If still to live, or desperate plunge to fate;
Thus doubting, prostrate on the deck I lay,
Till all the coward thoughts of death gave way."

On seeing them return with tattered sails, Aeolus averred they had
incurred the wrath of some god and therefore drove them away from his
realm. Toiling at the oar, they reached, after seven days, the harbor
of the Laestrigonians, cannibal giants, from whose clutches only a few
ships escaped. Sorrowing for their lost friends, the Greeks next
landed in the island of Circe, where Ulysses remained with half his
men by the ships, while the rest set out to renew their supplies. This
party soon discovered the abode of the enchantress Circe, who, aware
of their approach, had prepared a banquet and a magic drug. Enticed by
her sweet voice, all the men save one sat down to her banquet, and ate
so greedily that the enchantress, contemptuously waving her wand over
them, bade them assume the forms of the animals they most resembled! A
moment later a herd of grunting pigs surrounded her, pigs which,
however, retained a distressing consciousness of their former human
estate.

Milk newly press'd, the sacred flour of wheat,
And honey fresh, and Pramnian wines the treat:
But venom'd was the bread, and mix'd the bowl,
With drugs of force to darken all the soul:
Soon in the luscious feast themselves they lost,
And drank oblivion of their native coast.
Instant her circling wand the goddess waves,
To hogs transforms them, and the sty receives.
No more was seen the human form divine;
Head, face, and members, bristle into swine: