Black-figure painting on a two-handles cup, from Athens, dating to 560-550 B.C., now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA. At the centre of the image appears Circe concocting a magical potion with which she transforms Odysseus’s companions into animals, some of which are shown beside her already with animals’ heads. The one facing the sorceress is changed into a pig, the second in a ram and the third in a wolf, while the men behind her have a boar’s and a lion’s head (detail not visible in the image). The encounter of Odysseus with Circe, “a dread goddess of human speech [literally: “who speaks with a human voice”]”, is described in the X chapter of the Odyssey, where the sorceress lives into a forest, in an abode around which wild beasts, such as “mountain wolves and lions” prowl, behaving almost like domesticated animals. In the Homeric text, Circe transform Odysseus’s companions into wild pigs only, employing a magical staff. The transformation suffered concerned only the corporeal envelope, while the mode of thinking and feeling remained a human one (Odyssey, X, 237-240). Odysseus managed to escape to the sorceress’s arts, thanks to Hermes’s help, and constrains Circe to give back to his companions their human shape. The transformation seems to be a kind of regeneration, thus a sort of initiatory ritual, because the companions returned humans seemed “younger than they were before, and far comelier and taller to look upon” (X, 395-396).

[Source: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/drinking-cup-kylix-depicting-scenes-from-the-odyssey-153469]