Although Homer is vague when it comes to the island's whereabouts, the early 3rd BC author Apollonius of Rhodes's epic poem Argonautica locates Aeaea somewhere south of Aethalia (Elba), within view of the Tyrrhenian shore (that is, the western coast of Italy).

[30] In Homer's Odyssey, an 8th-century BC sequel to his Trojan War epic Iliad, Circe is initially described as a beautiful goddess living in a palace isolated in the midst of a dense wood on her island of Aeaea.

[32] Circe invites the hero Odysseus' crew to a feast of familiar food, a pottage of cheese and meal, sweetened with honey and laced with wine, but also mixed with one of her magical potions that turns them into swine.

After they have all remained on the island for a year, Circe advises Odysseus that he must first visit the Underworld, something a mortal has never yet done,[33] in order to gain knowledge about how to appease the gods, return home safely and recover his kingdom.

[35] According to an alternative version depicted in Lycophron's 3rd-century BC poem Alexandra (and John Tzetzes' scholia on it), Circe used magical herbs to bring Odysseus back to life after he had been killed by Telegonus.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.72.5) cites Xenagoras, the 2nd-century BC historian, as claiming that Odysseus and Circe had three different sons: Rhomos, Anteias, and Ardeias, who respectively founded three cities called by their names: Rome, Antium, and Ardea.

[39] Among Latin treatments, Virgil's Aeneid relates how Aeneas skirts the Italian island where Circe dwells and hears the cries of her many male victims, who now number more than the pigs of earlier accounts: The roars of lions that refuse the chain, / The grunts of bristled boars, and groans of bears, / And herds of howling wolves that stun the sailors' ears.

[47] In Lope de Vega's miscellany La Circe – con otras rimas y prosas (1624), the story of her encounter with Ulysses appears as a verse epic in three cantos.

[51] Later the English poet Edmund Spenser also made reference to Plutarch's dialogue in the section of his Faerie Queene (1590) based on the Circe episode which appears at the end of Book II.

Sir Guyon changes back the victims of Acrasia's erotic frenzy in the Bower of Bliss, most of whom are abashed at their fall from chivalric grace, But one above the rest in speciall, / That had an hog beene late, hight Grille by name, / Repined greatly, and did him miscall, / That had from hoggish forme him brought to naturall.

The others, who were formerly a corrupt judge (now a wolf), a financier (a pig), an abused wife (a hen), a deceived husband (a bull) and a flibbertigibbet (a linnet), find their present existence more agreeable.

Also in England, Austin Dobson engaged more seriously with Homer's account of the transformation of Odysseus' companions when, though Head, face and members bristle into swine, / Still cursed with sense, their mind remains alone.

His Emblem 76 is titled Cavendum a meretricibus; its accompanying Latin verses mention Picus, Scylla and the companions of Ulysses, and concludes that "Circe with her famous name indicates a whore and any who loves such a one loses his reason".

[64] His English imitator Geoffrey Whitney used a variation of Alciato's illustration in his own Choice of Emblemes (1586) but gave it the new title of Homines voluptatibus transformantur, men are transformed by their passions.

Lord de Tabley's "Circe" (1895) is a thing of decadent perversity likened to a tulip, A flaunting bloom, naked and undivine... / With freckled cheeks and splotch'd side serpentine, / A gipsy among flowers.

Leigh Gordon Giltner's "Circe" was included in her collection The Path of Dreams (1900), the first stanza of which relates the usual story of men turned into swine by her spell.

[75] At the end of the century, British poet Carol Ann Duffy wrote a monologue entitled Circe which pictures the goddess addressing an audience of "nereids and nymphs".

They include the following: Later scholarship has identified elements from the character of both Circe and especially her fellow enchantress Medea as contributing to the development of the mediaeval legend of Morgan le Fay.

Having waylaid the heroine and immobilized her on an enchanted chair, he stands over her, wand in hand, and presses on her a magical cup (representing sexual pleasure and intemperance), which she repeatedly refuses, arguing for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity.

In the first of these, Giovanni Pascoli's L'Ultimo Viaggio (The Last Voyage, 1906), the aging hero sets out to rediscover the emotions of his youth by retracing his journey from Troy, only to discover that the island of Eea is deserted.

The Circe episode is viewed by him as a narrow escape from death of the spirit: With twisted hands and thighs we rolled on burning sands, / a hanging mess of hissing vipers glued in sun!...

His escape from this mire of sensuality comes one day when the sight of some fishermen, a mother and her baby enjoying the simple comforts of food and drink, recalls him to life, its duties and delights.

[89] Where the attempt by Pascoli's hero to recapture the past ended in failure, Kazantzakis' Odysseus, already realising the emptiness of his experiences, journeys into what he hopes will be a fuller future.

Romney's preliminary study of Emma's head and shoulders, at present in the Tate Gallery, with its piled hair, expressive eyes and mouth, is reminiscent of Samuel Gardener's portrait of Miss Elliot.

Young Kate Keown sat for the head of "Circe" in about 1865 and is pictured wearing a grape and vineleaf headdress to suggest the character's use of wine to bring a change in personality.

The earliest was Beatrice Offor (1864–1920), whose sitter's part in her 1911 painting of Circe is suggested by the vine-leaf crown in her long dark hair, the snake-twined goblet she carries and the snake bracelet on her left arm.

[123] In the following century, Antonio Vivaldi's cantata All'ombra di sospetto (In the shadow of doubt, RV 678) is set for a single voice and depicts Circe addressing Ulysses.

One of its final moralising minuets, Ce n'est point par effort qu'on aime (Love won't be forced) was often performed independently and the score reprinted in many song collections.

The flautist Michel Blavet arranged the music for this and the poem's final stanza, Dans les champs que l'Hiver désole (In the fields that Winter wastes), for two flutes in 1720.

After a depiction of the sea voyage, a bass clarinet passage introduces an ensemble of flute, harp and solo violin over a lightly orchestrated accompaniment, suggesting Circe's seductive attempt to hold Odysseus back from traveling further.