For my paper I’m trying to find a way to use later literary sources, in particular versions of the Medea myth up to and including Euripides’ play, in order to find or create a useful framework for looking at magic in Homeric sources. Unsurprisingly, those earlier sources are by far the more problematic to deal with. Medea is unambiguous in treating the magic employed by said witch as harmful, evil and unnatural. In contrast, both the Iliad and the Odyssey contain actions that could be interpreted as magic, but it’s much less clear whether the characters in the works consider them as such.
Before even considering the specifics of the events in these works, I think it’s important to note that they are the result of an oral tradition, and could be representative of an earlier form of Greek culture, adapted to an audience contemporary to its recording in literary form, or the compilation of a series of poems gathered from other cultures; in all likelihood there are elements of all of these, making any analysis a matter of educated guesses and deductive reasoning rather than based on unassailable facts or truths.
Overlaps with medicine and with the traditions of other cultures create these uncertainties in some situations, as with the description of Odysseus’ wound that led to his identifying scar being treated with chanting as well as what we would recognize as medical treatment; it’s hard to say with any certainty that the people doing this would have considered it magical, and its close parallels with the myths of Ancient Near Eastern cultures raise concerns about whether it is even a representation of a Greek tradition at all.
The Iliad contains other episodes that are suggestive of magic: Odysseus’ night raid with Diomedes involves a change of wardrobe, including the use of animal parts, and it occurs at night with a very ritualized feel to the entire section, contrasting markedly with the tone of the rest of the work. At the same time, there is nothing to suggest that the two heroes performing the raid, nor any of their companions, consider this to be a spell of any kind.
Pseudo-magical activities in the Odyssey are similarly troublesome. Odysseus’ shape-changing and variation in appearance is attributed to divine aid, so even though it presents some of the abilities that the Greeks would later associate with magic, it’s not clear that the Homeric texts are even alluding to that. Likewise, the episode where Odysseus is given a bag holding the winds, directly controlling them in aid of his travel – this coercion of divine figures based on foreign knowledge more or less exactly matching the later definition of magic – it is presented in a surprisingly mundane way, no different than if Odysseus had been given a new spear or shield.
The description of Circe and her actions is challenging as well. While we know that later sources treated her, alongside Medea, as definitive representations of witches and of magic, it is unclear that Odysseus, Homer, or the contemporary audience viewed her the same way. She achieves the transformation of Odysseus’ men by feeding them potent herbs, and Odysseus defeats this through the use of a talisman that blocks the effects, but the talisman is given to him by Hermes, and it’s never clear that the Greeks consider her magical, rather than a powerful and unpredictable force of nature like Scylla or Charybdis.
On the whole, this is a very challenging topic. My intention is to use the less ambiguous later sources as a filter for engaging with the older works, along with scholarly material discussing the impact of the intervening centuries, and especially the Persian invasions of Greece, on Greek culture and identity. My hope is that these sources, although they are from a later culture that is quite distinct from that presented in the Homeric works, will allow for a useful interpretation of the events and the actions of Odysseus and those around him. Whether this ends up happening in a meaningful way or not, it’s an interesting subject to explore, and I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of ideas my research inspires.
This is a real problem. It’s interesting to see that in later periods people felt discontented with the Homeric magic (?) scenes and added details in – so there was a sense that this was different or needed to be added to in some way to make contemporary sense. It’s also hard to work out the divine status of Circe, which must have driven the hierarchical Greeks and Romans up the wall, especially when trying to work out how powerful she was. Not sure I can suggest anything helpful beyond perhaps looking at some artistic representations of Circe and the magical scenes in the Odyssey and seeing if they can fill in the picture a bit.