For millennia, mythology has served as a vessel for passing down traditions and knowledge in countless cultures. Sometimes, though, these tales seem a little too tall, especially those of magic that transforms men into beasts. But if you examine them closely, there are some slivers of truth, and they might actually be based in science.
Among the most famous of these myths is part of Homer’s The Odyssey. During their wanderings, Odysseus and his crew arrive at the island of Aeaea. Starving and exhausted, they split into two groups to search for resources, and one group stumbles upon a palatial home. A beautiful woman emerges and welcomes the men inside for a feast. All but one of them follow her.
This is no ordinary woman. This is the sorceress Circe — fabled daughter of the goddess of magic, Hecate — and as she prepared the feast for the men, the story says she:
… made for them a potion of cheese and barley meal and yellow honey with Pramnian wine; but in the food she mixed baneful drugs, that they might utterly forget their native land. Now when she had given them the potion, and they had drunk it off, then she presently smote them with her wand and penned them in the sties.
