Wining the Swine

Wining the Swine

The loss and recapture of “nostos”

The Odyssey, as a work of literature, is an epic poetic journey possessing cyclical themes of hardships and triumphs. During his time on the isle of the goddess Circe, Odysseus and his crewmates follow a preexisting theme of The Odyssey in which they, as a group, confront a dire situation in order to find eventual salvation through a combination of elements. It is not as though the crew continuously happen upon separate problems, solve them, and move on (even though the separate occurrences may have appeared mere happenstance). Each “scene” of The Odyssey builds on each previous scene to create a patchwork pyramid of fables and myths, each individual one designed to demonstrate in part how a journey becomes an end in itself. Although the style and content of Homer’s lyric lends one little by way of internal knowledge of Odysseus’s intent via complex internal monologue, we are able to address his intents and motivations through a combination of external elements, namely his actions. By analyzing these external elements in cooperation with an aforementioned knowledge of themes within the epic, one can give an explanation of the scene on Circe’s island: Why does Circe transform the laymen into swine and in turn why and how does Odysseus succeed in saving them?

We are given precious little information as to why Circe transforms anyone into any animal. We know there are lions and wolves when the men arrive, but we do not know their personalities or Circe’s motivations for turning them into wolves rather than pigs (Page 157, line 210). We are, conversely, given a possible motivation for Circe turning the men into pigs on line 236 when she first gives the men a potion to make them forget their country, and subsequently turns them into pigs. Therefore, once they are turned into pigs their “minds within them stayed as they had been before” (241). This line does not simply mean that their minds remained those of free men; rather, they stayed with their minds drugged, still in the mindset of the potion and subsequently without thought of returning to their country. The men are turned into pigs as a representation of sloth and relative incompetence, simply insofar as pigs are more slothful and less intelligent than men. For comparison, had they been turned into noble stags, who are notoriously free-spirited, that would not have worked as a good symbol of their loss of knowledge.

The pig-metaphor is layered upon by the gluttony and sloth of Odysseus and his men even after they are turned back into men. It is important to remember that both Odysseus and Eurylochos both were not affected by Circe’s drink. On a plot level, Odysseus evaded Circe because of Hermes’ divine intervention, which is representative of his motivation and intelligence as superhuman (286-305). This is made clearer when she says, “There is a mind in you no magic will work on. You are then resourceful Odysseus” (229-230). It is because of his intelligence he is not physically turned into a pig; however, he and his crewmates share the same fate in human form after Circe transforms