Circe

Pasiphaë: Circe’s sister, a powerful witch who marries Zeus’ mortal son Minos and becomes queen of Crete. She has several children with him, including Ariadne and Phaedra, and also contrives to become pregnant by a sacred white bull, giving birth to the Minotaur.

Perse: An Oceanid, one of the nymph daughters of Oceanos. The mother of Circe and wife to Helios. In later stories, she was associated with witchcraft herself.

Perses: Circe’s brother, associated in some stories with ancient Persia.

Prometheus: A Titan god who disobeyed Zeus to help mortals, giving them fire and, in some stories, teaching them the arts of civilization as well. Zeus punished him by chaining him to a crag in the Caucasus Mountains, where an eagle came every day to tear out and eat his liver, which then regenerated overnight.

Proteus: A shape-shifting god of the sea, guardian of Poseidon’s flocks of seals.

Selene: The goddess of the moon, Circe’s aunt and Helios’ sister. She drove a chariot of silvery horses across the night sky, and her husband was the beautiful shepherd Endymion, a mortal enchanted to eternal, ageless sleep.

Tethys: Titan wife to Oceanos, and Circe’s grandmother. Like her husband, she was initially associated with fresh-water but was later depicted as a goddess of the sea. Olympian Divinities

Apollo: God of light, music, prophecy, and medicine. Apollo was the son of Zeus and the twin brother of Artemis, and a champion of the Trojans in the Trojan War.

Artemis: Goddess of the hunt, a daughter of Zeus and sister to Apollo. In the Odyssey, she is named as the killer of the princess Ariadne.

Athena: The powerful goddess of wisdom, weaving, and war arts. She was a fierce supporter of Greeks in the Trojan War, and a particular guardian of the wily Odysseus. She appears often in both the Iliad and Odyssey. Said to be Zeus’ favorite child, she was born from his head fully formed and armored.

Dionysus: A son of Zeus, the god of wine, revelry, and ecstasy. He commanded Theseus to abandon the princess Ariadne, wanting her for his own wife.

Eileithyia: Goddess of childbearing who helped mothers in their labors, and also had the power to prevent a child from being born.

Hermes: Son of Zeus and the nymph Maia, messenger of the gods as well as god of travelers and trickery, commerce, and boundaries. He also led the souls of the dead to the underworld. In some stories Hermes was the ancestor of Odysseus, and in the Odyssey, he counsels Odysseus on how to counteract Circe’s magic.

Zeus: King of gods and men, ruler of all the world from his throne on Mount Olympus. He initiated the war against the Titans to take vengeance on his father, Kronos, and eventually to overthrow him. Father of many gods and mortals both, including Athena, Apollo, Dionysus, Heracles, Helen, and Minos. Mortals

Achilles: Son of the sea-nymph Thetis and King Peleus of Phthia, Achilles was the greatest warrior of his generation, as well as the swiftest and most beautiful. As a teenager, Achilles was offered a choice: long life and obscurity, or short life and fame. He chose fame, and sailed with the other Greeks to Troy. However, in the ninth year of the war he quarreled with Agamemnon and refused to fight any longer, returning to battle only when his beloved Patroclus was killed by Hector. In a rage, he slew the great Trojan warrior and was eventually killed himself by Hector’s brother Paris, assisted by the god Apollo.

Agamemnon: Ruler of Mycenae, the largest kingdom in Greece. He served as the over-general of the Greek expedition to retrieve his brother Menelaus’ wife, Helen, from Troy. Quarrelsome and proud during the ten years of war, he was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, upon returning home to Mycenae. In the Odyssey, Odysseus speaks to his shade in the underworld.

Ariadne: A princess of Crete, daughter of the goddess Pasiphaë and the demigod Minos. When the hero Theseus came to slay the Minotaur, she aided him, giving him a sword and a ball of string to unravel behind him so he could find his way out of the Labyrinth once the creature was dead. Afterwards, she fled with him, and the two planned to marry before the god Dionysus intervened.

Daedalus: A master craftsman, credited with several famous ancient inventions and works of art, including a dancing circle used by Ariadne and the great Labyrinth which jailed the Minotaur. Held captive with his son, Icarus, on Crete, Daedalus devised a plan to free himself, building two sets of wings with wax and feathers. He and Icarus successfully escaped, but Icarus flew too close to the sun, and the wax holding the feathers melted. The boy fell into the sea and drowned.

Elpenor: A member of Odysseus’ crew. In the Odyssey, he dies from falling off the roof of Circe’s house.