Aeaea

That bark, which was now the only vessel left of all the gallant navy that had set sail with him from Troy, He pushed off from the shore, cheering the sad remnant of his men, whom horror at the sight of their countryman's fate had almost turned to marble.

The Adventures of Ulysses by Charles Lamb CHAPTER II On went the single ship, till it came to the island of Aeaea, where Circe, the dreadful daughter of the sun, dwelt.

She was deeply skilled in magic, a haughty beauty, and had hair like the sun.

The sun was her parent, and begot her and her brother Aetes, such another as herself, upon Percy, daughter of Oceanus.

Give them strict command to bind you hand and foot to the mast, and in no case to set you free, till you are out of danger of the temptation, though you should entreat it and implore it ever so much, but to bind you rather the more, for your requesting to be loosed, so shall you escape that snare.

Ulysses then prayed her that she would inform him what Scylla and Charybdis were, which she had taught him by name to fear.

She replied, Sailing from Aeaea to Trinacria, you must pass at an equal distance between two fatal rocks, incline never so little either to the one side or to the other.

and your ship must meet with certain destruction.

The great promontory rises above the sea, and according to a tradition stretching back to antiquity, was associated with Circe.

After the catastrophe with the Laestrygonians, Ulysses and his remaining companions reach the island of Aeaea, A-E-S-E-A, home of the enchantress Circe.

Now, Circe turns some of his men into pigs.

Ulysses, protected by the magical herb given to him by Hermes, resists her spell, and eventually Circe restores his companions, and Ulysses remains with her for a year.

Now that we've heard about Odysseus' journeys as a whole, we can step back and compare and contrast the different islands to understand what Homer is showing us about why Odysseus chooses what he chooses and what that choice actually means for our hero.

To begin with Circe on Aeaea, as that's the first woman that Odysseus encounters on his journeys after Troy.

If we recall, and I discussed Circe and her island in lecture 6, on Aeaea, Circe lives in the midst of woods.

They are bewitching woods.

She lives with animals, wild animals around her, and it's a sort of magical environment.

This is the first low and base level of existence that Odysseus encounters on his journey.

The next woman Odysseus encounters is Calypso on Ogygia.

Now, we can compare her to Circe's on Aeaea, and we can see some very interesting similarities and some differences.

Let's just take a look at this book, Book 12, in a microscope first, and then we will talk about the larger story.

After Book 11, The Underworld, Odysseus and his company return to Aeaea, still super insecure about how I pronounce things.

In order to give Elpenor his proper cremation, go through all of the first part of the prophecy, Tiresias gives him the boat oar across the land, the burial mound, all that stuff.

There's another moment with Cersei as she is giving Odysseus privately another sort of prophecy or oracle, however you want to view it but it's different from what Tiresias gives them and it's more instructive this is what you can expect not what is going to happen necessarily but on the pathway that you have to go to get there, this is what stands before you.

Like just super mega bad.

So yeah, Surtsey Island.

I see the, I like the scene.

I like the scenes where we see the animals and they're just very docile and And that felt very eerie.

Medea and Jason are collected by the Argo.

They head to Aeaea, to Medea's Aunt Circe, whose use orders to purify them for the murder.

She purifies them, but sends them packing.

She doesn't approve of the whole sibling murder thing.

Um, Odysseus still narrating his adventures to King Alcinous and the Phaeacians, picking up where we left off in book 11 with the ship escaping from Hades and reentering the world of the living.

Back to Circe's island, Aeaea, uh, to speak to her again.

He's following Tiresias's, uh, prophecy, his tasks set out for him, bury Elpenor, drag that big old boat oar across the land, put it on a mound, uh, fulfilling that part of the prophecy, the promise, the instructions pretty quickly, and Circe returns to offer Odysseus and his men, um, food, rest, drink.

I thought a little bit more...