Their hearts sank, remembering Antiphates and the Cyclops. Still I divided the crew in two and cast lots. Eurylochus’s band drew the short straw. Twenty-two men went inland weeping; I kept the rest by the ship.
In a clearing they found Circe’s house of polished stone, with mountain wolves and lions about it — her own drugs had tamed them. The beasts did not attack but stood on their hind legs and fawned. Inside, Circe sang in a sweet voice as she worked a great web immortal and shining. Polites, the man I loved most for his sense, called her out.
She opened the bright doors and invited them in. All entered in their folly except Eurylochus, who smelled a trap and stayed outside. She seated them, mixed cheese, barley, and pale honey in Pramnian wine, and stirred in an evil drug to make them forget their country. When they had drunk she struck them with her wand and penned them in the sties. They had the heads and voices and bristles of pigs, but their minds were as before. She threw them mast and acorns, food of swine.
Eurylochus ran back so shaken he could not speak at first. At last he told how the others had vanished into the house and never come out, and how he alone had escaped. I slung on my bronze sword and bow and ordered him to lead me back. He clung to my knees and begged me not to go — better to sail with those still left. I told him to stay by the ship and eat if he feared; I myself would go.
On the path Hermes of the golden wand met me in a young man’s shape, the first beard on his lip. He warned me what Circe would do and gave me a plant the gods call moly — black root, milk-white flower, hard for mortals to dig, easy for gods. I was to draw my sword when she struck with the wand and rush as if to kill her; she would shrink and offer her bed; I must not refuse, but first make her swear the gods’ great oath not to harm me, or she would unman me when I was stripped.
Hermes clasped my hand as if we were old friends, though I had never seen that young man’s face before. He spoke of Circe’s drugs without fear, and when he pulled moly from the ground he put it in my palm and told me to keep it close until her cup was drained.