Odyssey 10.318 · Book 10, lines 318–319
But it did not bewitch me
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αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δῶκέν τε καὶ ἔκπιον, οὐδέ μʼ ἔθελξε, ῥάβδῳ πεπληγυῖα ἔπος τʼ ἔφατʼ ἔκ τʼ ὀνόμαζεν·
But when she had given it and I drank it off, and it did not bewitch me, she struck me with her wand, and spoke a word, and called me by name:
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The setting
The moment moly proves itself: Odysseus drinks the drugged cup and is untouched. Baffled, Circe strikes him with her wand — the gesture that turned his men to swine — and speaks.
A note on this passage
The turn the whole episode has been built toward, told in a single flat clause: οὐδέ μʼ ἔθελξε, ‘and it did not bewitch me.’ The drug that unmade a dozen men slides off him. Circe, who has never met a mortal her cup could not master, falls back on the wand and the words that always worked before.
The undercurrent is how quietly Homer stages the reversal. There is no flash, no struggle — the potion simply fails, and in that failure the power in the room changes hands. She strikes with the wand out of habit, still expecting the swine-change; the next line will show her expecting it. The god's herb has already won before a sword is drawn.
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