Odyssey 10.301 · Book 10, line 301
Lest she unman you
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Hermes — μή σʼ ἀπογυμνωθέντα κακὸν καὶ ἀνήνορα θήῃ.
lest she make you, stripped naked, a coward and unmanned.
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The setting
The close of Hermes' warning at Circe's threshold. Having told Odysseus to make the goddess swear the great oath before he goes to her bed, the god names the danger the oath guards against.
A note on this passage
Hermes finishes his instructions with the reason for them. Circe's bed is not the danger by itself; the danger is that, disarmed and naked, a man is remade into something less than a man. The verb θήῃ, ‘she may make,’ treats manhood as a thing that can be taken away by a goddess's craft.
The undercurrent is what the whole Circe episode fears. It is not death but unmaking — ἀνήνωρ, ‘unmanned,’ is the same threat the swine already embody. The men Circe struck kept their minds and lost their forms; here the warning is that a man might keep his form and lose his manhood. The oath is the fence around that.
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