Circe

And then the demon goddess lightly laid

Her wand upon our hair, and instantly

Bristles (the shame of it! but I will tell)

Began to sprout; I could no longer speak;

My words were grunts, I grovelled to the ground.

I felt my nose change to a tough wide snout,

My neck thicken and bulge. My hands that held

The bowl just now made footprints on the floor.

And with my friends who suffered the same fate

(Such power have magic potions) I was shut

Into a sty.

~Ovid, Metamorphoses.

The first magical operation recorded in Greek literature is found in Book 10 of the famous Odyssey by Homer which was written in the 8th century BCE. This magic was performed by Circe, a Witch who lived on an island called Aeaea at the edge of the known world. Ancient Greeks believed the world was flat and that it was encircled by the ‘river of ocean’, Circe lived at the boundary of this world - practically as far away from civilization as possible - near the entrance to Hades, the Underworld. She is a Heliade, a daughter of Helios the Sun God, and is sister to both Aeetes, the father of Medea, and Pasiphae, mother of the Minotaur. It is likely that Circe herself was also originally an ancient Goddess of some sort, perhaps a ‘Potnia Theron’, a Mistress of Animals. She is also a predatory seductress, and her name in Greek, Kirke, is related to kirkos which means a circling bird of prey, or a wolf, and which in Homer, denotes a hawk.

On their way home from the Trojan War, the hero Odysseus and his companions arrive at her island where "...all about them were lions, and wolves of the mountains, whom the goddess had given evil drugs and enchanted, and these made no attack on the men, but came up thronging about them, waving their long tails..." No sooner does Circe meet with the men than she waves her wand over them and "they took on the look of pigs, with the heads and voices and bristles of pigs, but the mind in them stayed as they had been before... Circe threw down acorns for them to eat, and ilex and cornel buds, such food as pigs who sleep on the ground always feed on." Pigs were sacred to Demeter and Persephone and associated with the fertility of the earth, so perhaps Circe is, in a way, designating the men as offerings to the chthonic Earth Mother/Daughter duo.

With the aid of the god Hermes, who supplied him with a magickal plant called ‘moly’, Odysseus becomes immune to Circe’s magic and so instead of transforming him into a pig as well, she invites him to become her lover. Eventually Odysseus persuades her to change his companions back to their human form, and they all remain living on her island for a year. However, Odysseus needs to obtain the advice of a famous prophet called Tiresias, (who unfortunately is dead), to find out exactly how to reach his home to reclaim his kingship. Circe explains the ritual processes required to enter the underworld so he can consult with the Seer, and shows him how to get there. Here she seems to be a type of gatekeeper, and her island, a portal to the realm of the dead.

In addition to her role in the Odyssey, in later literature Circe had dealings with the prophetic divinity, Picus, who loved the fruit goddess, Pomona, and was consequently changed by Circe into a woodpecker for preferring Pomona over her. She also loved Glaucus but he was in love with Scylla, consequently Circe put poisonous herbs into the fountain where Scylla bathed and she was turned into the famous monster which lurked in a cliff overlooking the strait between Italy and Sicily. Circe was also associated with Marcia, mother of Latinus by Faunus, and with Aphrodite.

Medea

My magic song rouses the quiet, calms the angry sea,

I move forests, bid the mountains quake,

the deep earth groans, and ghosts rise from their tombs.

Thee too bright moon, I banish...

~Ovid, Metamorphoses.

Medea is the niece of Circe, a Heliade, and also a Priestess and Witch in the lunar cult of Hekate. She is known to us from The Voyage of Argo, or as it is also known, Jason and the Argonauts by Apollonius of Rhodes, which was written in the 3rd century BCE. Probably the most infamous Witch of antiquity, many writers were fascinated by her and she also appears in works by Seneca, Euripedes and Ovid. In the story of the Argonauts, the goddesses, Athena and Hera, convince Aphrodite to send Eros to smite Medea with love for Jason, leader of the Argonauts, because it fits in with their plans which favour Jason. He had been sent to her kingdom of Colchis to find the Golden Fleece by his uncle who would not let him ascend the throne of his homeland without it. Medea consequently betrays her own people by helping Jason obtain the Golden Fleece, and then has to flee with him back to Greece.

Back in Jason’s kingdom Medea is seen as exotic and foreign and fails to be assimilated into society. Although she was instrumental in putting him on the throne and lives with him as a wife, ungrateful Jason later abandons her because he is offered a chance to marry a local princess for political reasons. Medea derives her sinister reputation from what she did to punish Jason - she made a poisonous robe for the princess he was to marry, who dies horribly, and then she kills her own children. Readers throughout later centuries have had difficulties reconciling their feelings of sympathy for Medea, with their abhorrence at her murderous behaviour . Many explanations for her actions have been suggested ranging from the obvious; that she was just desperate and furious, to the more subtle; that writers used it as a way of making her appear even more ‘alien’. Other versions of the story say that she left the children in the temple of Hera where they were stoned to death by the Corinthians and still other stories mention descendants of Medea and Jason, so if she did kill her children she only killed two of them. One of the survivors, Thessalus, was said to be the father of the Thessalian race.

Medea was not executed for her murders and infanticide, but flew away on her magical chariot and appealed to foreign kings for asylum. To one king, Aegus of Athens, she bore a son Medus whom in some versions of her story she took home to Colchis and who eventually became the father of the Medes, a powerful Asian race. Some writers say that she went to Italy where she was deified by people called the Marrubians as the obscure goddess, Angitia, whose name came from her abilities to kill serpents and cure snakebite; (anguis = serpent). She was also identified with the Roman goddess, Bona Dea, who was the chaste sister, or wife, to Faunus, and who was also associated with serpents. Bona Dea’s cult was a women-only affair, she was a goddess associated with healing, and medicinal herbs were sold in her temples.

Canidia

Canidia orders funeral Cypresses,

wild fig trees dug out from tombs,

a nocturnal screech-owl’s feathers,

and eggs smeared with the blood of a nasty toad.

Herbs supplied by poisonous, fertile Iolcos and Spain,

bones snatched from a starving bitch,

to be scorched in the Colchian flames.

~Horace, At o deorum.

Canidia and Erictho appear in Roman poetry, not in epic stories or plays, and so their characters are less-developed than Circe or Medea’s. They are meant to be repulsive, frightening hags, not sexy, amoral sorceresses, which seems to be the way Roman authors perceived Witches. Nevertheless, these types of Witches were to make a big impression on the readers of such literature and this Roman stereotype persisted for the next two thousand years.

Hag-like, spooky Canidia, along with her companions, Sagana and Veia, are thought to be (besides the Norns and the Fates), the inspiration for Shakespeare’s ‘Weird Sisters’ from Macbeth. Canidia appears in poems by the Roman writer Horace (65 - 8 BCE), and seems to have been based upon a real Neapolitan pharmacist and perfume-maker called Grattidia, famous for her potions and poisons.

According to Georg Luck’s essay in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome, Horace deliberately satirises Canidia as a depraved practitioner of the black arts in an effort to debunk popular belief in Witchcraft and discourage people from paying Witches for their services. Just as in northern Europe, southern European Witches were always ready with an elixir or a poison and many people sought their aid: The love-struck, seeking to ensnare a beloved or to destroy a rival; young women unable to conceive a child, begged the Witch to bestow upon them the blessing of fertility; and men with impotence problems implored Witches to straighten out their dilemma.

Arrest and persecution of Witches, whether they were hexers or healers, was not unique to Christian Europe’s Witch trials. In the years 184, 180-179 BCE, (which was, incidentally, before Canidia/Grattidia’s time), Roman magistrates ordered the execution of thousands of people accused of veneficia (poisoning) or malign magic, in one case killing 2000 alleged magic-workers and in another 3000. Performing magick, and especially being famous for doing so, like Grattidia, was a dangerous business and practitioners were always at risk of being denounced by an unsatisfied client.

Erictho

Nay, though the Witch had power to

call the shades forth from the depths,

‘twas doubtful if the cave were not a part of hell.

Discordant hues flamed on her garb as by a fury worn;

bare was her visage, and upon her brow dread vipers hissed,

beneath her streaming locks in sable coils entwined.

~Lucan, Pharsalia.

This is a description of her. 
"The blasphemer's face is gaunt and loathsome with decay: unknown to cloudless sky and terrifying . . . matted with uncombed hair: if rain and black clouds obscure the stars, then out comes the Thessalian woman from bare tombs . . . She tramples and scorches up the seeds of fertile corn, and with her breath corrupts the breezes not fatak before. . . The gods above grant every wickedness to her at first utterance of prayer: they dread to hear a second spell. Souls living, still in charge of their own limbs, she has buried in the tomb, and, while the Fates yet owe them years unwillingly death steals on; funerals she has brought back from the grave reversing the procession; corpses have escape death."

She collects human parts for her spells and enjoys it:
"She sinks her hands into the eyes, she gleefully digs out the cold eyeballs and gnaws the pallid nails on withered hand. With her own mouth has she burst the noose and knots of the criminals, mangled bodies as they hung, scraped clean the crosses, torn at guts beaten by the rains, at marrows exposed and baked by the sun. She has stolen the iron driven into hands, the black and putrid liquid trickling through the limbs and the congealed slime, and, if any muscle resisted her bite, she has tugged with all her weight."

Erictho has no fear of the gods, she will kill if she has to for her spells ingredients. she is a vile, misanthropic woman, the perfect portrayal of the traditional witch.