Odyssey 10.237 · Book 10, lines 237–240
Swine's bodies, human minds
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αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δῶκέν τε καὶ ἔκπιον, αὐτίκʼ ἔπειτα ῥάβδῳ πεπληγυῖα κατὰ συφεοῖσιν ἐέργνυ. οἱ δὲ συῶν μὲν ἔχον κεφαλὰς φωνήν τε τρίχας τε καὶ δέμας, αὐτὰρ νοῦς ἦν ἔμπεδος, ὡς τὸ πάρος περ.
But when she had given it and they had drunk it down, at once then she struck them with her wand and penned them in the sties. And they had the heads of swine — and the voice, and the bristles, and the body, but their mind stayed firm, just as it was before.
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The setting
Circe has stirred her drugs into the food and offered it. The men, drugged, are helpless when she reaches for her wand.
A note on this passage
They drink; she strikes with the wand and drives them into the pens. They take the heads of pigs, a pig's grunt, bristles and a swine's body — the transformation is total, and they are shut in a sty.
The horror is in the last half-line: their mind stayed firm, just as before. This is not oblivion but conscious imprisonment — they know exactly what they have become. Where the drug in the cup was meant to make them forget home, at the level of the self they cannot forget at all; they are trapped, remembering, inside a beast.
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