Moly

In Book 10 Hermes meets Odysseus on the way to Circe’s house and gives him the plant called moly. Its root is black, its flower milk-white. With it Odysseus resists the potion that turns his companions into swine and keeps his own form. The object is the concrete counter to Circe’s drugs; the educational point is both the gift of Hermes and the strict limits of what the poem itself tells us about the plant. — Material culture — Homer is precise and limited: the root is black, the flower milk-white; hard for mortals to dig, but the gods can do all things. Modern botanical identification is uncertain and must not be invented. Shown as dug, with earth still clinging to the black root. No fantasy glow. Books (Butler): 10 Epithet: Hermes’ protective herb