Cirʹce (2 syl.)

A sorceress. She lived in the island of Ææa. When Ulysses landed there, Circë turned his companions into swine, but Ulysses resisted this metamorphose by virtue of a herb called moly, given him by Mereury.

“Who knows not Circe,

The daughter of the Sun, whose charmëd cup

Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,

And downward fell into a grovelling swine?”

Milton: Comus, 50–53.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

Cirʹce (2 syl.)

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