Aeaea is a mythological island famed as the home of the sorceress Circe; the daughter of Hyperion and Perseis and former Princess of Colchis. Coming upon the island after being banished from her kingdom, Circe built herself a palace and practiced spells that enabled her to turn men into animals.
In modern times the island is publicly rendered as the property of a reclusive billionaire named Cassandra Colchis. However, superstition remains that the island is still occupied by a witch who is attempting to take over the surrounding islands.
History[]
In the age of mythology, Circe, the daughter of Titans Hyperion and Perseis, was born a princess of Colchis when she was exiled from the kingdom after killing her husband, the prince of Colchis.
Finding refuge on island of Aeaea, Circe took to using magic and potions to avenge herself. Unfortunately, her power could not extend beyond the island and so she used the Sirens to lure seafarers to her, whereupon she would subject them to various nightmares before killing them.
Her desire for vengeance unquenched, Circe desired more power so that she could affect that which was beyond the island and she traded her soul with the Greek goddess of sorcery, Hecate, who also wished to avenge herself upon humanity for worshipping the Greecian gods. Now bestowed with immortality, eternal beauty and the incredible power of a god, Circe first used her new-found power to destroy Colchis before turning to use her influence in fanning mistrust between the men and women of Greece to appease Hecate's wishes.
Building a palace in a forest dell on the island, amongst her attendants at the time were Nereids and Nymphs, who were tasked with sorting out the plants and flowers of Circe's herbarium while she herself tended to her favourite occupation of weaving dazzling fabrics.
One day, while Circe was gathering herbs, she met and fell in love with Picus, son of Cronos. While Circe loved him, Picus was in love with Canens, daughter of Janus, and refused her. Scorned once again, Circe turned the demigod into a woodpecker and further populated the island with the transformed forms of many of Picus' friends who came to query her of Picus' whereabouts.
Following the Trojan War, Odysseus and his crew landed on Aeaea after barely escaping the Cyclops Polyphemus and the cannibal Laestrygonians. After resting on the beach for three days, Odysseus, who had seen a wisp of smoke in the distance, sent Eurylochus with twenty two men to explore the terrain.
When Eurylochus's party found Circe's house, the sorceress invited them to enter and all of them followed her except for Eurylochus, who suspected a trap. Circe treated the men that followed her with a mixture of cheese, barley meal, and honey flavoured with Pramnian wine, all of which she drugged to make them forgetful of their native land before turning them into beasts. Discovering this, Eurylochus reported to Odysseus and Odysseus decided to go to confront the sorceress. On his way to her home, Odysseus was met by the god of messengers, Hermes, who gave him a fig of Moly to ward off Circe's powers and also advised him in interacting with her.
With her powers rendered ineffective against the Moly Odysseus wore, Circe relented her aggression and gradually learned to trust the hero; changing the men she had transformed back to human form. Charmed by the hospitality of the sorceress, Odysseus and his men stayed with her for a whole year. After which he asked her help in returning home to Ithaca; whereupon she instructed him to journey to Hades to consult the seer Tiresias. Following their return, Circe alerted Odysseus of the various dangers of the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, all of whom he would encounter on his way home.
As Odysseus departed, he left Circe with three children: Telegonus, Agrius, and Latinus; all of whom were presumably raised on the island. Some years later, Telegonus traveled to Ithaca to seek his father but ended up killing him by accident. As Telegonus brought Odysseus's body back to Aeaea, he was accompanied by Odysseus's widow, Penelope, and her son, Telemachus. Circe made them all immortal and married Telemachus as Telegonus married Penelope.
As the centuries passed, Circe remained on Aeaea but eventually assumed the persona of "Cassandra Colchis" to ward off unwanted attention and had begun to extend her reach to the surrounding Ionian islands, coming to be loyally served by the bestiamorph, Mikos, as her enforcer.
While observing the public arrival of the Themysciran princess, Diana, as the hero "Wonder Woman", Circe became concerned that the Amazon may be the one prophesized to take her powers from her and, when the princess came to Greece to visit the ancient Grecian temples and arrived on the Ionian island Cephalonia, she captured the Amazon and brought her to Aeaea in an attempt to kill her only to be thwarted by Julia Kapatelis leading a group of rebels from Cephalonia and Hermes' intervention.
Following Circe's disappearance due to Hermes' meddling, rebel member Katina Leikos created a cult revolving around their "savior", Wonder Woman, and erected a temple and monument in her image, renaming the island "Dianata". Naming themselves "Amazonians", the cult began attacking anything and everything that did not appeal to their doctrine. Hearing of the cult, Diana returned to the island in an attempt to disrupt it but did not succeed. Katina and her followers were later slaughtered by Circe's Bestiamorphs during the War of the Gods incident and the island was left alone by the nearby citizens of Cephalonia.
One year after the Infinite Crisis, Circe was shown to have returned to Aeaea where she began a new scheme to lure Diana from her year-long exile and steal her powers with Hercules' assistance. Although, this scheme, too, was part of a larger scheme to discredit and ultimately destroy the Amazons of Themyscira in what accumulated in the Amazons Attack incident.
Involvement[]
- The Chinatown Cafe and Chinatown Electronics in Metropolis have portals that lead to Circe's palace on Aeaea.
Trivia[]
- Aeaea first appeared in Wonder Woman #17 (June, 1988).
- When they were escaping the Colchian fleet following the assassination of Apsyrtus, Jason and the Argonauts visited Aeaea to be purified by Circe on Zeus' command.
- While Aeaea is Circe's most famed base of power, the sorceress actually possesses multiple power bases located across the globe, one of which, located within the Amazon Rainforest, she used to harbor the homeless Amazons of Bana-Mighdall and enact the War of the Gods incident.
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