Ah, the bane of Ulysses. I still think that was a misstep on his part.

I didn't know Circe was a goddess. I thought she was like a nymph or some such but not in a good way.

Some say witch /demigoddess, depending on who you talk to :B

Witch! That's what I was trying to think of. In the story, "Ulysses", it's implied she's a witch because she changed a lot of his crewmen into pigs.

Most accounts make her the daughter of sun god Helios and the Oceanid Perse, which would put her in minor goddess territory.

Okay. I'm not too good with the minor gods and goddesses or the demi-gods other than Heracles.

That's not unusual, I think. I had to look her up just to know her parentage, myself. With all the minor gods and demigods they had, the Greeks probably had just as much trouble keeping them all straight as we do.

That might explain why so many of the stories of them had very little in common with each other, other than the person the story was about.

In part, yes. Another part is that what we think of as the Greek myths originated as multiple different mythologies by different Greek, Latin, and nearby groups that got absorbed into one single mythology that was then added onto by later Greek and Roman storytellers. For example, Zeus was such a horndog because a bunch of earlier different local chief gods, each with their own mortal lovers they run off with, who eventually got unified into one character.

While I didn't think about local gods becoming the better-known ones, I did think about how each locality having their own version of the known gods and goddesses. I guess my ideas about Greek (and Roman) gods and goddesses came from what I learned in school 60 years or so ago.

Actually, you make a good point. Different groups would develop different stories about the same gods which would then feed back on each other and the overall mythology would have to adjust to make sense. Food for thought. You're not wrong.

It would also explain some of the inconsistencies in the myths and it might also explain why some of the gods and goddesses were over opposed things such as childbirth and death (although in those days childbirth walked hand in hand with death) or crops and war. Or how they would sometimes have two or more gods or goddesses over the same thing.

Of course a black cat.

She's so stylish!

An oldie but goodie.

Ah, how I love Circe.

Did you know her name should be pronounced "Keer-kee" and not "Seer-see"? The Greeks didn't have a C, that was something the Romans introduced for Greek K sounds. It wasn't until after the Roman Empire that C began also representing an S sound. So, Kirke, Karna, Keres, Klio, Konkordia, and so on.

Very interesting -- good to know!