Odyssey 10.451 · Book 10, lines 451–452
Circe clothes them, and we find them feasting
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ἀμφὶ δʼ ἄρα χλαίνας οὔλας βάλεν ἠδὲ χιτῶνας· δαινυμένους δʼ ἐὺ πάντας ἐφεύρομεν ἐν μεγάροισιν.
She threw thick cloaks and tunics around [them]; and feasting well, we found them all in the halls.
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The setting
Circe has just bathed and anointed Odysseus's crew, whom she had turned to swine and now restores. Odysseus, narrating, describes her dressing them and the rescue party finding them.
A note on this passage
Circe reverses her own spell in the plainest domestic terms: the men who were swine are washed, oiled, and dressed in fresh cloaks and tunics, and the rescue party finds them at ease in the hall. The horror is undone with the vocabulary of hospitality.
The fixed language of welcome does the work here. Cloaks, tunics, a feast in the hall — this is the ordinary gear of Greek xenia, and Homer lets it close smoothly over what has just been a scene of enchantment and terror. The comfort is real, but it is the same host's power that made the pigs.
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