Circe appears in Homer’s Odyssey as the enchantress of Aeaea, an island at the edge of the world. In her house are herbs, woven cloth, tame lions and wolves, and men changed into pigs by her drugs and incantations.

She is often remembered as a seductress or a punishment waiting for men who wander too far. The older story is stranger. Circe knows the nature of things. She can alter form because she can recognize it. Her power lives outside the city, outside marriage, outside ordinary law: a woman alone with her animals, her knowledge, and her own sovereign house.