Circe

Described by Homer as a “dread goddess” (Od. 10.136), Circe is now widely understood as a witch. The daughter of Helios and Perse, Circe inhabits the island of Aeaea and is typically depicted as a beautiful woman with an enchanting voice who transforms people into animals. She appears in many episodes from Greek and Latin epic, but her most famous appearance by far is in Books 10–12 of the Odyssey, wherein she turns Odysseus’s crew into pigs but is later overcome by Odysseus himself, after which she restores his men to their human forms and sleeps with Odysseus, later offering him and his crew supplies and shelter for a year as well as instructions about their journeys to come. Through her relationship with Odysseus, she is said by various authors to have borne multiple children, including Latinus, Telegonus, Agrius, and Cassiphone. Although the Homeric Aeaea is a mythic isle ambiguously located in the eastern Mediterranean, Circe has strong Italic ties visible as early as the 8th century bce. Hesiod names her son Latinus as a ruler of the Tyrrhenians (likely the Etruscans), and both he and Telegonus are not infrequently cited by Roman authors as founders of Praeneste and Tusculum.