A muddy pen behind Circe’s house where the twenty men of the scouting party are penned after she touches them with her wand and turns them into pigs. Their faces stretch. Their backs curve. They fall to the ground. Their hands become hooves and their skin bristled hide. She herds them in like livestock and throws them acorns. Eurylochus watches from the trees and cannot explain why he stayed hidden. He goes to the sty after she has gone inside. Their eyes are the same. He can see they know what has happened to them. That is when he starts running. Later, when Odysseus has put a sword to her throat and made her swear, she comes to the sty with a salve and touches each snout. The bristles fall away. The men stand from the mud taller, younger even. They weep when they see Odysseus. The sty is the cruellest joke in the story: a god’s reminder that human dignity is something that can be taken in an afternoon and given back the same way.
The Pig Sty
The pen behind Circe's house where the transformed crewmen are thrown acorns. Their eyes still know.