Circe & Medea: The Greek Witches

We know that the ancient Greeks believed in magic and witchcraft, with Hecate the goddess of magic in Greek mythology. We meet the first of the two most famous witches in Greek mythology in Homer’s Odyssey, Circe, and the next in the story of Jason and the Argonauts, Medea.

Who were these witches and what powers were they imagined having? How were these witches viewed by the ancient Greeks, and how did they compare to opinions of male “magoi.”

Circe: Divine Witch of the Odyssey

According to Homer, Hesiod, and a variety of other sources, Circle enjoyed divine parentage as the daughter of the sun god Helios and the Ocean nymph Perse. A number of other traditions exist around her parentage. For example, in some Orphic traditions, she was the daughter of a different Ocean nymph, Asterope, and the sister of Aeetes, the father of Medea. But she was clearly considered to have some divine blood in her veins, and the connection to Aeetes was clearly designed to bring her closer to Medea.

Circe’s divine heritage is sometimes described as giving her the flashing fiery eyes of Helios, and she may have ridden in his chariot on more than one occasion. She was given knowledge of herbs and potions by her mother Perse. She also often appears more with the powers of a goddess than a witch.

Circe lived on the island of Aeaea, a mythical island that is generally placed in the west near the Italian coast.  During the Gigantomachy, the giant Picolous fled the battle and came to the island. He tried to drive Circe away only to be killed by Helios. From the blood of the slain giant sprang forth the herb Moly with a white colored flower that only grew on the island.

In the Odyssey, it is said that she lives on the island in the middle of a dense wood surrounded by docile lions and wolves. She sits and weaves while luring the unsuspecting to her island with her singing voice. Called Polyphmakos (she who knows many drugs and charms), she uses drugs to change the shape of those she catches in her web.

Circe and the Argonauts

According to the Argonautica, Jason and his Argonauts encountered Circe on her island when they were fleeing from the kingdom of Aeetes. They want her to purify them of the “Miasma” (blood guilt) they have acquired for wrongful killing. She does this by slitting the throat of a pig and sprinkling them with its blood. This was the common way to remove Miasma, with like cleansing like, and was not considered an act of magic.

Circe and Scylla

When the prophetic sea god Glaucus fell in love with the maiden Scylla, he went to Circe to get a potion to make Scylla return his affections. But Circe herself fell for Glaucus, and when he turned her down, she used her magical knowledge to take revenge. She found the spot where Scylla usually took her bath and poisoned the water, so when she bathed there, dogs sprang forth from her thighs and she was turned into a monster.

Circe and Picus

In a similar story, the Latian king Picus, a son of Saturn, fell in love with a nymph named Carens. One day when he was hunting he came upon Circe who was gathering herbs in the woods, and she fell in love with him. When Picus rejected her, she turned him into a woodpecker.

Circe in the Odyssey

In the Odyssey, Circe lures Odysseus and his crew to her island where she feeds them food laced with a magical potion that turns them into pigs. However, Eurylochus did not trust the invitation and did not enter her home, so he could escape to the ship and warn Odysseus and the others who remained behind. Odysseus leaves the ship to help the others, and on the way, he is encountered by Hermes, who gives Odysseus the moly plant to protect himself against Circe’s magic. Odysseus frees his men, and they then remain on the island for a year.

Circe is no turned from enemy to ally and during that time, she tells Odysseus that he must go to the underworld to gain the knowledge he needs to appease the gods and be allowed to return home to his own kingdom (the gods were angry at the Greeks after incidents in the Trojan War). She tells him how to protect himself and communicate with the dead, and after he returns, shows him the different routes home and warns him of the danger.

Circe and the Sons of Odysseus

Hesiod records that during the time they spent together, Circe bore Odysseus three sons, Agrius, Latinus, and Telegonus. In the now lost epic of the Telegony, Circe tells Telegonus who his father is, and he sets out to find Odysseus. He arrives on Ithaca and Odysseus is not there, so he begins to ravage the island until Odysseus returns to defend it. Telegonus kills his father with a poison spear given to him by Circe not knowing who he was. When he learns the identity of the dead man, he returns to Aeaea with his father’s corpse, his half-brother Telemachus and his mother Penelope. Odysseus is buried on the island and Circe makes the other three immortal.

Medea: Sorcerer of the Argonauts

While Circe often feels like a goddess, Medea is very much a magic worker in her surviving stories.

Medea is the daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis who is the possession of the Golden Fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts. Her mother is sometimes identified as the Oceanid Idyia. She is sometimes depicted as the granddaughter of the god Helios and niece of Circe, and sometimes as a daughter of Hecate. In other contexts, she is a priestess of the goddess of magic.

In any case, she is shown as a devotee of Hecate who learned many magical arts from the goddess and her aunt Circe.

Medea Helps Jason Obtain the Fleece

When Jason arrives at Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, Aeetes sets Jason a series of tasks to try and win the fleece. Wanting to assist Jason, Hera convinces Aphrodite or Eros to cast a spell on Medea to fall in love with Jason and help him.

The first task is to plow a field with fire-breathing oxen. Medea gave him an unguent called the “Charm of Prometheus’ to anoint himself and his weapons to protect him from the fire.

After plowing the field, Jason had to sow the field with the teeth of a dragon. Medea warned him that the teeth would spring up into soldiers. She told him to throw a rock into the crowd of soldiers to confuse them so that they would attack and kill each other.

For the final task, Jason had to fight and kill the sleepless dragon that guards the fleece. Medea aided Jason by using narcotic herbs to put the dragon to sleep, allowing Jason to steal away the fleece.

Knowing that her father would detect her complicity, Medea and Jason sailed off with the fleece. But before doing so, they killed Medea’s brother Absyrtus to distract her father with retrieving the body that had been cut up and giving him a proper funeral. This is what gave Medea, Jason, and their crew Miasma blood guilt, which they visited Circe to have cleaned.

Medea in Crete

Medea uses her magic several times on the return to Jason’s homeland. For example, she uses her powers to heal the wounded Atalanta. She delivered a prophecy that Euphemus, the helmsman of Jason’s ship, would one day rule over Libya. She drive the bronze man Talos mad with drugs and deceived him that she would make him immortal by removing a nail from his body, which killed him.

When they arrived in Crete, Medea saw that Jason’s father was too old and infirm to enjoy the festivities, so she invigorated him by withdrawing blood from his body, infusing it with herbs, and retuning it to his body.

When the daughters of King Pelias saw this, they wanted her to perform the same act on their father. Medea agreed, but had no intention of helping Pelias who refused to give up the throne to Jason when he retrieved the fleece as had previously been agreed. Instead, she instructed the daughters that they must cut up their father’s body and put it in a stew of herbs, and that he would spring young from the stew. Medea demonstrated with an old ram. Of course, when the daughter tried the spell, they killed their father. But rather than gain the kingdom, Jason and Medea were forced to flee.

Media Turns on Jason

When Jason and Medea fled, they made their way to Corinth, where they lived as man and wife for ten years and had many children. Medea also ended a famine happening in Corinth by making a sacrifice to Demeter. This drew the attention of Zeus, who desired Medea, but she rejected his advances aware of Hera’s wrath for Zeus’s lovers. As a reward, Hera offered to make Medea’s children immortal.

But after a while in Corinth, Jason abandoned Medea for the daughter of the king of Corinth, Glauce. In the following confusion, Medea’s children were killed by the people of Corinth. She then buried them in the temple of Hera in the hope that they would become immortal.

A bloodier story also survives of Medea sending Glauce a dress and golden coronet covered in poison, which resulted in the death of both the princess and her father when he tried to save his daughter. She then killed two of her children and refused to let Jason hold the bodies before felling to Athens.

Medea in the Aftermath of Jason

When Medea arrived in Athens she married another man, Aegeus, and they had a son Medus. But when Aegeus’ long-lost-son Theseus returned, she convinced her husband that Theseus was an imposter and tried to poison him. But Aegeus recognized the sword he had given his infant son at the final moment and saved Theseus.

Following this disappointment, Medea returned home to Colchis where she discovered that her uncle Perses had deposed her father. She killed her uncle and restored her father.

Witches versus Magoi in Greek Mythology

While both Circe and Medea are described as witches and magic workers, they have a sprinkle of the divine. As independently powerful women, they are also often described as having some of the worst personality traits associated with women. They are jealous, vengeful, manipulative of men, and willing to use their children for their own purposes. These are some of the characteristics that came up again and again against women in the medieval witch trials, reflecting the lack of trust men have in women they cannot control.

Male magos, in Greek mythology do not suffer the same negative reputations. The mythical figure of Orpheus, who was thought to have lived in the Thrace a generation before Homer. He is described as the father of melodious songs who sang magical enchantments. He is described as achieving great deeds such as going down to the underworld to retrieve Eurydice.

Magical powers were also attributed to Pythagoras, the mathematician and philosopher who lived in the 6^th century BCE. He is recorded as being able to transport himself between places and be in two cities within the same hour, being able to communicate with animals, such as eagles and bears, and with nature, such as a river. He could also predict the future.

Empedocles reportedly lived in the 5^th century BCE and was able to heal the sick, rejuvenate the old, influence the weather, and summon the dead.

These venerable, male magic workers were often called ‘Theos Aner” (divine men) rather than Magoi, which was a superstitious word reserved for eastern magicians such as those of Zoroastrianism. There was no word for witch.