23. The Odyssey Retold: Circe, Monsters and Myth

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Book Club

Episode 23 – The Odyssey Retold: Circe, Monsters and Myth

Hosts: Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha (Tabby) Syrett
Date: July 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores Madeline Miller’s Circe, a bestselling retelling of Greek myth, which reimagines the myth of the enchantress Circe from Homer’s Odyssey—turning a sideline character into a compelling protagonist. Dominic and Tabby dissect the book’s rich tapestry of ancient tales, its feminist reimagination, and what the myth tells us about magic, gender, power, and the human search for meaning. They discuss Miller’s writing style, her deep classical grounding, and how Circe stands out among modern myth retellings.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Novelist and Her Approach

• Background on Madeline Miller
  • Born 1978 in Boston; grew up in New York and Philadelphia; deeply influenced by ancient mythology from a young age ([06:03]–[06:51]).
  • Studied Classics at Brown, taught Greek and Latin.
  • Takes many years per book—Song of Achilles took 10 years; Circe seven years ([08:05]–[08:16]).
  • Miller’s process: meticulous, keeping sometimes just two sentences from 300-page drafts ([08:17]).
  • "The quality of the writing ... it is simultaneously accessible, but it also feels that it's organically derived of that world." (Dominic, [08:39])

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The Power of the Retelling

• Retelling from the Margins
  • Not just a “feminist” lens, but an attempt to “give voice to sidelined female characters” (Tabby, [04:49]).
  • Miller's craft makes the ancient world vivid yet contemporary, resisting overly modern or archaic language ([09:01]–[09:14]).
  • Circe stands out for “how it alters the perspective of the myths from this one formerly fairly unknown, fairly sidelined character. ... It alters the whole world” (Tabby, [15:31]).

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Plot and Mythological Texture

• Circe’s Journey

  • Begins as an outcast among gods, grows into her power through encounters with key mythological figures: Minos, Minotaur, Jason and Medea, Daedalus, Odysseus ([09:17]–[14:41]).
  • The book is replete with “classical illusions” and binds together many myths into Circe’s life story ([15:26]).
  • Explores her complex lineage (daughter of Helios, the sun god), early powers, banishment, and self-discovery ([10:08]–[11:40]).

• Notable Mythological Intersections

  • Minotaur Birth: “The lips of my sister's wound parted and the thing slid forth...The nose broad and flat, shining wetly with birth fluid, the shaggy, thick face crowned with two sharp horns...” (Tabby & Dominic, [48:16]–[48:38]).
  • Prometheus: His suffering and Circe’s reaction to it foreshadow her empathy and divide from the gods ([30:00]–[31:32]).

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Character Study

Circe

• Originality and Relatability
  • “She’s the most original and interesting part…she's complex and very human. And so the whole story delves into totally new emotional landscapes. …She is almost human…and the whole story is rooted in her emotions” (Tabby, [34:34]–[36:09]).
  • Her difference: Born with a “mortal’s voice,” curiosity, and the ability to pity—unlike other gods ([32:16]).
  • Growth through suffering, motherhood, and work: her magic is “earned and delicate,” grown from patience and diligence ([38:13]–[40:34]).

Odysseus

• A Complex Portrait
  • “Odysseus's defining qualities are of course his cunning and his cleverness…but also he's got this kind of sardonic, wry wisdom” (Dominic, [42:55]).
  • His post-war darkness: “It’s not that he's traumatized by the Trojan War; it's that the Trojan War, he loved it...It has brought out something very sinister in his personality” (Dominic, [44:41]).

Telemachus

• Embodying a New Choice
  • Unlike classical heroes, Telemachus “values genuine quiet and peace over glory” (Tabby, [58:18]).
  • Chooses anonymity and ordinary life over Kleos (glory): “Would you like to be somebody whose fame is sung by poets…or would you rather be nobody? And he says, well, I'd rather be nobody. I'd rather be a normal person…” (Dominic, [59:27]).

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Key Themes

Violence, Agency, and Power

• Violence in Greek Myth

  • “The violence of the book reflects the world of Greek mythology…Even conception of the Minotaur…” (Dominic, [49:02]).
  • Miller’s writing makes mythic violence visceral and real, stripping away the sanitized veneer.

• Female Agency & Self-Defense

  • Circe’s transformation of men into pigs is recast as an act of self-defense after rape ([52:03]).
  • “By writing the book, by telling her own story, Miller is kind of wrestling control away from the men who tell the story of Odysseus…” (Tabby, [46:25]).

Mortality vs. Immortality

• What Gives Life Meaning
  • Gods envy mortals’ fleeting experience; meaning comes from “practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glow beneath the sun. ... Human beings are creative; gods are destructive.” ([39:15]–[40:34])
  • Parental love, mortality, loss, and the willingness to risk all for brief, meaningful connection ([61:07]–[62:27]).
  • "You want to protect your child, shield them from every conceivable harm...yet the child, by definition, pulls against you, wants to go out into the world." (Dominic, [62:27])

The Realism of the Divine

• “She writes the gods, she imbues them with all the recognizable traits from the myths, but it makes them even colder and even more frightening…with all the ridiculousness of their behavior in the myths, you forget how terrifying the gods would be” (Tabby, [53:43]).

• The gods: powerful, beautiful, cruel, static; Circe: curious, vulnerable, changing ([36:09]–[37:45]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On myths and their purpose:
  “The Greeks used myths to explain the natural world and to give shape to the past. These myths have been retold for centuries, bringing previously overlooked figures into view.” (Dominic, [02:24])

• On language and authenticity:
  "What you have to do, line by line, is to pitch the writing at a level that is neither modern vernacular ... but also, there is a hint of strangeness to it and a hint of belonging to a world that is not our own." (Dominic, [15:22]–[15:31])

• On Circe’s transformation:
  “The whole story is rooted in her emotions, her psychology, … insecurity, loneliness, a growing sense of what one is able to achieve and what one is able to do, a growing independence.” (Tabby, [34:34])

• On gods and mortals:
  “Their lives are worthless because they're going to die. Circe meets Prometheus very early on, and that's the point where she has a sense of her own distinctiveness.” (Dominic, [30:45]–[31:32])

• On textual jokes and mythic in-jokes:
  “Years later, I would hear a song made of our meeting...the boy who sang it was unskilled...Yet the sweet music of the verses shone through his mangling." (Miller’s Circe, as quoted by Tabby, [28:12])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Circe’s place in myth and Miller’s approach – [04:38]–[08:39]
• Summary of Circe’s origin and exile – [09:17]–[11:40]
• Richness of the retelling genre & feminist lens – [04:38]–[05:49]
• Mythological roots: Minotaur, Jason, Medea, Argonauts – [13:20]–[19:30]
• On Greek myth violence and the visceral detail – [48:16]–[50:42]
• Female agency, rape, and mythic self-defense – [52:03]–[53:12]
• Gods vs. mortals—mortality, growth, and meaning – [55:03]–[61:34]
• Motherhood, loss, and the book’s moving end – [61:34]–[65:46]
• Final ratings and verdicts – [66:34]–[68:09]

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Hosts’ Final Verdicts

• Dominic: 9/10 “Terrifying Minotaur Babies.” “Of all the books that we've done on the book club so far...it's probably the one I enjoyed most...I really love this book. I would recommend it to anybody.” ([66:46])
• Tabby: 10/10 “Terrifying Minotaur Babies.” “It's richly written, it's joyful. Circe is the beating heart of it…It roots the stories I love on a relatable perspective. It’s my fourth time reading it, and I’m sure I will read it again.” ([67:44])

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Next Week & Teaser

Next episode: The 39 Steps by John Buchan, with upcoming episodes on works by Ferrante, Huxley, Hemingway, du Maurier, and Nabokov ([68:09]–[68:45]).

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Final Thought

Circe is celebrated by the hosts for its imaginative empathy, textured storytelling, and the way it reframes ancient myth for a modern audience—especially in giving voice and agency to a once-marginalized female character. Both Dominic and Tabby found it beautifully written and moving, and they recommend it to lifelong classicists and newcomers alike.

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Notable Quotes are provided with speaker attribution and timestamps in MM:SS format for easy reference. This summary omits any advertisement, newsletter, or outro sections to focus on core content and insight.

Transcript

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[Tabby (Tabitha)]

War has always seemed to me a foolish choice for men. Whatever they win from it, they will have only a handful of years to enjoy before they die. More likely, they will perish trying.

[Dominic]

Well, there is the matter of glory. But I wish you could have spoken to our general. You might have saved us all a lot of trouble.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

What was the fight over?

[Dominic]

Hmm, let me see if I can remember the list. Vengeance, lust, hubris, greed, power. What have I forgotten? Ah, yes, vanity and pique.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Sounds like a usual day among the gods. He laughed and held up his hand.

[Dominic]

It is your divine privilege to say so, my lady. I will only give thanks that many of those gods fought on our side.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Divine privilege. He knew I was a goddess then, but he showed no awe. I might be his neighbour whose fence he leaned over to discuss the fig harvest. Gods fought among mortals. Who?

[Dominic]

Hera, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Athena, of course. We were 10 years fighting on Troy's shores and now it is longer still. We sailed from Troy two years ago. Our journey back has been somewhat more difficult than I would have wished.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I think you are Odysseus. He did not start at the uncanny knowledge. He was a man used to gods.

[Dominic]

And you are the goddess Circe, daughter of the Sun.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

This episode is brought to you by the Folio Society.

[Dominic]

The Greeks used myths to explain the natural world and to give shape to the past. These myths have been ret for centuries, bringing previously overlooked figures into view.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

This is exactly what Madeline Miller does in Circe. She takes a figure everyone knows through Odysseus, but gives her her own story, full of exile and magic and loss and the discovery of powers.

[Dominic]

The Folio Society's version brings that retelling into the design of the book. Julie Dillon's wonderful illustrations capture Circe's world, the island, the spells, the gods and the dangers that surround them.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

You can see her world in the slip case inspired by Greek black figure pottery. There you go. And in the cloth binding and in the gilded page tops, there's also a new introduction and an exclusive afterwards written by Miller herself.

[Dominic]

This is still Madeline Miller's Circe, but it's with gorgeous artwork and with details that make you want to slow down and really relish every page.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

The Folio Society Circe is available now. Find your favorite [e-mail] the book club. So hello everybody. That was of course from Circe by Madeline Miller, and it's her second best selling mythic fantasy novel published in 2018. She also wrote the Song of Achilles before that. And Circe is a retelling, in a sense of Homer's Odyssey, but from the perspective of a sideline character in the story, Circe, who is a powerful enchantress and goddess. She's very famous in Greek mythology, and it's on her island that Odysseus lands two years after leaving Troy, at which point she famously turns his men into pigs. And I think Charlize Theron is playing her in the new movie coming out in June, which is very exciting. Traditionally, she's kind of, I don't know, she's sort of an ambiguous antagonist, maybe something of a femme fatale. That's what she's been turned into in traditional culture. And she is known to have sort of delayed his return to Ithaca by a year and then becomes his lover. And in this book, in Miller's iteration, it's her redemption and her vindication.

[Dominic]

It's an example of a genre that's very popular in the last 10 or 15 years, which is basically taking ancient stories and retelling them from a feminist perspective, or rather a feminist perspective is too reductive.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

It's giving voice to sideline female characters.

[Dominic]

Exactly.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

So it's sharing their experience. So it's like Natalie Hayes has written a lot of books about this. Pat Barker.

[Dominic]

So, Tabby, you were a massive, massive fan of this from the absolute outset when you. Because I remember when we first started the show, it was one of the books that you most wanted to do.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah. So I loved the Song of Achilles. And then when I read this, I just fell in love with it. I think this is my fourth time reading. It's beautiful, it's supple, it's mesmerizing. It features the Greek myths and monsters and gods, which I grew up listening because I listened to the Greek myths long before I went to school. And Circe, as the character at the heart of it, is extraordinary. She's strange and resilient and she develops and she's endlessly intriguing. So it is one of those books that I will probably keep going back to for the rest of my life. But for you, Dominic, it was your first time reading it and I. I was a bit nervous. I didn't know what you'd make of it. But what did you make of it? Surprise us all.

[Dominic]

Well, as you know, I started reading it about a week ago. Yeah, we had to go to London to go for dinner with some friends and I texted you from the train to say I'm like 50 pages in and this is brilliant. I'm absolutely loving this.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I was so pleased. I was so pleased.

[Dominic]

I loved reading it. I think there's so much to unpick in this book. It's a really, really brilliant example of somebody taking an old story and doing something entirely new and entirely unexpected with it. So we'll get into all that, but first of all, let's talk about the author, as we always do. Madeline Miller, born in 1978 in Boston, grew up in New York and Philadelphia, A massive reader, particularly of ancient literature. So, like you, Tabby.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Her parents split up when she was young and she said in interviews her father thought she was reading too much, so he took her books away, which seems very harsh.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Terrible.

[Dominic]

Right. But her mother read her the Iliad when she was young and took her on trips to see the amazing Egyptian and Greek artifacts at the Met in

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

New York, which I did when we were on tour in New York.

[Dominic]

I spent the Temple of Dender, is it that's in. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And so she felt like you. She, as a girl, she fell in love with Greek mythology in the ancient world. She loved the. The vividness of it. But she also said in an interview, I liked the fact there was so much unfairness and injustice, which is a slightly odd thing to say, although you put in the notes that you like that too.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, I totally get it. It's. It's. I think people forget, maybe they don't. But about the Greek mess, they're so entertaining. You know, the mix up, the tangles, they're quite Shakespearean in that.

[Dominic]

But the cruelty of them. They're so cruel, though, and violent, aren't they?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

But children love that, you know, when you're. When your world is quite sanitized as a child by your parents and older people that know better you're suddenly given this whole world of people behaving very badly and doing terrible things, and it's tantalizing.

[Dominic]

Chopping children up into bits and throwing them into the waters or something. Yeah, yeah. So she did classics, inevitably, at Brown University. She got a master's degree. She taught Greek and Latin to high school students. And obviously, this informed her novel writing. And she's one of those writers who takes, basically. I mean, getting on for a decade per book. She's written two books only.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I know. Takes her a long time.

[Dominic]

So the Song of Achilles is the first one. You loved that, didn't you?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I really, really liked it, yeah. And that took her 10 years to write, which is extraordinary. And in that, she's doing something similar, as she's doing in Circe, she gives voice to a sideline character. So in that, it's Patroclus, who is Achilles, sometimes cousin, sometimes friend, sometimes lover. In that he's very much his lover. And then it took her seven years to write, so Circe. And she said that at one point, she'd written the first draft or whatever, she'd written 300 pages, and she only kept two sentences out of that because only two sentences felt right. And you can see that, I think, in the quality of the writing. It's effortless and yet it's beautifully embroidered.

[Dominic]

Yeah, the quality of the writing. We can talk about that in a minute. Because obviously, writing about the ancient world, a world in which, by definition, there are no novels or no novels that we would recognize, that's a kind of a tough ask to get the narrative voice right, so that it is simultaneously accessible, but it also feels that it's organically derived of that world. Exactly.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Which actually, and I've read pretty much, you know, any ancient retelling that gets published, I read because I, you know, I love the genre. And I would say this is the one that does that best, because a lot of them miss the mark, I think.

[Dominic]

Right.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

A lot of them are too modern. Anyway, let's get into the plot.

[Dominic]

So, Cersei. The issue with Cersei from the very beginning of the book is that she is an outcast. She's an outsider. She's on the margins. She's somebody. A daughter who is despised by her parents, parents, despised by her family. She has to sort of, as in so many stories of this kind, she has to grow into her powers to find her courage, to find her identity. The book goes through a series of episodes that are quite familiar from Greek mythology, and Madeline Mirror is very clever. About the way she introduces a series of characters. So King Minos of Crete, the Minotaur, Jason of Argonauts fame, Odysseus and so on. If you had a crush on Jason Tabby the way you were.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I had such a crush on all the Greek heroes when I was little. Perseus, Jason, Theseus, they were my favorites.

[Dominic]

Okay, so take us into the world of Greek mythology since I love it so much.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

So this is kind of. It's the golden age of Greek mythology, I'd say. Zeus rules from Mount Olympus as king and among the Titans who have lasted into this age because there was a terrible war in the heavens, the Titanomachy, where the Olympians fought against the Titans. The Olympians won, but one of the Titans to have survived is Helios. And he is the personification of the sun. And he drives his chariot across the sky every day and that makes the sun rise. And he and a beautiful Naiad who is the daughter of Oceanus, who is another Titan, she's called Percy. And they have three children. There is Pasiphae, the future queen of Crete, and she turns out to be the mother to the Minotaur of Greek mythology. And then there's Perses and he's a necromancer. And then there's Aeetes and he's a sorcerer and he ends up becoming the king of Colchis. So this is, you know, home to the Golden Fleece from the famous Jason and the Argonauts myth. And then they have a third child. She's the third or fourth. And this is Circe. She is plain by immortal standards. She has these strange yellow eyes. And that's part of the reason that they call her Circe, because in the book Madeline Miller translates it to Hawkins. And she has this strange ugly thin voice. And she discovers after turning this nymph called Scylla into a terrifying monster. So this is the Scylla Scylla of the Odyssey. The terrifying multi headed monster that eats men off ships. This is because of a lover's tiff. She falls in love with a mortal who she turns into a God and he ends up going for the nymph over her.

[Dominic]

Yeah. He's also turned blue, hasn't he?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

He's turned blue, yeah. He's described as very dishy and all the other nymphs fancy him. But I find that odd given he has green hair and is blue. But you know, there's someone maybe like

[Dominic]

the people in Avatar.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, well that's true. They're vaguely attractive. I Kind of get that. And she realizes that she has some form of magic, and it manifests through potions and herbs. And she is a witch. And this is something that the Olympians are very frightened by because they never encountered witches before. And she and her siblings share this strange sorcery, this witchcraft. So she's deserted to the island of Aea and. And surrounds herself with wild animals, lions and wolves. If you look up paintings of Circe, she's often surrounded by lions, and she immerses herself in her garden and her spells, and she sort of learns to master her witchcraft.

[Dominic]

So she's stuck there on her island, isn't she? And at that point in the book, I thought, oh, is this going to be quite dull? And a lot of interfering with herbs. But no, because basically through the story, she meets all these brilliant people.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

So she does.

[Dominic]

Before she even goes to the island, she's met Prometheus. So this is the person who stole fire from the Go. He gave it to mankind, and then he's punished by the gods for all eternity. A kind of eagle, or whatever it is, is eating his liver forever. She meets Daedalus, the great sort of inventor and craftsman. And you hear about the story of Daedalus and Icarus who flew too close to the sun. We get into the whole story of the labyrinth of Crete. So it's her sister gonna struggle to pronounce this properly. Tabby and I spent ages discussing pronunciation.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, I think. I think this name might just. Just come off in different iterations throughout the course of the episode. We're doing our best.

[Dominic]

We're doing all kinds of different pronunciations. Like Ancient Greek. Modern Greek.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mary Beard/Josephine Quinn]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

But anyway, so her sister Pasiphae had this monstrous child that. I know. Tabby thinks I'm showing off of my pronunciations.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, massively. Massively.

[Dominic]

So she has this child, the Minotaur. That stuff is brilliantly done. The stuff with the Minotaur.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I know. We'll get to this. There'll be a lot more Minotaur action to come in this episode.

[Dominic]

Tabby's favorite, Jason and Medea. She has another brush with Scylla, who is her great antagonist, really. And then towards the end of the book, probably the last third of the book, Odysseus turns up. And the relationship with Odysseus is brilliantly done, gloriously done. And his wife Penelope, and Telemachus, his son. And through all this, she sort of discovers her power, she discovers her identity. She becomes a mother. She falls in love, and she begins to reflect upon her own status as a God or goddess in a world of gods and mortals. So her identity and what it is really, in some ways to be a woman, I suppose, is at the absolute center of this book. So, as we said, this is one of a series of books. Pat Barker or whoever, Natalie Haynes, writers who have reinterpreted the Greek myths. And the trick, as we've said, to getting this right, is in the writing, because basically what you have to do, line by line, is to pitch the writing at a level that is neither modern vernacular, pro.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

No, no daddies here, right?

[Dominic]

No, there's no mention of pants, for example, as we had in a course.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

No one in the world should use the word pants.

[Dominic]

Not well, unless you're describing underwear, I suppose.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Nor sidewalk.

[Dominic]

That's heavy. You're alienating the American audience.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Sorry. Dumb, you guys.

[Dominic]

But equally, you don't want to be sort of archaic Victorian, archaic, like Gerard Tolkien at his worst.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

You alienate people, don't you?

[Dominic]

Exactly. All of that kind of thing. So what, as she said herself, I wasn't trying to write Cersei's story in a modern way. I was trying to be true to her experience in the ancient world. But that is a very hard trick to pull off. You have to do. You have to judge every sentence, every word, so that it is simultaneously accessible.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

But also, there is a hint of strangeness to it and a hint of belonging to a world that is not our own.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

You can tell that she is a woman that is very familiar with a lot of epic poetry because she's able to use it in so loose a way that she can almost write the echo of it in certain places, particularly points of high tension or climactic moments where Circe encounters the great figures of Greek mythology, but then also makes it easygoing and natural and fluid and familiar. But let's get a little bit, then, into sort of the mythology behind the book, because, as we've already shown, Circe overflows with classical illusions and with Greek mythology. I think it's a wonderful element of it, the way that Miller binds together so many familiar myths, then weaves them into a single narrative, the focus being Circe's life and altering the perspective of the myths from this one formerly fairly unknown, fairly sidelined character. So we start with Helios. So Hesiod's Theogony, which is an ancient Greek poem, is the foundational myth for Circe's lineage, because that's when we discover that the oceanid Percy is her mother, and Helios Titan God of the sun is her father. So in the book, Helios has to walk a very fine line with Zeus and the other Olympians because of this great war that was fought and because he can't ever be too powerful in case they're threatened.

[Dominic]

So he's a Titan.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, they're the people that ran Earth before the Olympians came. So that was Cronus and deities like that. And he and his obviously Olympian siblings and children are in charge. And as in this book, in most versions of the myth, but particularly Hesiod's myths, Helios banishes Circe to Aea, the island, and he drives her there in his chariot. That is true to the myth and obviously carries over into Miller's book.

[Dominic]

So a couple of other things that are from Greek mythology that would be familiar to people or Roman mythology that would be familiar to people reading this book. The story of Cersei falling in love with this bloke who's human, who's like a fisherman or something, and she changes him into a God.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

He's such a bore. All he does is moan to her. It's like the worst cliche of kind of boyfriend behavior.

[Dominic]

She turns him blue.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

And he rewards her by falling in love with her love rival, Scylla. And Cersei poisons Scylla in revenge. And Scylla basically turns into this hideous monster that attacks sailors.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Terrifying the way that it's described. These massive grey bobbing heads, eyeless, that loom out of this cave in the mist and stinking and foul. It's wonderfully visceral writing.

[Dominic]

Yeah, it is. And then we've got Theseus and the Minotaur, obviously. So this is described by Ovid as indeed, the story of Sillaris. Circe is not in those stories of the Minotaur. So the classic thing about the Minotaur that people know is he's born to Queen Pasiphe, he's hideous. He's thrown into the labyrinth which is designed by Daedalus. And then Theseus, the great Greek hero, comes in with his thread, and Ariadne, he kills the Minotaur, doesn't he?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, exactly. But the focus here is on the birth of the Minotaur. Then we have Daedalus and Icarus, a very, very famous myth. It originates in antiquity, but again, the definitive version comes from Ovid much later. And here it's very humanized. So Daedalus is. So he's the famous craftsman imprisoned in Crete for his abilities here. He sort of becomes Circe's Lover. He is a father worrying about the fate of his son trying to escape. And then we later learn of Icarus fate. And this is when he flew too close to the sun and the wax on the wings that his father had made for him melt and he falls to his death.

[Dominic]

You know, we were talking about the cruelty of the Greek myths earlier. I remember reading this when I was about seven.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I know.

[Dominic]

And finding it, it was the one myth that I hated most.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I actually agree because he's stockpiling the feathers for years and years and years and years and years from the birds that come to his window. It's the time and the effort and they get so close, it's hard.

[Dominic]

But then it's the boy like, oh, look, Daddy. And he's flying closer, higher and higher. And then Diedless shouts to him, the wax melts and he falls into the sea and that's the end of him.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

It's heartbreaking. And then we get Medea and the Golden Fleece. So this comes from Jace, from the Argonauts, one of the most famous ancient Greek myths. The most famous surviving literary version comes from the third century B.C. and this is Apollonius of Rhodes. So Jason steals the Golden Fleece from Colchis. He must face an undead army, terrifying fire breathing bulls and a dragon to do so. And then here, and it's also true in the Argonautica, Jason and Medea sail to Cersei's island to have ritual kind of purification, I guess, because they have brutally murdered Medea's brother in their efforts to get away. And in most versions of Circe's myth, she is sister to the king of Colchis, a powerful and very cruel sorcerer called Aeetes. But in this again, there's a much more human dimension in that he's turned into Circe's little brother, who she adores and raises. And so his transformation is heartbreaking for her. But Jason and Medea are pretty much the versions of themselves that we get from Apollonius. He's kind of a heroic meathead. She is dark and infatuated and ruthless. And I've always been fascinated with the character of Midir.

[Dominic]

She's a great character, Midir. She's always interested dramatists, hasn't she?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

But there's one story in particular that this is based on and it's probably the most famous story that there is from the ancient world. Soon to hit the big screen.

[Dominic]

Exactly. So, so you've got the Iliad, Homer, Homer's Iliad, and then the Odyssey. Now Whether Homer existed, you know, historians still argue about this. Let's assume that he did exist. The Odyssey is probably composed towards the end of the 8th century BC and people think it may have originated in the Greek settlements in what's now Western Turkey. It was an oral work. It wasn't written to be read, it was written to be read aloud, which is obviously different, to be recited to listeners. And it probably evolved over a fairly long period of time so that it only reached its final form in the seventh century. So 100 years or so later. How you translate the Odyssey has become quite a controversial subject in recent years. So a scholar called Emily Wilson brought out a very controversial new interpretation where she basically said, you know, people have translated it in an archaic, fusty, formal way and that's. She doesn't think that's how it was written to be recited. The beginning of the book is basically saying to the muses, tell us the

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

story, tell us, sing us the song.

[Dominic]

Right. Of what kind of man? A complicated man, a many sided man, a man of twists, A resourceful man, an audacious man. How you translate that, it sort of conditions how you see Odysseus. And as we will see, Madeline Miller has obviously thought very hard about how to portray the character of Odysseus in her book because he's not quite as we would expect.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

And is it anyway probably the most complicated, the most three dimensional of all the heroes of Greek mythology. So it's a fascinating thing in itself how the translation contributes to this interpretation.

[Dominic]

Exactly, exactly. Because he's an ambiguous figure, He's a trickster, he's a liar, he is wily, he is smart, he is the bloke who came up with the idea for the Trojan Horse. He was the king of Ithaca, he went with all the rest of the Greek heroes to Troy to fight in the Trojan War. But then he's 10 years at Troy and then he's another 10 years in the Odyssey getting home.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

So he's left his wife Penelope and their infant son Telemachus behind. He has a whole load of adventures in the Odyssey with kind of whirlpools and sea monsters and there's the Cyclops, very well known case. But also he meets a witch called Circe in the Odyssey who turns his men into swine, into pigs. And in the Odyssey, Cersei basically comes and goes quite quickly, doesn't she?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, she only. She only. She first appears in book 10 and her time is gone very, very quickly. She's a pretty passive figure. She's More symbolic of kind of temptation, supernatural temptation. But she. In most versions, she. As with this version, she advises Odysseus about how best to get home, how to avoid Scylla and Charybdis.

[Dominic]

She's always interested people, hasn't she? Because there are different kind of adaptations of her and iterations over time.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

You know, when I was reading this interview with Miller about why she chose this story, I just. I totally agree. I've been fascinated with Cersei' since I was a little girl. I mean, we'll talk about why. But she. She has this incredible staying power for a character that has always been at the sideline of Greek mythology and classical literature and, you know, even more recent literature, the Renaissance or whatever. She has this incredible hold on people's imagination. So I think maybe something to do with the animals, the beauty, the fact that there's very. Her origins are often, you know, complex and not very well known. So she's. Despite never being at the forefront, she pops up again and again and again. So, first of all, in Hesiod's Theogony, as I said. So this is a poem that describes the origins and the genealogies of the Greek gods, approximately from 700 BC. And she makes a very brief appearance. She's pretty passive, but it establishes her, as we said, as the daughter of Helios and Percy. And it also establishes her witchcraft, which is the whole idea of her throughout the centuries.

[Dominic]

Well, I was about to say that's. You can see why people are fascinated with her consistently. Because a sexy witch is always enticing.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Well, because witches in Greek mythology, they're sort of overlooked, I think, because we think about the gods, don't we? The immortal power of the gods. And that's also something Miller plays with in this.

[Dominic]

Yeah. So if you trace her through various kind of iterations, there's the Telegony, written by Hugh Gammon of Cyrene. I'm not massively familiar with you. Gammon of Cyrene.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Don't like his work. He's like. He's like Harry Potter. When I'm not reading other books, I'm listening to Eugamon.

[Mary Beard/Josephine Quinn]

Yeah.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I mean, he's the great.

[Dominic]

It's like somebody shouting at Nigel Farage.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yugamon. Yeah.

[Dominic]

Right. Anyway, this is a lost poem, anyway. So you're not listening to it. That was a lie.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

We have fragments of it, but basically

[Dominic]

it's a story of Odysseus being killed by his son Telegonus.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

It's the sequel to the Odyssey.

[Dominic]

And then Telemachus his son, and Penelope, his widow, travel to Circe's island and Circe marries Odysseus's son. Wow, that's a twist. Yeah, Who'd have thunk it? Exactly. So, as we'll see, Madeline Miller draws on this quite heavily in Circe. Then there's a couple of other appearances. She appears in Apollonius's Argonautica, 250 BC. This is her cleansing Medea of her blood guilt for murdering her brother. She's in Virgil's Aeneid, where the Trojans sail past. Not the Greeks, but the Trojans sail past her eye and they hear the sound of men being turned into pigs.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

It's a really creepy passage. This is the first time that we see a genuinely frightening Cersei, because up till now, she's kind of been a bit passive, a bit eerie, and at one point, actually quite wise. And then now suddenly, she comes across as seductive, supernatural, dangerous, a disembodied kind of scream in the mist.

[Dominic]

And then she's in Ovid in the Metamorphoses. So now we're into AD So we're well into the Roman period. And she is this sort of scary, evil sorceress, isn't she, in Ovid?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah. And that kind of sets the image of her that then carries over into, say, the Renaissance, where she becomes symbolic of sexual temptation and female power. Emasculating female power. And it's also an allegory against greed and desire. That is, if those men hadn't eaten her food, they wouldn't have become swine.

[Dominic]

I'll tell you who would agree about the sexy witch is the Pre Raphaelites. Cause the Pre Raphaelites, they love a sexy witch and they can't get enough of Cersei. So there's, for example, every teenage girl's favorite painter, John William Waterhouse, loves her.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

But, you know, actually, I have a sweet connection because when my dad was away, when I was little, he would send me postcards, and a lot of them were John William Waterhouse, because they're kind of beautiful women, looking very romantic. And I got all the Circe ones, and so I love, love, love them. There's one of her poisoning Scylla's pool, looking very witchy. There's one of her with her elbows on a table, looking out into the distance in an orange robe. And that's very much Miller's Cersei, I think. Slightly lonely, slightly pensive.

[Dominic]

So really, Madeline Miller's is only the latest of many retellings of this story. So you Know, we've talked before about stories that kind of are built on stories. Well, all books are, and this is a very, very good example. But the difference here is that in almost all of those stories, Cersei is not the protagonist. Cersei is the antagonist. Cersei is the. You know, we're meant to empathize with a hero here. Cersei is the main character. And actually, one of the things that she does a lot is to play with. There's lots of in jokes about the other versions, aren't there?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Witty, classical in jokes.

[Mary Beard/Josephine Quinn]

Yeah.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Right up my street. So at one point, she actually. She jokes about retellings in and of themselves. She writes, this is Circe. Years later, I would hear a song made of our meeting her. And Odysseus, the boy who sang it was unskilled, missing notes more often than he hid. Yet the sweet music of the verses shone through his mangling.

[Dominic]

And this is Homer.

[Mary Beard/Josephine Quinn]

Right.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

So she's making fun of her mythos. Yes, exactly. And then later, Odysseus tells her that in India there were ants the size of foxes which dig up gold among the dunes. That's a reference to Herodotus. And he also tells us. I love this bit about the people in the far north who believe in a serpent that encircles the world, devouring its own tail. And that is the Midgard Serpent of Norse mythology.

[Dominic]

Yeah. So there's the jokes, but also, I think what's really clever about the writing, the writing is full of foretellings and prophecies, and what that allows her to do is to throw forward to stories that we will recognize from Greek mythology. So, right. Quite early on in the book, book Hermes, the kind of trickster God, messenger God, he tells her, a man called Odysseus will come to your island. So from that point onwards, we, the readers, think, ah, I know all about Odysseus. And you're kind of looking forward to this bit, aren't you?

[Mary Beard/Josephine Quinn]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

But then there's other things. Because of the prophecies, because of dreams and stories and things like that that occur throughout the book, we were able to see things that were not present at the fall of Troy.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

The death of the deathless. Yeah.

[Dominic]

Death of the Minotaur, all of those kinds of things. So she's able to weave in different sort of versions of reality. There might be prophecies, there might be flashbacks, there might be people telling stories so that we get a very textured account of the kind of cultural imagination of the Greeks.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I guess there's one moment in particular that foreshadows and also sets in motion many of the events in the book. And this is her meeting with the Titan, Prometheus. So, as we said, this is the guy that stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind because he pitied them. And the gods were threatened because they thought it meant that mankind would need the gods less. And so they punished him for eternity. And this sets up, you know, both Prometheus love of mankind, but also Circe's interest in and sympathy empathy with mankind, even though, you know, he says the only thing that mankind share is death. And Circe asks why a God would do such a thing. Help them, essentially. And this is the question that sort of runs through the whole book, and it's answered in the final pages.

[Dominic]

Yeah, exactly. So it's about. The gods have total contempt for mortals. They think of mortals as. As grubby, insignificant and so transient. Their lives are worthless because they're going to die. Circe meets Prometheus very early on, and that's the point where she has a sense of her own distinctiveness. She thinks, and there's wonderful couple of lines. All my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it. So the murk and the depths there is the world of the gods, divinity, I guess, immortality. She just feels that I'm a creature, I'm a being with a beginning and an end who has found herself in this world of darkness. But my true destiny maybe lies elsewhere.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah. And it's interesting because as a child, when she grows up in the halls of her father, Helios, and he lives in pools built of obsidian because it reflects his sunlight. It really is very dark and murky, which is why she clings to her father all the time, because he's so blazing. So you can see this. She's sort of searching for something, even at this point point. And then in chapter eight, she learns definitively what it is that makes her different. And it's Hermes again that tells her, and he says that you were born with a mortal's voice. You sound like a mortal. Most gods have voices of thunder and rocks, which I like, because, you know, in the ancient world, people attributed landslides, storms to the gods. And then he says, they won't fear you as they fear the rest of us. So automatically, the gods are on one side, the mortals are on the other, and Circe is somewhere in the middle.

[Dominic]

Exactly. So where exactly she fits is the question that runs through the book. And I guess we'll discuss that after the break.

[Mary Beard/Josephine Quinn]

I'm Mary Beard. And I'm Josephine Quinn. At the Rest Is Fest this September, we're putting on a show that can only be described as an iconoclastic romp through the ancient world. We're talking about leaders behaving badly, emperors putting their horses in charge, cities built by asylum seekers and empires getting their comeuppance. There will be some proper myth busting, but we'll also be asking why these myths matter even when we know they're wrong. So if you love your ancient history and you're free on September 6th, get your ticket now and join us at London South Bank Centre. Tickets are on sale now. Just visit Southbankcentre.co.uk. that's Southbankcentre.co.UK.uk.

[Dominic]

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the book club. Now, before we get into the story of Madeline Miller's Cersei, actually, we have an exciting announcement, don't we, Tabby?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yes.

[Dominic]

So we have a new newsletter. It's called Book Club Notes and it lands in your inbox every Saturday. It is completely free. What we do is we offer more thoughts about the books. There's a guide to further reading, you know, if you liked this, read this. But particularly, we like to have and like to feature the opinions of listeners. So if you have strong views about a book, write in, tell us if you disagreed, particularly if you disagreed with Tabby, send those thoughts in. I would like to see more comments along those lines.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

And it's about time. There was one person who did do that. So be the first. Be a trailblazer. I dare you.

[Dominic]

So if you want to sign up for more of this merry banter, you sign [e-mail] so that's thebookclubhq.com you just put in your email address absolutely free and we'll send you the newsletter every Saturday. All right, so Cersei, I described her very ungallantly as a sexy witch.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

So ungallant reflects poorly on you.

[Dominic]

I meant it as a compliment. Right. You're gonna tell us why Cersei is so compelling as a character.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Why I am.

[Dominic]

Why does she speak to you particularly? Because you. I mean, of all the characters we're talking about, apart from, of course, Kathy and East of Eden, she is the one who really speaks to your soul. Am I wrong?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Well, she's very like, alike to me, which is obviously always compelling in and of itself. I just think that she in a very original Retelling that still honors all of the stories and the myths and the figures that I've grown up loving. She is the most original and interesting part. So she's, as we've said, a formally muted perspective. But she's a mysterious figure in and of herself in the Odyssey because she is sorceress who can harness animals to her will and turns men into pigs. In here, though, she is almost human. And the whole story is rooted in her emotions, her psychology, the things that she's feeling. And so it's interesting as well because it's obviously that of a woman rather than the man after whom the Odyssey is named. And rather than coming across as dangerous and lascivious or lustful the way that she often comes across in the Odyssey, she's complex and very human. And so the whole story delves into totally new emotional landscapes. You know, insecurity, loneliness, a growing sense of what one is able to achieve and what one is able to do, a growing independence. And it's only through the reactions of the immortals that she encounters that we remember that she's a goddess. And then that in itself is intriguing because we think we've gotten to know the earthy, not homely, but circly, very human Circe. And then a mortal encounter with her, and we realize that she's got this divine luster to her and she's got these incredible eyes and she is not mortal. And so it's always interesting to have a figure that you know well from mythology transformed and turned into something much deeper and much more complex, but also

[Dominic]

more, I hate to use the word, but more relatable. So she, at the beginning, she's lonely, she's insignificant, she's despised. I mean, it's actually a very familiar trajectory in fiction.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, in many ways it's a coming of age story.

[Dominic]

Do you know what? I didn't want to say that because it's such a cliche, but I'm glad you said it because it's both a cliche and slightly true. Yeah, it's a story about how you discover yourself. It's an interesting thing, this business about being immortal or mortal. Because the immortals, what sets them apart is their beauty, their cruelty, their callousness. Yeah, the callousness, their power, all of these things. And she seems to lack all those things. We are told that she's not regarded as beautiful, she is not regarded as powerful. She feels great sympathy and pity, for example, for Prometheus, where he is tortured, which the other gods do not.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

And also the other gods because they are just innately, divinely confident in exactly who they are and what they are. Because they are born magnificent. They don't have much curiosity. They want to be entertained, but they are not entertained by watching and listening and observing. Maybe Hermes to some degree. Circe is. She watches everything. She's also very trusting, which none of them are.

[Dominic]

She has pity. She has an innocence to her. I think she feels guilt at times. She doesn't. She. So she's not as cruel and as uncaring as the other gods are. And also, the other gods are kind of static.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yes. They are one thing frozen in time,

[Dominic]

and then they're frozen emotionally, psychologically.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Their identity is fixed kind of in and of themselves. Like, you are the God of wisdom, you are the God of beauty.

[Dominic]

Yes.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

That's your thing. You can't change. You can't grow.

[Dominic]

She changes and grows because she's cast out. So this is part of her, as we will discover. I mean, a big spoiler alert here. Her essential humanity is that she grows over time and she changes, but also her power, such as it is. I mean, she does become very powerful through her.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

She does witchcraft.

[Dominic]

But this has actually gained not. It's not innate, or rather, there's an innate element to it, but she has to work at it. She has to experiment. She has to mess around with the herbs and all of that stuff.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

It's earned and it's delicate.

[Dominic]

Exactly. I said messing around with herbs, and you said something very nice, which is. Yes, that's the dynamic of the center of the podcast. So the witchcraft. The Greeks called it pharmakeia, didn't they? From which we get Pharmacy.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Pharmacy.

[Dominic]

The funny thing, as I mentioned, about the messing around with herbs, and of course that's part of it, but actually, Madeline Miller's not that interested in all the herbs. What she's interested in, it's, as you said quite rightly, I think she's much more interested in the curiosity and in the willpower that drives it.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

There are these wonderful, though, descriptions of the way that she tends the herbs and the right times to pick them and when the moon is high and, you know, that kind of thing. Classic witchy witchiness. But, yeah, I think you're right. She's fascinated by the fact that it's bound to Cersei's will. So there's almost an element of magical realism when Cersei practices her magic, because it's never like, oh, a lightning bolt shot across the sky, a golden aura descended. It's sort of things gradually happen and we know that it's because Circe is practicing great degree of self control and artistry to make it happen.

[Dominic]

But the difference between magical realism and fantasy, which is a really interesting difference, is that magical realism, what makes it so strange and so haunting, is that it's anchored in the world of the everyday, so far as fantasy is just all bonkers, like, you know, fairies with wings or whatever it was in a court of thorns and roses. But in this, you simultaneously believe in the world, but you're also struck by the strangeness of the things that can happen within it, do you not think? Anyway, so to go back to the issue about her working at things, so there's a nice line where she's talking about Ariadne of thread fame. Yeah, she's watching Ariadne dance and improving her dancing. And Cersei thinks to herself, this was how mortals found fame, I thought, through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glow beneath the sun. But gods are born of ichor and nectar. Their excellence is already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar, destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. In other words, human beings are creative, whereas gods are destructive. What gives life meaning as a human being is working at something, is trying things, is developing, is, you know, patience and diligence and practice and curiosity and all those kinds of things which the gods by definition, do not have.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, and also makes them bored. But Circe uses the same mortal practice and diligence to become a great sorceress. And we see the contrast when she goes to stay with her sister Pasiphae, and she comes across her witch's cupboard and she realizes that because her sister is so lazy in her divinity. So she says, for her will had always been strong, but she was lazy. And here was the proof. Those few samples were old and weak as dead leaves. They can be collected haphazardly, some in bud, some already withered, cut with any knife at any time of day. It means that she will never be a great witch such as Circe. And she develops a love of simplicity that is also unusual in the gods. So she says, I was not Athena. I was happy with simple scarves, with cloaks and blankets that lay like jewels upon my chairs. You know, there's a wonderful domesticity to her life on the island, and it's sumptuously elaborated. And, you know, the descriptions of her picking and preparing her herbs, her love of the animals that grow old around her is really tender. Her weaving, her even wiping her table and pressing her olives. The movement of the seasons, it adds a new texture, a very female texture to an old tale and it enriches it. I think it's, it's wonderful, it's very personal. So you don't get a lot of that say in the Odyssey, which is kind of describes great sweeping events.

[Dominic]

Yeah, absolutely right. You don't get the texture in the Odyssey. Now that actually brings us very neatly to Odysseus. So he's the male character that we've been waiting for since his coming was foretold. Clever writing. This he's introduced obliquely. He asked me once, why pigs? She's talking about her turning male visitors to pigs. And the he there is Odysseus. So sort of thrown forward to a point after he's arrived on the island. And then she moves back and tells us about his arrival. And Odysseus's defining qualities are of course his cunning and his cleverness. But also he's got this kind of sardonic, wry wisdom. So in the reading we did right at the beginning when they're talking about what the Trojan War was about, his answer. Ah, let me see if I can remember the list. Vengeance, lust, hubris, greed, power. What have I forgotten is vanity and peak. There is a sort of dry, slightly cynical, world weary awareness of the darkness of human nature in Odysseus. When you first encounter him in the book, he's a very appealing character, isn't he?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Because you get the sense that a bit like Circe with her divine compadres, that he sees things that no one else does. He sees the weaknesses in men. He's still not the out and out villain that he becomes in later Great Tragedy. He's only, you know, the slipperiness of his cunning and then he sort of becomes heroic after that. He's sort of admirable, he's intriguing. You like sitting and listening to their conversations, so to speak.

[Dominic]

You do Odysseus, the sardonic side of him, he only ever sees the bad in people. He's a trickster. So he knows how to manipulate people, he knows their weaknesses. But that can become corrosive and that he has perhaps lost sight of the good in people as well.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

We realize later that he's actually sort of been in love with his own myth all along like all the other heroes. So Telemachus tells us about the arrival of his father home. So that's Tom Holland in the new movie by the way. And in his version of the story we get a totally different Odysseus, so he says of his father's character, he brings out the cruelty and the paranoia. The war did not break him. It made him more himself. And I found that really interesting because you get the sense of this struggle in Odysseus, in the Odyssey, of the call of home and hearth and family and then the lure of fame, the likes of which Achilles won. Odysseus chooses the former. That's why he's so desperate to go home. But we don't actually see in the Odyssey what happens later after he settled back home. And it's interesting to see him grapple with that here. But we get like, you know, in the telegony, we get his different ending wherein home is a mirage and he's unsatisfied because he's frightened that he will be forgotten, his myth will be forgotten. And actually he's become addicted to wandering and stillness and restfulness and home and hearth is no longer enough.

[Dominic]

Yes, he's a very dark character. He turns out in this book to be a very dark character. It's. It's not that he's traumatized by the Trojan War, it's that the Trojan War, he loved it has brought out something very sinister in his personality, which is the love of manipulating other people. A slightly contempt for other people, actually. But also there is a violence and a cruelty in his nature.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

That the war satisfied. And once he got home to Penelope and Telemachus's son, he was bored. He wanted to go on being paranoid and vengeful and violent. And actually that's the sort of disappointment, in a way, for Cersei, who had slightly idealized him. I think she fell in love with him, basically. And then she realizes there was another side to him, that actually with all her abilities that she had never really seen, I guess.

[Mary Beard/Josephine Quinn]

Yeah.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Because also the way that Penelope transforms in the book reflects that. So when we first hear about Penelope, from Odysseus tellings, you know, to Circe, it's a bit like the myth, a long lost wife who he's still in love with, but then later he goes home and it's very sad and disappointing. And Circe actually makes fun of Homer's interpretation of their story. So she says, I was not surprised by the portrait of myself. The proud witch undone before the hero's sword and kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. So in this version, she doesn't beg him to go to bed. With her, they have this wonderful battle of wits. And then almost as a joke with herself, she takes him to bed and we discover the reason that she turns his men into pigs is actually, it's a justification, it's a form of self defense. But we'll get to that. So in a sense, by writing the book, by telling her own story, Miller is kind of wrestling control away from the men who tell the story of Odysseus and make it about Circe and imbue her with a brand new agency.

[Dominic]

But isn't that the story of the whole book to some degree, about women trying to find their own agency in a male dominated world?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Because it is a male dominated world. Yeah.

[Dominic]

Cersei is trapped within the world. Absolutely. Where people are in a thrall to her father, Helios, the sun God. And she's then kicked out because she tried to develop a kind of agency of her own with her witchcraft. And she was kicked out and banished to this island. And then even on the island where men visit, they treat her as a sex object. They see her as no more than that. Almost all the women we meet in the story, they are going to be reduced to an appendage, to a male character. So Ariadne, for example, will basically just become Theseus's girlfriend. Medea is doomed in part because she ties herself to Jason, who would you describe him as? A meathead.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

A meathead hero. And also because she emasculates him by taking control herself and enabling his escape. Yeah, even Pasiphae, who, you know, she shares the cold arrogance of the gods and she doesn't earn much of our sympathy. But then even she says of her husband, King Minos of Crete, minos does not want a queen, only a simpering jelly who he keeps in a jar and breeds to death. And then her childbirth scene itself is horrifyingly violent. So this is when she gives birth to the Minotaur and it's terrible indictment of childbirth. And again, it is a pretty monstrous baby. The lips of my sister's wound parted and the thing slid forth. It's thrashed like a fish on a hook and muck flew across our faces. Her belly a slaughter yard. And then this adorable newborn mangles his aunt's hand. So Circe's hand, who helps to birth him until it is a mass of broken pain and blood. And he himself is very cute. The nose broad and flat, shining wetly with birth fluid. The shaggy, thick face crowned with two sharp horns below the froggy baby body bucked with unnatural Strength. So you can, I mean, think just incredibly raw, fleshy, horrible.

[Dominic]

Bros. Yeah, of course. And the Minotaur, actually, that scene really does live in the mine.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Oh, doesn't it? It bites off her fingers.

[Dominic]

Pasiphaea. She has to be cut open. She has a Caesarean section, hasn't she? Which is described in kind of visceral detail. Then the Minotaur is effectively pulled out. Everybody else is absolutely horrified by this creature, but its mother.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Will not hear a word against it, though. The prose is so physical. The shaggy, thick face, the shining wetly with birth fluid, all of this kind of stuff. I mean, every element of this, even the conception of the Minotaur. So Daedalus built this structure in which Pasiphae concealed herself so that she could be penetrated by a bull. I mean, that is. That's quite hardcore stuff. And in the Greek myths, I mean,

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

we'll find out it's a family fetish.

[Dominic]

There is a lot of bull and cow action. Generally, if you're into that. This is the book for you. Definitely. The violence of the book reflects the world of Greek mythology. So when Prometheus is being punished, I think this is the first moment of the really visceral violence. Quite early on, Prometheus is punished and Cersei watches. They all watch. And the gods, they are sadists. They love watching this kind of thing.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Cersei's horrified by it. A bloodied strip tore from his back. She. That's. It's one of the Furies, isn't it? Who is. Who is tormenting him? She began to carve in earnest, each blow falling on the next, peeling his flesh away in long lines that crossed and recrossed the skin. And this sort of sense of the fleshiness, the carnality of the prose, the descriptions of blood and fat and flesh and meat, I mean, they recur throughout the. It's a book that is. For all that, it's about gods and ethereal things. It's really anchored in kind of earthly realities.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

But I think that's also very clever, because what Madeline Miller is doing, she's taking the story out of myth and legend, I. E. It's not just a parable or anything like that. She's like, you know, when you grow up and you listen to these stories as a child and you love them, and this is what it actually means. If this were to happen in the real world, this is. This is what it would actually mean, the violence of it. And then you see that as well. When his punishment is described, I. E We all know about the eagle and the liver, and it's just an image in your mind. But she goes into it in visceral detail. An eagle was commanded to come every noon and tear out his liver and eat it steaming from his flesh. Unspeakable punishment, she said. The bloody beak, the shredded organ regrowing, only to be ripped forth again. It really hits home.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Now, you mentioned cow action. There is a sort of sexual violence, is there? From the beginning, it's not just human beings on each other, it's human beings on animals.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Bestiality.

[Dominic]

Yeah. So at the beginning of the book, chapter one, the great discovery that Cersei makes about her father is that her father has these kind of sacred cows. He sleeps with them. He has sex with his cows.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Impregnates them.

[Dominic]

Yeah, he impregnates them. They give birth to calves when the cows themselves are old. He cooks and eats them, and then he has sex with the calves, and they in turn give birth. And so the cycle continues. That is how he makes new ones. He turns into a bull and size their calves, then cooks the ones to get old. That's why everyone thinks that the cows are immortal. There is a sense when you're about halfway through the book, in fact more than halfway, that there's no such thing, really, as romantic love, and there's no such thing as innocence or idealism. That underpinning everything is this kind of manipulative, aggressive, violent objectification. And actually, the. The worst example of this is when sailors arrive on her island and she welcomes them in. She's genuinely kind.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Well, and she's lonely as well.

[Dominic]

Yeah, she's lonely. And she thinks she perhaps has created a sort of idealized portrait, do you think, of human beings?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, I think she thinks that if they're not immortal, they can't be as cruel as the immortals that she's grown up with. There must be an innate goodness in them by virtue of the fact they suffer because they die. She's very much wrong about this. It turns out they can be just as brutal because she is brutally raped by these sailors. This is why she turns men into pigs. And Madeline Miller said in an interview that this was the question that drove her to write the book in the first place. She kept wondering why this character did this, this drastic thing. And so this is the explanation that she gives. It's a form of self defense, so she says. At one point, when the first crew had come, I'd been a desperate thing, ready to fawn on anyone who smiled at me. Now I was a fell witch proving my power with sty after sty. So that is the Circe that we kind of have from classical literature. And you can see the relished takes in her retribution for this terrible crime. In the description of the transformation, his ribcage cracked and began to bulge. I heard the sound of flesh rupturing wetly, the pops of breaking bone. His nose ballooned from his face and his legs shriveled like a fly sucked by a spider. He fell to all fours. He screamed and his men screamed with him. It went on for a long time.

[Dominic]

It's a horrible scene, but it's a horrible scene that's kind of been earned, I suppose, by Miller and by the reader, because we have been now reading for 200 pages or something in which there's been constant violence towards women. And in which. I mean, there's a line that when Cersei is reflecting on this, we were an endless feast laid out upon a table, beautiful and renewing and so very bad at getting away. And she's talking about, you know, women of all kinds that are basically just being constantly abused and raped by the male gods.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

The Greek myths themselves are full of rape, particularly with Zeus. Zeus is constantly transforming into other animals to impregnate mortals. Again, there's more bull action. Lecherous Zeus turning into a bull to lure pretty maiden. And this is one insight among many into the heartlessness of the gods. And I think one of the greatest parts of this book is the way that she writes the gods, because she imbues them with all the recognizable traits from the myths. But it makes them even colder and even more frightening because with all the ridiculousness of their behavior in the myths, you forget how terrifying the gods would be.

[Dominic]

Yes, exactly. That they are. They're overwhelming. I mean, they're obviously superhuman. There's a description of Hermes. His mind a thousand times sharper and more swift. It's shone like light upon the waves, dazzling to blindness. There's a sense that to gaze upon the gods in any conceivable way, even to engage with them, you know, you're opening your mind to unbelievable terrors that will overwhelm and destroy you. But the gods themselves, Here's a brilliant detail. I thought this was really cleverly done. The gods themselves live in constant fear. They live in what's called a great chain of fear with Zeus at the top. They hate each other. They hate themselves. They live in dread of being punished by Zeus. Zeus himself is frightened of being overthrown.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

That's why he's terrified of the Titans. It's why he's terrified of Cersei, because he's never seen her kind before. But they also delight. I mean, let's be honest, we all have an element of schadenfreude in us. They delight in the suffering of one another.

[Dominic]

They do so when Scylla. So this is Cersei's great love rival, when Circe punishes Scylla by poisoning her and turns her into this monster, the other gods don't react in shock or sympathy. They laugh and they can't wait to talk about it and they giggle and they gossip with each other.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

This is like us with the other Goal Hanger presenters.

[Dominic]

It so is actually Sammy, in particular, very cruel towards the other goal.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I've still got a foot in both camps. You, however, you've been on Mount Olympus for years.

[Dominic]

They literally call me the Zeus of the.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

They most definitely do not. Dionysus, maybe.

[Dominic]

I'd say Dionysus.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

You make merry with the grape completely. But they also, they delight in the suffering of mankind, because the more that mankind suffers, the more that they look to the gods. Humans have always sought to explain the randomness of life or the suffering that they experience with divine intervention or the absence of divine intervention, so that the more that they suffer, the more the offerings they give to the gods. So at one point, Circe asks, why is it that they punished Prometheus as they did? And he says, who gives better offerings? A miserable man or a happy man? And man is more likely to be happy if they have fire.

[Dominic]

Yes, exactly right. Exactly right. So set against them are the mortals. So the first mortal we meet is Glaucos, who has turned into this blue bloke, and he lets himself down by falling in love with Scylla. He is the selfishness and vanity and heartlessness of humanity, isn't he? Because basically, becoming a God has brought out the worst in him. There are mortals like Jason, who's obsessed with his own legend. There is.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

They're the worst.

[Dominic]

But Daedalus, for example, he's much more attractive, isn't he? He's clever, he makes things. He loves his son, he grieves his son Icarus when he dies. And so actually, Daedalus is quite an admirable character. And Daedalus is. He's the first example really, of how mortality and loss and grief gives your life meaning, gives your life depth and gives it a beauty that actually is denied to the gods.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

And also the value of working for something to become really good at it. And then another mortal who epitomizes this is Telemachus. And this is Odysseus, son on Ithaca. Again, this is Tom Holland in the movie. And he's a very different hero from the traditional hero of Greek mythology. He inherits none of his father's brilliance, cunning or charisma. Instead, he's like Circe. He's insecure and he's full of doubt, but he's gentle and thoughtful and kind. And having grown up in his father's shadow and having experienced what it actually meant to be without a father all those years, to have to deal with Hasutas and then to experience his return, you know, no matter how lauded and renowned he is, he knows the real suffering caused by war and heroic ambition. So he says he made a life for others and misery. All those years of pain and wondering why, for a moment's pride, he would rather be cursed by the gods than be no 1. So unlike Odysseus or these other heroes of Greek mythology, he values genuine quiet and peace over glory.

[Dominic]

Telemachus does.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Telemachus does. He chooses to be nobody, to live out his life in obscurity. So this is the choice that is offered to Achilles at the heart of the Iliad, that is to live a life, a short life, but that earns you glory and fame. So this is. Is Cleos, or a long life lived in anonymity. Famously, Achilles chooses the former through glory in battle. But then he dies, and in the Iliad, the glory of this trumps all. But not, interestingly in the Odyssey, because when Odysseus encounters Achilles in the underworld, he sort of bemoans his choice. He says, don't give me consolation about death, glorious Odysseus. I'd rather slave on earth for another man than rule down here over all this. Breathless, dead. And so Telemachus embodies the other choice, the choice that he turned down, and this is Hesikia. And he gets value and meaning from small daily pleasures. And his relationship with Circe. He doesn't care about glory, riches and fame. And Circe loves him for this. And so therefore do we, the reader.

[Dominic]

That's so interesting, because he's an un Greek character.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

He's a very un Greek, and he's. Yeah, very un Greek and very un Roman, which is probably why that myth was never really taken up.

[Dominic]

The myth of Telemachus killing his father and all of that.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Exactly.

[Dominic]

Because he's not a drum, a glamorous or dramatic character. He's ordinary. He and. And he's as you said, he's given the choice, or effectively he's given the choice. Would you like to be somebody whose fame is sung by poets down the ears, or would you rather be nobody? And he says, well, I'd rather be nobody. I'd rather be a normal person, have a normal life. You know, happy, quiet, peaceful.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Children.

[Dominic]

Children, all of that. Do I want to go and, like, fight in some mad battle and then die at the age of 25 and people will sing about me? No, I'd rather live to the age of 65 and die in my bed. And by this point in the book, we have become. There's been so much violence and so much cruelty and so much suffering that we're like, alas, finally, you know, a character that actually captures what it is to be human in a way that the others don't.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah. And he loves every living thing, like Circe, which the gods most certainly do not. So Hermes says at one point, come if you cry every time someone mortal dies, he'll drown in a month. And we hear of Ariadne's death, and she's killed for some slight that no one remembers by Artemis. And her life means nothing, despite watching her dance and see how much she cares about that one thing. Her life counts for nothing. And Circe is appalled by how little every mortal life is mourned and how little it all means at the end, at one point in the book. Because, you know, all they are in the end is kind of smoke and dust. But then, as she discovers, as you say, that the fragility of human life is what gives it value. And it takes her the course of the book to realize this and basically answer the question that she asks Prometheus at the very beginning. Why would you basically risk eternal suffering to help mankind?

[Dominic]

And you would risk it precisely because being human is worth more than being a God. Because the fertility of it, yeah, the fragility of it, the fact that it is so brief and then you're gone is precisely what gives it a power and a dignity to your life and a beauty to your life that is denied you if you're immortal. And actually, for her, it's the experience of parenthood as well, of love, of the love of a mother.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

And that contrasts with all the gods of Olympus who have hundreds and hundreds of children, don't really care about their offspring, and generally just live in fear that they're going to be killed by the offspring. Offspring. Circe bears a mortal son and is fascinated by watching him grow and becomes very relatable As a mother, completely.

[Dominic]

She does. I think this is really, really powerful. The final quarter of the book, she has a son called Telegonus, who is their son with Odysseus.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

The description of her birth, of the experience of childbirth is, again, very visceral, very raw. You know, there's nothing romantic or idealized about it at all. And she struggles as a mother. She finds it very difficult. She finds him very frustrating at times. Wonderful lines. I did not go easy to motherhood. I faced it. As soldiers face the enemies, sword up against the coming blows. I love that. I think it's really well done.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I know, I know. I totally. Lots of mothers must feel that way.

[Dominic]

Of course. Exactly. But in the car, in her relationship with her son, there's another dimension to this book which, as, you know, as a parent, I found very moving. You want to protect your child, shield them from every conceivable harm, sort of gather them close to you, and yet, at the same time, the child, by definition, pulls against you, pulls against you, wants to go out into the world. And this is absolutely what Telenus wants to do. He wants to go out into the world and become something different. And we know that he is going to leave her. Because this is foreshadowed by Athena, isn't it? By the goddess Athena.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Athena just sort of. She lands on the scene, and I love her appearances because it's just what you hope Athena will be. But she's terrifying because she's got it in for Telegonus, because she has heard a prophecy that he will kill Odysseus, who she loves. He's sort of the one thing living that she loves because he's so brilliant and clever and cunning. And so Cersei must strive even harder to protect her son. Her magic reaches new heights, driven as it is by her love of her son.

[Dominic]

But ultimately, her son will leave her. Maybe we won't spoil it completely and say exactly how he leaves her, but the scene where he leaves her forever I found very, very moving when she's saying she thinks, like, she can't bear it. She wants to press him, to set him into my skin.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Oh, yeah.

[Dominic]

But she has no choice because, you know, fate has decreed, I guess, that they will be parted, which is, of course, the experience of all human beings and an experience of mortality, the experience of parenthood. It's the fragility, the brevity of life. And she's come to realize at the end of this book that mortality and the delicacy, the vulnerability of being human, that those are the things that make life worth living and are so, so much more valuable than the kind of fixed certainties of the immortals, which actually are so sterile and empty and hollow and give her nothing.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, and also that there's sort of an inevitability to prophecy. And the gods put so much straw by prophecy, but in trying to change the course of fate, they often bring it upon themselves. And so there's a randomness to life that you sort of have to lean into. And then at the very end, she's left with Telemachus and he tells her, it'll be all right. I quote, he does not mean that we are not frightened, only that we are here. That is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. And so because of this, this realization, she chooses to be immortal by trying to do the reverse spell that she did on Glaukos at the very beginning to turn him into an immortal. So the story comes full circle. Whether or not she achieves it, we never really know. It's sort of open ended. But she sees a vision of herself as a human woman growing old with Telemachus. And it's lovely and it's very moving and it's melancholy, but it's also full of joy.

[Dominic]

I think it is, agreeably. It's a really. We've talked a lot about the, the. The violence and cruelty of it, I should say. If you haven't read it and you might be sort of put off by that, it's not a traumatizing read at all. I wouldn't have said. I mean, there are, there are dark things in it, but it's actually a beautiful book and I found it, particularly at the end, really, really moving book. I don't want to make a habit, Tabby, of bursting into tears at the end of these podcasts, Mrs. Dalloway style.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

This is a safe space.

[Dominic]

You adopted precisely the same tone, slightly patronizing, slightly patronizing tone at the end of the Mrs. Dalloway episode. I've never quite recovered from it, to be honest.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

So we both loved this book. So I think the question, both of our minds must be, what next from the brilliant Madeline Miller. Well, she has said that her next book will be either about Shakespeare's the Tempest or, and fingers crossed for this one, in my case, the Aeneid by Virgil. But given that it took her 10 years to write the Song of the Achilles and I think seven years to write Circe, I think it might be A long time coming.

[Dominic]

I think it should be the Tempest.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

No, keep it in the ancient world.

[Dominic]

No, you've done this. Don't be a one trick pony.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

No, be a one trick pony.

[Dominic]

Well, on that we disagree. Okay, what are we marking this in? I think we're clearly marking it and looking at your different options. Tabby's giving me different options. I think absolutely. Terrifying Minotaur Babies is surely the one.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, Terrifying Minotaur Babies it is. All right, you go first, Mr. Weepy. You're like Echo. You know the myth of Echo Gone. Who cries over Narcissus?

[Dominic]

I mean, if people would not have believed this in my Daily Mail columnist days, I mean, I would have been. They would never have me back now. Okay, I'm gonna give it nine. I know that'll disappoint you, Tabby. I'm gonna give it nine out of ten.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I actually, I'm pretty pleased with that.

[Dominic]

I loved reading this. It's probably. Of all the books that we've done on the book club so far, I mean, of the new ones that I've read, it's probably the one I enjoyed most. I mean, some of the new ones that I read were the Hunger Games, A Court, of course, and the Interminable Slog that was east of Eden. But I really, really love this book. I would recommend it to anybody. I've actually been telling, like, friends of mine and stuff. Oh, I read this book and you would never normally read it, but it's brilliant. I deducted a point. I've deducted a point for no good reason. Really?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Yeah, I think possibly because the callousness of the gods.

[Dominic]

No, I think it's. I mean, I do have the callousness of the gods. I don't know. I've just done it for. Out of willful capriciousness.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Fair enough.

[Dominic]

So there you go. What about you? You're going to give it. You're going to give it 11, presumably?

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I'm giving it 10. Terrifying. Minus four babies out of 10. It's richly written, it's joyful. Circe is the beating heart of it. It's revelatory and compelling. It's set amongst stories that I've grown up loving all my life and roots them on the inside on a relatable perspective. And it's my fourth time reading it and I'm sure that I will read it again.

[Dominic]

So, Tabby, next week, something. A total change of tone because we are doing.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

We're doing the 39 steps by John Buchan. Then we've Got My Brilliant Friend by Eleanor Ferrante. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. All of these, by the way, were sent in by people in the newsletter. So this is where you have your say.

[Dominic]

You know, when you read them like that, it does sound quite a daunting amount of reading.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

I know, but that's the wonderful thing about this show, that you don't have to have read the books to enjoy our takes.

[Dominic]

Exactly. We will see you next time for more Sexy Witches with John Buchan. Bye.

[Tabby (Tabitha)]

Bye. Bye. Bye.