GREEK CONCEPTS
"I could bring you nectar," I said.
His gaze rested on mine. "I would thank you for that," he said....I stepped forward, so close that I could feel the heat rising from his shoulders. The ground was wet with his fallen blood. I raised the cup to his lips and he drank. I watched his throat moving gently."
What is XENIA?
"I loved his face in those moments, glowing with power and joy. My chest swelled with his. I longed to tell him that it was I who had given him such a gift, but I saw how it pleased him to believe his godhead wholly his own and I did not want to take that from him. I still dreamed of lying with him in those dark woods, but I had begun to think beyond that, to say to myself new words: marriage, husband."
What is puppy love for Glaucos?
"...they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind."
Who are all the gods?
"He grew, and his fragility grew with him. I had never been so glad of my immortal flesh, layered like armor around him."
What is Simile? Circe's experience of pregnancy with Telegonus.
"'Please, Mother! I cannot bear to watch them die.'
'This once,' I said. 'Once only'"
Who is Telegonus? (He begs Circe to save sailors about to drown.)
"I picked up the overturned benches, wiped the soaked floors. I stacked the platters and carried them to the kitchen. I had scrubbed myself in the waves with sand till the blood came through. I'd found the glob of spit on the flagstone and scrubbed that too. It did nothing."
What is KATHARSIS?
"I ran my hands across his ragged scars. There were pleasures there, but in truth the greater pleasure was after, when we lay together in the darkness and he told me stories of Troy, conjuring the war for me spear by spear."
What is quasi-platonic love for Odysseus?
"My father likes to set the captains of those ships loose among his dragons and watch them run. The crew he enslaves, stealing away their minds so they have no more will than stones. To entertain his guests, I have seen my father light a brand and hold it to one of those men's arms. The slave will stand there burning until my father releases him. I have wondered if they are merely empty shells, or if they understand what is being done to them and scream inside."
Who is Aeetes? (Medea speaking about her father)
"He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves."
What is Metaphor? Circe in an amorous relationship with Hermes.
"Their bodies crumble and pass into earth. Their souls turn to cold smoke and fly to the underworld. There they eat nothing and drink nothing and feel no warmth. Everything they reach for slips from their grasp.
A chill shivered across my skin. 'How do they bear it?'"
Who is Prometheus AND Circe?
He cut it down, then hacked the rest of the day at my brambles. 'They were overrun. What you really need is some goats. A flock of four would have them flat in a month. A they'd keep it flat.'
'And where will I find goat?'
That would between us, Ithaca, like the breaking of a spell. 'Never mind,' I said. 'I will transform a few of the sheep, that will fix it.'"
What is NOSTOS?
"But his voice then was a like a balm upon my raw skin. I yearned for his hands, for all of him, mortal though he was, distant and dying though he would always be."
What is loving Daedalus?
Dionysus claims Ariadne for himself, and as she waits for him on an island this divinity kills the "lithe and hopeful" dancer for no comprehensible reason, just for sport.
Who is Artemis?
"Now that he could sit up, reach and grasp, all the ordinary objects of my house showed their hidden teeth. The boiling pots on the fire seemed to leap for his fingers. The blades slipped from the table a hairbreadth from his head."
What is Personification? To an overcautious Circe ordinary objects take on hostile agency toward her toddler.
"She would go often to its cage and speak softly to it through the bars, and offer delicacies from her own table. Once, she got too close, and its teeth caught her shoulder. She escaped and Daedalus sewed up the wound, but it left a scar at the base of her neck, in the shape of a crown."
Who is Ariadne? (Shows love for the Minotaur, p. 158)
"When he talked, he was lawyer and bard and crossroads charlatan at once, arguing his case, entertaining, pulling back the veil to show you the secrets of the world."
What is POLYTROPOS?
"'Will you bear my child?' he asked me.
I laughed at him. 'No, never and never.'
He was not hurt...He wanted to see how moonish I was over him. But all the sop in me was gone. I did not lie dreaming of him during the days, I did not speak his name into my pillow. He was no husband, scarcely even a friend."
What is casual amusement with Hermes?
"She cursed him with a spell that turned his seed to snakes and scorpions. Whenever he lay with a woman, they stung her to death from the inside."
Who is Pasiphae?
"She was showing her mink teeth, trying to get me to melt like all those naiads in Oceanos' halls. But there was no wound she could give me that I had not already given myself."
What is Metaphor? Pasiphae's predatory nature. Wants Circe to witness the carnage of Scylla.
"I took them to war before they could do any of those things that steady a man. They were unmarried when they left. They had no children. They had no years of lean harvest, when they must scrape the bottom of their stores, and no good years either, that they might learn to save. They have not seen their parents grow old and begin to fail. They have not seen them die. I fear I have robbed them not only of their youth but their age as well."
Who is Odysseus? (Speaking about his unruly crew)
"At that word, Fates, her eyes flashed. She was a goddess of argument, born from the bright, relentless mind of Zeus. If she was forbidden something, even by the three gray goddesses themselves, she would not simply submit. She would set about parsing the constraint down to its atoms, and try to eke a way through."
What is METIS?
I looked into that shining gray gaze, her eyes like two hanging jewels twisting to catch the light. She was smiling, her hand open towards me, as if ready to receive mine. When she had spoken of children, she had nearly crooned, as if to lull her own babe. But [ ______] had no babe, and she never would. Her only love was reason. And that has never been the same as wisdom.
Who is Athena?
"The wind struck me across the face. I had no time to cry out. It rushed into my throat, battering its way to my belly as if all the sky were being funneled through me. I gagged, but its swelling force poured on and on, choking off my breath, drowning me in its alien power."
Who is Apollo? (He uses Circe as a prophetic tool)
"Around me was murk and dark currents. I set Telegonus' bright face before me. I reached."
What is Parallelism/Symbolism? (redefines herself again as a different from her family. She lets go of her own life, to save her sons. Hyperlink to Chapter 2.)
"For the first time the cold underworld of mortals seemed a mercy. At least some part of them lived on. She was utterly lost."
Who is Circe? (Empathy for her lioness)