. [Homer, The Odyssey, XII]

Returning Home

'As for your home-coming, I myself was never in any doubt: I knew in my heart that you would get back ... And now, to convince you, let me show you the Ithacan scene. ...'

As she [Athene] spoke the goddess dispersed the mist, and the countryside stood plain to view. And now joy came at last to the gallant long suffering Odysseus. So happy did the sight of his own land make him that he kissed the generous soil, then with uplifted hands invoked the Nymphs:

'And I had thought, you Nymphs of the Springs, you Daughters of Zeus, that I should never set my eyes on you again! Accept my greetings and my loving prayers. Gifts too will follow as in days gone by, if through the kindness of this warrior Child of Zeus I am allowed to live and see my son grow up.'

'Be bold,' said Athene of the flashing eyes, 'and dismiss all such doubts from your heart. ...'

[Homer, The Odyssey, XIII. 352-360]