Summary

Chapter Nineteen narrates the days following Athena's visit, which Circe remembers "only in pieces" (252) because she was so intensively searching for something on the island that could keep the goddess at bay. Eventually Circe realizes that the only place the gods cannot go is the underworld; thus, whatever potion she crafts must have in it "a token from the house of Hades" (253). Realizing that Odysseus had given her a phial filled with the blood from the pit he used to enter the underworld, Circe crafted two potent spells. The first covered the island in a "layer of living death" such that if "Athena came, she would be forced to turn aside, like a shark meeting fresh water" (254), and the second enchanted the island itself to rise up in Telegonus' defense if ever Athena approached (254).

In the years that followed...