title: Operation Overlord

text: Many of the German radar stations on the French coast were destroyed by the RAF in preparation for the landings. On the night before the invasion, in Operation Taxable, 617 Squadron (the famous "Dambusters") dropped strips of "window", metal foil that German radar operators interpreted as a naval convoy approaching Cap d'Antifer (about 80 km from the actual D-Day landings). The illusion was bolstered by a group of small vessels towing barrage balloons. No. 218 Squadron RAF also dropped "window" near Boulogne-sur-Mer in Operation Glimmer. On the same night, a small group of Special Air Service (SAS) operators deployed dummy paratroopers over Le Havre and Isigny. These dummies led the Germans to believe an additional airborne assault had occurred.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Training exercises for the Overlord landings took place as early as July 1943. As the nearby beach resembled the planned Normandy landing-site, the town of Slapton in Devon, was evacuated in December 1943, and taken over by the armed forces as a site for training exercises that included the use of landing craft and the management of beach obstacles. A friendly fire incident there on 27 April 1944 resulted in as many as 450 deaths. The following day, an additional estimated 749 American soldiers and sailors died when German torpedo-boats surprised members of Assault Force "U" conducting Exercise Tiger. Exercises with landing craft and live ammunition also took place at the Combined Training Centre in Inveraray in Scotland. Naval exercises took place in Northern Ireland, and medical teams in London and elsewhere rehearsed how they would handle the expected waves of casualties. Paratroopers conducted exercises, including a huge demonstration drop on 23 March 1944 observed by Churchill, Eisenhower, and other top officials.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Allied planners considered tactical surprise to be a necessary element of the plan for the landings. Information on the exact date and location of the landings was provided only to the topmost levels of the armed forces. Men were sealed into their marshalling areas at the end of May, with no further communication with the outside world. Troops were briefed using maps that were correct in every detail except for the place names, and most were not told their actual destination until they were already at sea. A news blackout in Britain increased the effectiveness of the deception operations. Travel to and from the Republic of Ireland was banned, and movement within several kilometres of the coast of England restricted.


title: Operation Overlord

text: The invasion planners specified a set of conditions regarding the timing of the invasion, deeming only a few days in each month suitable. A full moon was desirable, as it would provide illumination for aircraft pilots and have the highest tides. The Allies wanted to schedule the landings for shortly before dawn, midway between low and high tide, with the tide coming in. This would improve the visibility of obstacles the enemy had placed on the beach while minimising the amount of time the men had to spend exposed in the open. Specific criteria were also set for wind speed, visibility, and cloud cover. Eisenhower had tentatively selected 5 June as the date for the assault, however, on 4 June, conditions were clearly unsuitable for a landing; high winds and heavy seas made it impossible to launch landing craft, and low clouds would prevent aircraft from finding their targets.


title: Operation Overlord

text: By the evening of 4 June, the Allied meteorological team, headed by Group Captain James Stagg of the Royal Air Force, predicted that the weather would improve sufficiently so that the invasion could go ahead on 6 June. He met Eisenhower and other senior commanders at their headquarters at Southwick House in Hampshire to discuss the situation. General Montgomery and Major-General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, were eager to launch the invasion. Admiral Bertram Ramsay was prepared to commit his ships, while Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory expressed concern that the conditions would be unfavourable for Allied aircraft. After much discussion, Eisenhower decided that the invasion should go ahead. Allied control of the Atlantic meant that German meteorologists did not have access to as much information as the Allies on incoming weather patterns. As the Luftwaffe meteorological centre in Paris predicted two weeks of stormy weather, many Wehrmacht commanders left their posts to attend war games in Rennes, and men in many units were given leave. Marshal Erwin Rommel returned to Germany for his wife's birthday and to meet Hitler to try to get more Panzers.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Had Eisenhower postponed the invasion again, the next available period with the right combination of tides (but without the desirable full moon) was two weeks later, from 18 to 20 June. As it happened, during this period the invaders would have encountered a major storm lasting four days, between 19 and 22 June, that would have made the initial landings impossible.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Nazi Germany had at its disposal 50 divisions in France and the Low Countries, with another 18 stationed in Denmark and Norway. Fifteen divisions were in the process of formation in Germany, but there was no strategic reserve. The Calais region was defended by the 15th Army under "Generaloberst" (Colonel General) Hans von Salmuth, and Normandy by the 7th Army commanded by "Generaloberst" Friedrich Dollmann. Combat losses throughout the war, particularly on the Eastern Front, meant the Germans no longer had a pool of able young men from which to draw. German soldiers were now on average six years older than their Allied counterparts. Many in the Normandy area were "Ostlegionen" (eastern legions)—conscripts and "volunteers" from Turkestan, Russia, Mongolia, and elsewhere. The Wehrmacht had provided them mainly with unreliable captured equipment; they lacked motorised transport. Formations that arrived later, such as the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend", were, for the most part, younger and far better equipped and trained than the static troops stationed along the coast.


title: Operation Overlord

text: In early 1944, OB West was significantly weakened by personnel and materiel transfers to the Eastern Front. During the Soviet Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive (24 December 1943 – 17 April 1944), the German High Command was forced to transfer the entire II SS Panzer Corps from France, consisting of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions, as well as the 349th Infantry Division, 507th Heavy Panzer Battalion and the 311th and 322nd StuG Assault Gun Brigades. All told, the German forces stationed in France were deprived of 45,827 troops and 363 tanks, assault guns, and self-propelled anti-tank guns. It was the first major transfer of forces from France to the east since the creation of Führer Directive 51, which no longer allowed any transfers from the west to the east. There were also transfers to the Italian front: von Rundstedt complained that many of his best units had been sent on a "fool's errand" to Italy, saying it was "madness ... that frightful boot of a country should have been evacuated ... we should have held a decent front with a few divisions on the Alpine frontier."


title: Operation Overlord

text: The 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, 9th, 11th, 19th and 116th Panzer divisions, alongside the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich", had only arrived in March–May 1944 to France for extensive refit after being badly damaged during the Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive. Seven of the eleven panzer or panzergrenadier divisions stationed in France were still not fully operational or only partially mobile in early June 1944.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Alarmed by the raids on St Nazaire and Dieppe in 1942, Hitler ordered the construction of fortifications all along the Atlantic coast, from Spain to Norway, to protect against an expected Allied invasion. He envisioned 15,000 emplacements manned by 300,000 troops, but due to shortages, particularly of concrete and manpower, most of the strongpoints were never built. As the expected site of an Allied invasion, Pas de Calais was heavily defended. In the Normandy area the best fortifications were concentrated at the port facilities at Cherbourg and Saint-Malo.


title: Operation Overlord

text: A report by Rundstedt to Hitler in October 1943 regarding the weak defences in France led to the appointment of Rommel to oversee the construction of further fortifications along the expected invasion-front, which stretched from the Netherlands to Cherbourg. Rommel was given command of the newly re-formed Army Group B, which included the 7th Army, the 15th Army, and the forces guarding the Netherlands. Nazi Germany's tangled command structure made it difficult for Rommel to achieve his task. He was not allowed to give orders to the Organisation Todt, which was commanded by armaments minister Albert Speer, so in some places he had to assign soldiers to do construction work.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Rommel believed that the Normandy coast could be a possible landing point for the invasion, so he ordered the construction of extensive defensive works along that shore. In addition to concrete gun-emplacements at strategic points along the coast, he ordered wooden stakes, metal tripods, mines, and large anti-tank obstacles to be placed on the beach to delay the approach of landing craft and to impede the movement of tanks. Expecting the Allies to land at high tide so that the infantry would spend less time exposed on the beach, he ordered many of these obstacles to be placed at the high-tide mark. Tangles of barbed wire, booby traps, and the removal of ground cover made the approach hazardous for infantry. On Rommel's order, the number of mines along the coast was tripled. Given the Allied air supremacy (4,029 Allied aircraft assigned to operations in Normandy plus 5,514 aircraft assigned to bombing and defence, versus 570 Luftwaffe planes stationed in France and the Low Countries), booby-trapped stakes known as "Rommelspargel" (Rommel's asparagus) were set up in meadows and fields to deter airborne landings.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Rommel, believing that the Germans' best chance was to stop the invasion at the shore, requested that mobile reserves—especially tanks—be stationed as close to the coast as possible. Rundstedt, General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg (commander of Panzer Group West), and other senior commanders believed that the invasion could not be stopped on the beaches. Geyr argued for a conventional doctrine: keeping the Panzer formations concentrated in a central position around Paris and Rouen and deploying them only when the main Allied beachhead had been identified. Geyr also noted that in the Italian Campaign the armour stationed near the coast had been damaged by naval bombardment. Rommel's opinion was that because of the overwhelming Allied air superiority, large-scale movement of tanks would not be possible once the invasion was underway. Hitler made the final decision: he left three divisions under Geyr's command and gave Rommel operational control of three tank-divisions as reserves. Hitler took personal control of four divisions as strategic reserves, not to be used without his direct orders.


title: Operation Overlord

text: By May 1944, 1.5 million American troops had arrived in the United Kingdom. Most were housed in temporary camps in the south-west of England, ready to move across the Channel to the western section of the landing zone. British and Canadian troops were billeted in accommodation further east, spread from Southampton to Newhaven, and even on the east coast for men who would be coming across in later waves. A complex system called Movement Control assured that the men and vehicles left on schedule from twenty departure points. Some men had to board their craft nearly a week before departure. The ships met at a rendezvous point (nicknamed "Piccadilly Circus") south-east of the Isle of Wight to assemble into convoys to cross the Channel. Minesweepers began clearing lanes on the evening of 5 June, and a thousand bombers left before dawn to attack the coastal defences. Some 1,200 aircraft departed England just before midnight to transport three airborne divisions to their drop zones behind enemy lines several hours before the beach landings. The American 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned objectives on the Cotentin Peninsula west of Utah. The British 6th Airborne Division was assigned to capture intact the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne. The Free French 4th SAS battalion of 538 men was assigned objectives in Brittany (Operation Dingson, Operation Samwest). Some 132,000 men were transported by sea on D-Day, and a further 24,000 came by air. Preliminary naval bombardment commenced at 05:45 and continued until 06:25 from five battleships, twenty cruisers, sixty-five destroyers, and two monitors. Infantry began arriving on the beaches at around 06:30.


title: Operation Overlord

text: The craft bearing the U.S. 4th Infantry Division assaulting Utah were pushed by the current to a spot about south of their intended landing zone. The troops met light resistance, suffering fewer than 200 casualties. Their efforts to push inland fell far short of their targets for the first day, but they were able to advance about , making contact with the 101st Airborne Division. The airborne landings west of Utah were not very successful, as only ten per cent of the paratroopers landed in their drop zones. Gathering the men together into fighting units was made difficult by a shortage of radios and by the terrain, with its hedgerows, stone walls and marshes. The 82nd Airborne Division captured its primary objective at Sainte-Mère-Église and worked to protect the western flank. Its failure to capture the river crossings at the River Merderet resulted in a delay in sealing off the Cotentin Peninsula. The 101st Airborne Division helped protect the southern flank and captured the lock on the River Douve at La Barquette, but did not capture the assigned nearby bridges on the first day.


title: Operation Overlord

text: At Pointe du Hoc, the task for the two hundred men of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Rudder, was to scale the cliffs with ropes and ladders to destroy the gun battery located there. While under fire from above, the men scaled the cliff, only to discover that the guns had already been withdrawn. The Rangers located the weapons, unguarded but ready to use, in an orchard some south of the point, and disabled them. Under attack, the men at the point became isolated, and some were captured. By dawn on D+1, Rudder had only 90 men able to fight. Relief did not come until D+2, when members of the 743rd Tank Battalion arrived.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Omaha, the most heavily defended sector, was assigned to the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, supplemented by troops from the U.S. 29th Infantry Division. They faced the 352nd Infantry Division, rather than the expected single regiment. Strong currents forced many landing craft east of their intended position or delayed them. Casualties were heavier than all the other landings combined, as the men were subjected to fire from the cliffs above. Problems clearing the beach of obstructions led to the beachmaster calling a halt to further landings of vehicles at 08:30. A group of destroyers arrived around this time to offer supporting artillery fire. Exit from Omaha was possible only via five gullies, and by late morning barely six hundred men had reached the higher ground. By noon, as the artillery fire took its toll and the Germans started to run out of ammunition, the Americans were able to clear some lanes on the beaches. They also started clearing the draws of enemy defences so that vehicles could move off the beach. The tenuous beachhead was expanded over the following days, and the D-Day objectives were accomplished by D+3.


title: Operation Overlord

text: At Gold, high winds made conditions difficult for the landing craft, and the amphibious DD tanks were landed close to shore or directly on the beach instead of further out as planned. Aerial attacks had failed to hit the Le Hamel strongpoint, and its 75 mm gun continued to do damage until 16:00. On the western flank, the 1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment captured Arromanches (future site of Mulberry "B"), and contact was made on the eastern flank with the Canadian forces at Juno.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Landings of infantry at Juno were delayed because of rough seas, and the men arrived ahead of their supporting armour, suffering many casualties while disembarking. Most of the offshore bombardment had missed the German defences. In spite of these difficulties, the Canadians quickly cleared the beach and created two exits to the villages above. Delays in taking Bény-sur-Mer led to congestion on the beach, but by nightfall, the contiguous Juno and Gold beachheads covered an area wide and deep. One troop of the 1st Hussar Tank Regiment was the only Allied unit to achieve its objective on the first day of the invasion. Casualties at Juno were 961 men.


title: Operation Overlord

text: On Sword, 21 of 25 DD tanks succeeded in getting safely ashore to provide cover for the infantry, who began disembarking at 07:30. They quickly cleared the beach and created several exits for the tanks. In the windy conditions, the tide came in more quickly than expected, making manoeuvring the armour difficult. The 2nd Battalion, King's Shropshire Light Infantry advanced on foot to within a few kilometres of Caen, but had to withdraw due to lack of armour support. At 16:00, the German 21st Panzer Division mounted a counterattack between Sword and Juno and nearly succeeded in reaching the coast. They met stiff resistance from the British 3rd Infantry Division and were soon recalled to assist in the area between Caen and Bayeux.


title: Operation Overlord

text: The first components of the Mulberry harbours were brought across on D+1 and the structures were in use for unloading by mid-June. One was constructed at Arromanches by the British, the other at Omaha by the Americans. Severe storms on 19 June interrupted the landing of supplies and destroyed the Omaha harbour. The repaired Arromanches harbour was able to receive around 6,000 tons of materiel daily and was in continuous use for the next ten months, but most shipments were brought in over the beaches until the port of Cherbourg was cleared of mines and obstructions on 16 July.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Allied casualties on the first day were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. The Germans lost 1,000 men. The Allied invasion plans had called for the capture of Carentan, St. Lô, Caen, and Bayeux on the first day, with all the beaches (other than Utah), linked with a front line from the beaches; none of these objectives was achieved. The five bridgeheads were not connected until 12 June, by which time the Allies held a front around long and deep. Caen, a major objective, was still in German hands at the end of D-Day and would not be completely captured until 21 July. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.


title: Operation Overlord

text: In the western part of the lodgement, US troops were to occupy the Cotentin Peninsula, especially Cherbourg, which would provide the Allies with a deep water harbour. The terrain behind Utah and Omaha was characterised by bocage, with thorny hedgerows on embankments high with a ditch on either side. Many areas were additionally protected by rifle pits and machine-gun emplacements. Most of the roads were too narrow for tanks. The Germans had flooded the fields behind Utah with sea water for up to from the coast. German forces on the peninsula included the 91st Infantry Division and the 243rd and 709th Static Infantry Divisions. By D+3 the Allied commanders realised that Cherbourg would not quickly be taken, and decided to cut off the peninsula to prevent any further reinforcements from being brought in. After failed attempts by the inexperienced 90th Infantry Division, Major General J. Lawton Collins, the VII Corps commander, assigned the veteran 9th Infantry Division to the task. They reached the west coast of the Cotentin on 17 June, cutting off Cherbourg. The 9th Division, joined by the 4th and 79th Infantry Divisions, took control of the peninsula in fierce fighting from 19 June; Cherbourg was captured on 26 June. By this time, the Germans had destroyed the port facilities, which were not brought back into full operation until September.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Fighting in the Caen area versus the 21st Panzer, the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend" and other units soon reached a stalemate. During Operation Perch, XXX Corps attempted to advance south towards Mont Pinçon but soon abandoned the direct approach in favour of a pincer attack to encircle Caen. XXX Corps made a flanking move from Tilly-sur-Seulles towards Villers-Bocage with part of the 7th Armoured Division, while I Corps tried to pass Caen to the east. The attack by I Corps was quickly halted and XXX Corps briefly captured Villers-Bocage. Advanced elements of the British force were ambushed, initiating a day-long Battle of Villers-Bocage and then the Battle of the Box. The British were forced to withdraw to Tilly-sur-Seulles. After a delay because of storms from 17 to 23 June, Operation Epsom began on 26 June, an attempt by VIII Corps to swing around and attack Caen from the south-west and establish a bridgehead south of the Odon. Although the operation failed to take Caen, the Germans suffered many tank losses after committing every available Panzer unit to the operation. Rundstedt was dismissed on 1 July and replaced as OB West by Field Marshal Günther von Kluge after remarking that the war was now lost. The northern suburbs of Caen were bombed on the evening of 7 July and then occupied north of the River Orne in Operation Charnwood on 8–9 July. Operation Atlantic and Operation Goodwood captured the rest of Caen and the high ground to the south from 18 to 21 July, by when the city was nearly destroyed. Hitler survived an assassination attempt on 20 July.


title: Operation Overlord

text: After securing territory in the Cotentin Peninsula south as far as Saint-Lô, the U.S. First Army launched Operation Cobra on 25 July and advanced further south to Avranches by 1 August. The British launched Operation Bluecoat on 30 July to secure Vire and the high ground of Mont Pinçon. Lieutenant General Patton's U.S. Third Army, activated on 1 August, quickly took most of Brittany and territory as far south as the Loire, while the First Army maintained pressure eastward toward Le Mans to protect their flank. By 3 August, Patton and the Third Army were able to leave a small force in Brittany and drive eastward towards the main concentration of German forces south of Caen. Over Kluge's objections, on 4 August Hitler ordered a counter-offensive (Operation Lüttich) from Vire towards Avranches.


title: Operation Overlord

text: While II Canadian Corps pushed south from Caen toward Falaise in Operation Totalize on 8 August, Bradley and Montgomery realised that there was an opportunity for the bulk of the German forces to be trapped at Falaise. The Third Army continued the encirclement from the south, reaching Alençon on 11 August. Although Hitler continued to insist until 14 August that his forces should counter-attack, Kluge and his officers began planning a retreat eastward. The German forces were severely hampered by Hitler's insistence on making all major decisions himself, which left his forces without orders for periods as long as 24 hours while information was sent back and forth to the Führer's residence at Obersalzberg in Bavaria. On the evening of 12 August, Patton asked Bradley if his forces should continue northward to close the gap and encircle the German forces. Bradley refused because Montgomery had already assigned the First Canadian Army to take the territory from the north. The Canadians met heavy resistance and captured Falaise on 16 August. The gap was closed on 21 August, trapping 50,000 German troops but more than a third of the German 7th Army and the remnants of nine of the eleven Panzer divisions had escaped to the east. Montgomery's decision-making regarding the Falaise Gap was criticised at the time by American commanders, especially Patton, although Bradley was more sympathetic and believed Patton would not have been able to close the gap. The issue has been the subject of much discussion among historians, criticism being levelled at American, British and Canadian forces. Hitler relieved Kluge of his command of OB West on 15 August and replaced him with Field Marshal Walter Model. Kluge committed suicide on 19 August after Hitler became aware of his involvement in the 20 July plot. An invasion in southern France (Operation Dragoon) was launched on 15 August.


title: Operation Overlord

text: The French Resistance in Paris rose against the Germans on 19 August. Eisenhower initially wanted to bypass the city to pursue other targets, but amid reports that the citizens were going hungry and Hitler's stated intention to destroy it, de Gaulle insisted that it should be taken immediately. French forces of the 2nd Armoured Division under General Philippe Leclerc arrived from the west on 24 August, while the U.S. 4th Infantry Division pressed up from the south. Scattered fighting continued throughout the night, and by the morning of 25 August Paris was liberated.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Operations continued in the British and Canadian sectors until the end of the month. On 25 August, the U.S. 2nd Armored Division fought its way into Elbeuf, making contact with British and Canadian armoured divisions. The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division advanced into the Forêt de la Londe on the morning of 27 August. The area was strongly held; the 4th and 6th Canadian brigades suffered many casualties over the course of three days as the Germans fought a delaying action in terrain well suited to defence. The Germans pulled back on 29 August, withdrawing over the Seine the next day. On the afternoon of 30 August, the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division crossed the Seine near Elbeuf and entered Rouen to a jubilant welcome.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Eisenhower took direct command of all Allied ground forces on 1 September. Concerned about German counter-attacks and the limited materiel arriving in France, he decided to continue operations on a broad front rather than attempting narrow thrusts. The linkup of the Normandy forces with the Allied forces in southern France occurred on 12 September as part of the drive to the Siegfried Line. On 17 September, Montgomery launched Operation Market Garden, an unsuccessful attempt by Anglo-American airborne troops to capture bridges in the Netherlands to allow ground forces to cross the Rhine into Germany. The Allied advance slowed due to German resistance and the lack of supplies (especially fuel). On 16 December the Germans launched the Ardennes Offensive, also known as the Battle of the Bulge, their last major offensive of the war on the Western Front. A series of successful Soviet actions began with the Vistula–Oder Offensive on 12 January. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April as Soviet troops neared his "Führerbunker" in Berlin, and Germany surrendered on 7 May 1945.


title: Operation Overlord

text: The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers. The opening of another front in western Europe was a tremendous psychological blow for Germany's military, who feared a repetition of the two-front war of World War I. The Normandy landings also heralded the start of the "race for Europe" between the Soviet forces and the Western powers, which some historians consider to be the start of the Cold War.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Victory in Normandy stemmed from several factors. German preparations along the Atlantic Wall were only partially finished; shortly before D-Day Rommel reported that construction was only 18 per cent complete in some areas as resources were diverted elsewhere. The deceptions undertaken in Operation Fortitude were successful, leaving the Germans obliged to defend a huge stretch of coastline. The Allies achieved and maintained air superiority, which meant that the Germans were unable to make observations of the preparations underway in Britain and were unable to interfere via bomber attacks. Transport infrastructure in France was severely disrupted by Allied bombers and the French Resistance, making it difficult for the Germans to bring up reinforcements and supplies. Much of the opening artillery barrage was off-target or not concentrated enough to have any impact, but the specialised armour worked well except on Omaha, providing close artillery support for the troops as they disembarked onto the beaches. The indecisiveness and overly complicated command structure of the German high command was also a factor in the Allied success.


title: Operation Overlord

text: From D-Day to 21 August, the Allies landed 2,052,299 men in northern France. The cost of the Normandy campaign was high for both sides. Between 6 June and the end of August, the American armies suffered 124,394 casualties, of whom 20,668 were killed, and 10,128 were missing. Casualties within the First Canadian and Second British Armies are placed at 83,045: 15,995 killed, 57,996 wounded, and 9,054 missing. Of these, Canadian losses amounted to 18,444, with 5,021 killed in action. One in seven Canadian soldiers killed between 6–11 June were killed after surrendering, in a series of executions that would be named the Normandy Massacres. The Allied air forces, having flown 480,317 sorties in support of the invasion, lost 4,101 aircraft and 16,714 airmen (8,536 members of the USAAF, and 8,178 flying under the command of the RAF). The Free French SAS paratroopers suffered 77 killed, with 197 wounded and missing. Allied tank losses have been estimated at around 4,000, with losses split evenly between the American and British/Canadian armies. Historians slightly differ on overall casualties during the campaign, with the lowest losses totaling 225,606 and the highest at 226,386.


title: Operation Overlord

text: German forces in France reported losses of 158,930 men between D-Day and 14 August, just before the start of Operation Dragoon in Southern France. In action at the Falaise pocket, 50,000 men were lost, of whom 10,000 were killed and 40,000 captured. Sources vary on the total German casualties. Niklas Zetterling, on examining German records, places the total German casualties suffered in Normandy and facing the Dragoon landings to be 288,695. Other sources arrive at higher estimates: 400,000 (200,000 killed or wounded and a further 200,000 captured), 500,000 (290,000 killed or wounded, 210,000 captured), to 530,000 in total. Allied forces reported the capture of 47,000 Germans in June, 36,000 in July, and 150,000 in August. Around 80,000 German soldiers are buried in Normandy, although this figure does include an unreported number of Germans who died prior to the battle and those who died in captivity after the end of the fighting.


title: Operation Overlord

text: There are no exact figures regarding German tank losses in Normandy. Approximately 2,300 tanks and assault guns were committed to the battle, of which only 100 to 120 crossed the Seine at the end of the campaign. While German forces reported only 481 tanks destroyed between D-day and 31 July, research conducted by No. 2 Operational Research Section of 21st Army Group indicates that the Allies destroyed around 550 tanks in June and July and another 500 in August, for a total of 1,050 tanks destroyed, including 100 destroyed by aircraft. Luftwaffe losses amounted to 2,127 aircraft. By the end of the Normandy campaign, 55 German divisions (42 infantry and 13 panzer) had been rendered combat ineffective; seven of these were disbanded. By September, OB West had only 13 infantry divisions, 3 panzer divisions, and 2 panzer brigades rated as combat effective.


title: Operation Overlord

text: During the liberation of Normandy, between 13,632 and 19,890 French civilians were killed, and more were seriously wounded. In addition to those who died during the campaign, 11,000 to 19,000 Normans are estimated to have been killed during pre-invasion bombing. A total of 70,000 French civilians were killed throughout the course of the war. Land mines and unexploded ordnance continued to inflict casualties upon the Norman population following the end of the campaign.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Prior to the invasion, SHAEF issued instructions (later the basis for the 1954 Hague Convention Protocol I) emphasising the need to limit the destruction to French heritage sites. These sites, named in the Official Civil Affairs Lists of Monuments, were not to be used by troops unless permission was received from the upper echelons of the chain of command. Nevertheless, church spires and other stone buildings throughout the area were damaged or destroyed to prevent them being used by the Germans. Efforts were made to prevent reconstruction workers from using rubble from important ruins to repair roads, and to search for artefacts. The Bayeux Tapestry and other important cultural treasures had been stored at the Château de Sourches near Le Mans from the start of the war, and survived intact. The occupying German forces also kept a list of protected buildings, but their intent was to keep the facilities in good condition for use as accommodation by German troops.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Many cities and towns in Normandy were totally devastated by the fighting and bombings. By the end of the Battle of Caen there remained only 8,000 liveable quarters for a population of over 60,000. Of the 18 listed churches in Caen, four were seriously damaged and five were destroyed, along with 66 other listed monuments. In the Calvados department (location of the Normandy beachhead), 76,000 citizens were rendered homeless. Of Caen's 210 pre-war Jewish population, only one survived the war.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Looting was perpetrated by all sides: the retreating Germans, the invading Allies, and the local French population. Looting was never condoned by Allied forces, and those who were found to be looting were punished.


title: Operation Overlord

text: The beaches of Normandy are still known by their invasion code names. Significant places have plaques, memorials, or small museums, and guide books and maps are available. Some of the German strong points remain preserved; Pointe du Hoc, in particular, is little changed from 1944. The remains of Mulberry harbour B still sits in the sea at Arromanches. Several large cemeteries in the area serve as the final resting place for many of the Allied and German soldiers killed in the Normandy campaign.


title: Operation Overlord

text: Above the English channel on a bluff at Omaha Beach, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial has hosted numerous visitors each year. The site covers 172.5 acres and contains the remains of 9,388 American military dead, most of whom were killed during the invasion of Normandy and ensuing military operations in World War II. Included are graves of Army Air Corps crews shot down over France as early as 1942 and four American women.


title: Circe

text: Circe (; , ) is an enchantress and a minor goddess in ancient Greek mythology and religion. She is either a daughter of the Titan Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate and Aeëtes. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.


title: Circe

text: The best known of her legends is told in Homer's "Odyssey" when Odysseus visits her island of Aeaea on the way back from the Trojan War and she changes most of his crew into swine. He manages to persuade her to return them to human shape, lives with her for a year and has sons by her, including Latinus and Telegonus. Her ability to change others into animals is further highlighted by the story of Picus, an Italian king whom she turns into a woodpecker for resisting her advances. Another story tells of her falling in love with the sea-god Glaucus, who prefers the nymph Scylla to her. In revenge, Circe poisoned the water where her rival bathed and turned her into a dreadful monster.


title: Circe

text: Depictions, even in Classical times, diverged from the detail in Homer's narrative, which was later to be reinterpreted morally as a cautionary story against drunkenness. Early philosophical questions were also raised about whether the change from being a human endowed with reason to being an unreasoning beast might not be preferable after all, and the resulting debate was to have a powerful impact during the Renaissance. Circe was also taken as the archetype of the predatory female. In the eyes of those from a later age, this behaviour made her notorious both as a magician and as a type of sexually-free woman. She has been frequently depicted as such in all the arts from the Renaissance down to modern times.


title: Circe

text: Western paintings established a visual iconography for the figure, but also went for inspiration to other stories concerning Circe that appear in Ovid's "Metamorphoses". The episodes of Scylla and Picus added the vice of violent jealousy to her bad qualities and made her a figure of fear as well as of desire.


title: Circe

text: By most accounts, she was the daughter of the sun god Helios and Perse, one of the three thousand Oceanid nymphs. In "Orphic Argonautica", her mother is called Asterope instead. Her brothers were Aeëtes, keeper of the Golden Fleece and father of Medea, and Perses. Her sister was Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos and mother of the Minotaur. Other accounts make her and her niece Medea the daughters of Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft by Aeëtes, usually said to be her brother instead. She was often confused with Calypso, due to her shifts in behavior and personality, and the association that both of them had with Odysseus.


title: Circe

text: According to Greek legend, Circe lived on the island of Aeaea. Although Homer is vague when it comes to the island's whereabouts, in his epic poem "Argonautica", the early 3rd BC author Apollonius of Rhodes locates Aeaea somewhere south of "Aethalia" (Elba), within view of the Tyrrhenian shore (that is, the western coast of Italy). In the same poem, Circe's brother Aeëtes describes how Circe was transferred to Aeaea: "I noted it once after taking a ride in my father Helios' chariot, when he was taking my sister Circe to the western land and we came to the coast of the Tyrrhenian mainland, where she dwells to this day, very far from the Colchian land." A scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius claims that Apollonius is following Hesiod's tradition in making Circe arrive in Aeaea on Helios' chariot, while Valerius Flaccus writes that Circe was borne away by winged dragons. Roman poets associated her with the most ancient traditions of Latium, and made her home to be on the promontory of Circeo.


title: Circe

text: Homer describes Circe as "a dreadful goddess with lovely hair and human speech". Apollonius writes that she (just like every other descendant of Helios) had flashing golden eyes that shot out rays of light, with the author of "Argonautica Orphica" noting that she had hair like fiery rays. Ovid's "The Cure for Love" implies that Circe might have been taught the knowledge of herbs and potions from her mother Perse, who seems to have had similar skills.


title: Circe

text: In the "Argonautica", Apollonius relates that Circe purified the Argonauts for the murder of Medea's brother Absyrtus, possibly reflecting an early tradition. In this poem, the Argonauts find Circe bathing in salt water; the animals that surround her are not former lovers transformed but primeval 'beasts, not resembling the beasts of the wild, nor yet like men in body, but with a medley of limbs'. Circe invites Jason, Medea and their crew into her mansion; uttering no words, they show her the still bloody sword they used to cut Absyrtus down, and Circe immediately realizes they've visited her to be purified of murder. She purifies them by slitting the throat of a suckling pig and letting the blood drip on them. Afterwards, Medea tells Circe their tale in great detail, albeit omitting the part of Absyrtus' murder; nevertheless Circe is not fooled, and greatly disapproves of their actions. However, out of pity for the girl, and on account of their kinship, she promises not to be an obstacle on their way, and orders Jason and Medea to leave her island immediately.


title: Circe

text: The sea-god Glaucus was in love with a beautiful maiden, Scylla, but she spurned his affections no matter how he tried to win her heart. Glaucus went to Circe, and asked her for a magic potion to make Scylla fall in love with him too. But Circe was smitten by Glaucus herself, and fell in love with him. But Glaucus did not love her back, and turned her offer of marriage down. Enraged, Circe used her knowledge of herbs and plants to take her revenge; she found the spot where Scylla usually took her bath, and poisoned the water. When Scylla went down to it to bathe, dogs sprang from her thighs and she was transformed into the familiar monster from the "Odyssey". In another, similar story, Picus was a Latian king whom Circe turned into a woodpecker. He was the son of Saturn, and a king of Latium. He fell in love and married a nymph, Canens, to whom he was utterly devoted. One day as he was hunting boars, he came upon Circe, who was gathering herbs in the woods. Circe fell immediately in love with him; but Picus, just like Glaucus before him, spurned her and declared that he would remain forever faithful to Canens. Circe, furious, turned Picus into a woodpecker. His wife Canens eventually wasted away in her mourning.


title: Circe

text: During the war between the gods and the giants, one of the giants, Picolous, fled the battle against the gods and came to Aeaea, Circe's island. He attempted to chase Circe away, only to be killed by Helios, Circe's ally and father. From the blood of the slain giant an herb came into existence; moly, named thus from the battle (malos) and with a white-coloured flower, either for the white Sun who had killed Picolous or the terrified Circe who turned white; the very plant, which mortals are unable to pluck from the ground, that Hermes would later give to Odysseus in order to defeat Circe.


title: Circe

text: In Homer's "Odyssey", an 8th-century BC sequel to his Trojan War epic "Iliad", Circe is initially described as a beautiful goddess living in a palace isolated in the midst of a dense wood on her island of Aeaea. Around her home prowl strangely docile lions and wolves. She lures any who land on the island to her home with her lovely singing while weaving on an enormous loom, but later drugs them so that they change shape. One of her Homeric epithets is "polypharmakos", "knowing many drugs or charms".


title: Circe

text: Circe invites the hero Odysseus' crew to a feast of familiar food, a pottage of cheese and meal, sweetened with honey and laced with wine, but also mixed with one of her magical potions that turns them into swine. Only Eurylochus, who suspects treachery, does not go in. He escapes to warn Odysseus and the others who have remained with the ship. Before Odysseus reaches Circe's palace, Hermes, the messenger god sent by the goddess of wisdom Athena, intercepts him and reveals how he might defeat Circe in order to free his crew from their enchantment. Hermes provides Odysseus with moly to protect him from Circe's magic. He also tells Odysseus that he must then draw his sword and act as if he were going to attack her. From there, as Hermes foretold, Circe would ask Odysseus to bed, but Hermes advises caution, for the treacherous goddess could still "unman" him unless he has her swear by the names of the gods that she will not take any further action against him. Following this advice, Odysseus is able to free his men.


title: Circe

text: After they have all remained on the island for a year, Circe advises Odysseus that he must first visit the Underworld, something a mortal has never yet done, in order to gain knowledge about how to appease the gods, return home safely and recover his kingdom. Circe also advises him on how this might be achieved and furnishes him with the protections he will need and the means to communicate with the dead. On his return, she further advises him about two possible routes home, warning him, however, that both carry great danger.


title: Circe

text: Towards the end of Hesiod's "Theogony" (c. 700 BC), it is stated that Circe bore Odysseus three sons: Agrius (otherwise unknown); Latinus; and Telegonus, who ruled over the Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans. The "Telegony", an epic now lost, relates the later history of the last of these. Circe eventually informed her son who his absent father was and, when he set out to find Odysseus, gave him a poisoned spear. When Telegonus arrived in Ithaca, Odysseus was away in Thesprotia, fighting the Brygi. Telegonus began to ravage the island; Odysseus came to defend his land. With the weapon Circe gave him, Telegonus killed his father unknowingly. Telegonus then brought back his father's corpse to Aeaea, together with Penelope and Odysseus' son by her, Telemachus. After burying Odysseus, Circe made the other three immortal.


title: Circe

text: Circe married Telemachus, and Telegonus married Penelope by the advice of Athena. According to an alternative version depicted in Lycophron's 3rd-century BC poem "Alexandra" (and John Tzetzes' scholia on it), Circe used magical herbs to bring Odysseus back to life after he had been killed by Telegonus. Odysseus then gave Telemachus to Circe's daughter Cassiphone in marriage. Sometime later, Telemachus had a quarrel with his mother-in-law and killed her; Cassiphone then killed Telemachus to avenge her mother's death. On hearing of this, Odysseus died of grief.


title: Circe

text: Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.72.5) cites Xenagoras, the 2nd-century BC historian, as claiming that Odysseus and Circe had three different sons: Rhomos, Anteias, and Ardeias, who respectively founded three cities called by their names: Rome, Antium, and Ardea.


title: Circe

text: In the later 5th-century CE epic "Dionysiaca", its author Nonnus mentions Phaunus, Circe's son by the sea god Poseidon.


title: Circe

text: Three ancient plays about Circe have been lost: the work of the tragedian Aeschylus and of the 4th-century BC comic dramatists Ephippus of Athens and Anaxilas. The first told the story of Odysseus' encounter with Circe. Vase paintings from the period suggest that Odysseus' half-transformed animal-men formed the chorus in place of the usual Satyrs. Fragments of Anaxilas also mention the transformation and one of the characters complains of the impossibility of scratching his face now that he is a pig.


title: Circe

text: The theme of Circe turning men into a variety of animals was elaborated by later writers. In his episodic work "The Sorrows of Love" (first century BC), Parthenius of Nicaea interpolated another episode into the time that Odysseus was staying with Circe. Pestered by the amorous attentions of King Calchus the Daunian, the sorceress invited him to a drugged dinner that turned him into a pig and then shut him up in her sties. He was only released when his army came searching for him on the condition that he would never set foot on her island again.


title: Circe

text: Among Latin treatments, Virgil's "Aeneid" relates how Aeneas skirts the Italian island where Circe dwells and hears the cries of her many male victims, who now number more than the pigs of earlier accounts: "The roars of lions that refuse the chain, / The grunts of bristled boars, and groans of bears, / And herds of howling wolves that stun the sailors' ears." In Ovid's 1st-century poem "Metamorphoses", the fourth episode covers Circe's encounter with Ulysses (the Roman name of Odysseus), whereas book 14 covers the stories of Picus and Glaucus.


title: Circe

text: Plutarch took up the theme in a lively dialogue that was later to have several imitators. Contained in his 1st-century "Moralia" is the Gryllus episode in which Circe allows Odysseus to interview a fellow Greek turned into a pig. After his interlocutor informs Odysseus that his present existence is preferable to the human, they engage in a philosophical dialogue in which every human value is questioned and beasts are proved to be of superior wisdom and virtue.


title: Circe

text: Strabo writes that a tomb-shrine of Circe was attended in one of the Pharmacussae islands, off the coast of Attica, typical for hero-worship. Circe was also venerated in Mount Circeo, in the Italian peninsula, which took its name after her according to ancient legend. Strabo says that Circe had a shrine in the small town, and that the people there kept a bowl they claimed belonged to Odysseus. The promontory is occupied by ruins of a platform attributed with great probability to a temple of Venus or Circe.


title: Circe

text: Giovanni Boccaccio provided a digest of what was known of Circe during the Middle Ages in his "De mulieribus claris" ("Famous Women", 1361–1362). While following the tradition that she lived in Italy, he comments wryly that there are now many more temptresses like her to lead men astray.


title: Circe

text: There is a very different interpretation of the encounter with Circe in John Gower's long didactic poem "Confessio Amantis" (1380). Ulysses is depicted as deeper in sorcery and readier of tongue than Circe and through this means he leaves her pregnant with Telegonus. Most of the account deals with the son's later quest for and accidental killing of his father, drawing the moral that only evil can come of the use of sorcery.


title: Circe

text: The story of Ulysses and Circe was retold as an episode in Georg Rollenhagen's German verse epic, "Froschmeuseler" ("The Frogs and Mice", Magdeburg, 1595). In this 600-page expansion of the pseudo-Homeric "Batrachomyomachia", it is related at the court of the mice and takes up sections 5–8 of the first part.


title: Circe

text: In Lope de Vega's miscellany "La Circe – con otras rimas y prosas" (1624), the story of her encounter with Ulysses appears as a verse epic in three cantos. This takes its beginning from Homer's account, but it is then embroidered; in particular, Circe's love for Ulysses remains unrequited.


title: Circe

text: As "Circe's Palace", Nathaniel Hawthorne retold the Homeric account as the third section in his collection of stories from Greek mythology, "Tanglewood Tales" (1853). The transformed Picus continually appears in this, trying to warn Ulysses, and then Eurylochus, of the danger to be found in the palace, and is rewarded at the end by being given back his human shape. In most accounts Ulysses only demands this for his own men.


title: Circe

text: In her survey of the "Transformations of Circe", Judith Yarnall comments of this figure, who started out as a comparatively minor goddess of unclear origin, that "What we know for certain – what Western literature attests to – is her remarkable staying power…These different versions of Circe's myth can be seen as mirrors, sometimes clouded and sometimes clear, of the fantasies and assumptions of the cultures that produced them." After appearing as just one of the characters that Odysseus encounters on his wandering, "Circe herself, in the twists and turns of her story through the centuries, has gone through far more metamorphoses than those she inflicted on Odysseus's companions."


title: Circe

text: One of the most enduring literary themes connected with the figure of Circe was her ability to change men into animals. There was much speculation concerning how this could be, whether the human consciousness changed at the same time, and even whether it was a change for the better. The Gryllus dialogue was taken up by another Italian writer, Giovan Battista Gelli, in his "La Circe" (1549). This is a series of ten philosophical and moral dialogues between Ulysses and the humans transformed into various animals, ranging from an oyster to an elephant, in which Circe sometimes joins. Most argue against changing back; only the last animal, a philosopher in its former existence, wants to. The work was translated into English soon after in 1557 by Henry Iden. Later the English poet Edmund Spenser also made reference to Plutarch's dialogue in the section of his "Faerie Queene" (1590) based on the Circe episode which appears at the end of Book II. Sir Guyon changes back the victims of Acrasia's erotic frenzy in the Bower of Bliss, most of whom are abashed at their fall from chivalric grace, "But one above the rest in speciall, / That had an hog beene late, hight Grille by name, / Repined greatly, and did him miscall, / That had from hoggish forme him brought to naturall."


title: Circe

text: Two other Italians wrote rather different works that centre on the animal within the human. One was Niccolò Machiavelli in his unfinished long poem, "L'asino d'oro" ("The Golden Ass", 1516). The author meets a beautiful herdswoman surrounded by Circe's herd of beasts. After spending a night of love with him, she explains the characteristics of the animals in her charge: the lions are the brave, the bears are the violent, the wolves are those forever dissatisfied, and so on (Canto 6). In Canto 7 he is introduced to those who experience frustration: a cat that has allowed its prey to escape; an agitated dragon; a fox constantly on the look-out for traps; a dog that bays the moon; Aesop's lion in love that allowed himself to be deprived of his teeth and claws. There are also emblematic satirical portraits of various Florentine personalities. In the eighth and last canto he has a conversation with a pig that, like the Gryllus of Plutarch, does not want to be changed back and condemns human greed, cruelty and conceit.


title: Circe

text: The other Italian author was the esoteric philosopher Giordano Bruno, who wrote in Latin. His "Cantus Circaeus" ("The Incantation of Circe") was the fourth work on memory and the association of ideas by him to be published in 1582. It contains a series of poetic dialogues, in the first of which, after a long series of incantations to the seven planets of the Hermetic tradition, most humans appear changed into different creatures in the scrying bowl. The sorceress Circe is then asked by her handmaiden Moeris about the type of behaviour with which each is associated. According to Circe, for instance, "fireflies are the learned, wise, and illustrious amidst idiots, asses, and obscure men" (Question 32). In later sections different characters discuss the use of images in the imagination in order to facilitate use of the art of memory, which is the real aim of the work.


title: Circe

text: French writers were to take their lead from Gelli in the following century. Antoine Jacob wrote a one-act social comedy in rhyme, "Les Bestes raisonnables" ("The Reasoning Beasts", 1661) which allowed him to satirise contemporary manners. On the isle of Circe, Ulysses encounters an ass that was once a doctor, a lion that had been a valet, a female doe and a horse, all of whom denounce the decadence of the times. The ass sees human asses everywhere, "Asses in the town square, asses in the suburbs, / Asses in the provinces, asses proud at court, / Asses browsing in the meadows, military asses trooping, / Asses tripping it at balls, asses in the theatre stalls." To drive the point home, in the end it is only the horse, formerly a courtesan, who wants to return to her former state.


title: Circe

text: The same theme occupies La Fontaine's late fable, "The Companions of Ulysses" (XII.1, 1690), which also echoes Plutarch and Gelli. Once transformed, every animal (which includes a lion, a bear, a wolf and a mole) protests that their lot is better and refuses to be restored to human shape. Charles Dennis shifted this fable to stand at the head of his translation of La Fontaine, "Select Fables" (1754), but provides his own conclusion that "When Mortals from the path of Honour stray, / And the strong passions over reason sway, / What are they then but Brutes? / 'Tis vice alone that constitutes / Th'enchanting wand and magic bowl, The exterior form of Man they wear, / But are in fact both Wolf and Bear, / The transformation's in the Soul."


title: Circe

text: Louis Fuzelier and Marc-Antoine Legrand titled their comic opera of 1718 "Les animaux raisonnables". It had more or less the same scenario transposed into another medium and set to music by Jacques Aubert. Circe, wishing to be rid of the company of Ulysses, agrees to change back his companions, but only the dolphin is willing. The others, who were formerly a corrupt judge (now a wolf), a financier (a pig), an abused wife (a hen), a deceived husband (a bull) and a flibbertigibbet (a linnet), find their present existence more agreeable.


title: Circe

text: The Venetian Gasparo Gozzi was another Italian who returned to Gelli for inspiration in the 14 prose "Dialoghi dell'isola di Circe" ("Dialogues from Circe's Island") published as journalistic pieces between 1760 and 1764. In this moral work, the aim of Ulysses in talking to the beasts is to learn more of the human condition. It includes figures from fable (The fox and the crow, XIII) and from myth to illustrate its vision of society at variance. Far from needing the intervention of Circe, the victims find their natural condition as soon as they set foot on the island. The philosopher here is not Gelli's elephant but the bat that retreats from human contact into the darkness, like Bruno's fireflies (VI). The only one who wishes to change in Gozzi's work is the bear, a satirist who had dared to criticize Circe and had been changed as a punishment (IX).


title: Circe

text: There were two more satirical dramas in later centuries. One modelled on the Gryllus episode in Plutarch occurs as a chapter of Thomas Love Peacock's late novel, "Gryll Grange" (1861), under the title "Aristophanes in London". Half Greek comedy, half Elizabethan masque, it is acted at the Grange by the novel's characters as a Christmas entertainment. In it Spiritualist mediums raise Circe and Gryllus and try to convince the latter of the superiority of modern times, which he rejects as intellectually and materially regressive. An Italian work drawing on the transformation theme was the comedy by Ettore Romagnoli, "La figlia del Sole" ("The Daughter of the Sun", 1919). Hercules arrives on the island of Circe with his servant Cercopo and has to be rescued by the latter when he too is changed into a pig. But, since the naturally innocent other animals had become corrupted by imitating human vices, the others who had been changed were refused when they begged to be rescued.


title: Circe

text: Also in England, Austin Dobson engaged more seriously with Homer's account of the transformation of Odysseus' companions when, though "Head, face and members bristle into swine, / Still cursed with sense, their mind remains alone". Dobson's "" (1640) depicts the horror of being imprisoned in an animal body in this way with the human consciousness unchanged. There appears to be no relief, for only in the final line is it revealed that Odysseus has arrived to free them. But in Matthew Arnold's dramatic poem "The Strayed Reveller" (1849), in which Circe is one of the characters, the power of her potion is differently interpreted. The inner tendencies unlocked by it are not the choice between animal nature and reason but between two types of impersonality, between divine clarity and the poet's participatory and tragic vision of life. In the poem, Circe discovers a youth laid asleep in the portico of her temple by a draught of her ivy-wreathed bowl. On awaking from possession by the poetic frenzy it has induced, he craves for it to be continued.


title: Circe

text: With the Renaissance there began to be a reinterpretation of what it was that changed the men, if it was not simply magic. For Socrates, in Classical times, it had been gluttony overcoming their self-control. But for the influential emblematist Andrea Alciato, it was unchastity. In the second edition of his "Emblemata" (1546), therefore, Circe became the type of the prostitute. His Emblem 76 is titled "Cavendum a meretricibus"; its accompanying Latin verses mention Picus, Scylla and the companions of Ulysses, and concludes that 'Circe with her famous name indicates a whore and any who loves such a one loses his reason'. His English imitator Geoffrey Whitney used a variation of Alciato's illustration in his own "Choice of Emblemes" (1586) but gave it the new title of "Homines voluptatibus transformantur", men are transformed by their passions. This explains her appearance in the Nighttown section named after her in James Joyce's novel "Ulysses". Written in the form of a stage script, it makes of Circe the brothel madam, Bella Cohen. Bloom, the book's protagonist, fantasizes that she turns into a cruel man-tamer named Mr Bello who makes him get down on all fours and rides him like a horse.


title: Circe

text: By the 19th century, Circe was ceasing to be a mythical figure. Poets treated her either as an individual or at least as the type of a certain kind of woman. The French poet Albert Glatigny addresses "Circé" in his "Les vignes folles" (1857) and makes of her a voluptuous opium dream, the magnet of masochistic fantasies. Louis-Nicolas Ménard's sonnet in "Rêveries d'un païen mystique" (1876) describes her as enchanting all with her virginal look, but appearance belies the accursed reality. Poets in English were not far behind in this lurid portrayal. Lord de Tabley's "Circe" (1895) is a thing of decadent perversity likened to a tulip, "A flaunting bloom, naked and undivine... / With freckled cheeks and splotch'd side serpentine, / A gipsy among flowers".


title: Circe

text: That central image is echoed by the blood-striped flower of T.S.Eliot's student poem "Circe's Palace" (1909) in the Harvard Advocate. Circe herself does not appear, her character is suggested by what is in the grounds and the beasts in the forest beyond: panthers, pythons, and peacocks that "look at us with the eyes of men whom we knew long ago". Rather than a temptress, she has become an emasculatory threat.


title: Circe

text: Several female poets make Circe stand up for herself, using the soliloquy form to voice the woman's position. The 19th-century English poet Augusta Webster, much of whose writing explored the female condition, has a dramatic monologue in blank verse titled "Circe" in her volume "Portraits" (1870). There the sorceress anticipates her meeting with Ulysses and his men and insists that she does not turn men into pigs—she merely takes away the disguise that makes them seem human. "But any draught, pure water, natural wine, / out of my cup, revealed them to themselves / and to each other. Change? there was no change; / only disguise gone from them unawares". The mythological character of the speaker contributes at a safe remove to the Victorian discourse on women's sexuality by expressing female desire and criticizing the subordinate role given to women in heterosexual politics.


title: Circe

text: Two American poets also explored feminine psychology in poems ostensibly about the enchantress. Leigh Gordon Giltner's "Circe" was included in her collection "The Path of Dreams" (1900), the first stanza of which relates the usual story of men turned into swine by her spell. But then a second stanza presents a sensuous portrait of an unnamed woman, very much in the French vein; once more, it concludes, 'A Circe's spells transform men into swine'. This is no passive victim of male projections but a woman conscious of her sexual power. So too is Hilda Doolittle's "Circe", from her collection "Hymen" (1921). In her soliloquy she reviews the conquests with which she has grown bored, then mourns the one instance when she failed. In not naming Ulysses himself, Doolittle universalises an emotion with which all women might identify. At the end of the century, British poet Carol Ann Duffy wrote a monologue entitled "Circe" which pictures the goddess addressing an audience of 'nereids and nymphs'. In this outspoken episode in the war between the sexes, Circe describes the various ways in which all parts of a pig could and should be cooked.


title: Circe

text: Another indication of the progression in interpreting the Circe figure is given by two poems a century apart, both of which engage with paintings of her. The first is the sonnet that Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote in response to Edward Burne-Jones' "The Wine of Circe" in his volume "Poems" (1870). It gives a faithful depiction of the painting's Pre-Raphaelite mannerism but its description of Circe's potion as 'distilled of death and shame' also accords with the contemporary (male) identification of Circe with perversity. This is further underlined by his statement (in a letter) that the black panthers there are 'images of ruined passion' and by his anticipation at the end of the poem of "passion's tide-strown shore / Where the disheveled seaweed hates the sea". The Australian A. D. Hope's "Circe – after the painting by Dosso Dossi", on the other hand, frankly admits humanity's animal inheritance as natural and something in which even Circe shares. In the poem, he links the fading rationality and speech of her lovers to her own animal cries in the act of love.


title: Circe

text: There remain some poems that bear her name that have more to do with their writers' private preoccupations than with reinterpreting her myth. The link with it in Margaret Atwood's "Circe/Mud Poems", first published in "You Are Happy" (1974), is more a matter of allusion and is nowhere overtly stated beyond the title. It is a reflection on contemporary gender politics that scarcely needs the disguises of Augusta Webster's. With two other poems by male writers it is much the same: Louis Macneice's, for example, whose "Circe" appeared in his first volume, "Poems" (London, 1935); or Robert Lowell's, whose "Ulysses and Circe" appeared in his last, "Day by Day" (New York, 1977). Both poets have appropriated the myth to make a personal statement about their broken relationships.


title: Circe

text: Several Renaissance epics of the 16th century include lascivious sorceresses based on the Circe figure. These generally live in an isolated spot devoted to pleasure, to which lovers are lured and later changed into beasts. They include the following:


title: Circe

text: Later scholarship has identified elements from the character of both Circe and especially her fellow enchantress Medea as contributing to the development of the mediaeval legend of Morgan le Fay. In addition, it has been argued that the fairy Titania in William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1600) is an inversion of Circe. Titania (daughter of the Titans) was a title by which the sorceress was known in Classical times. In this case the tables are turned on the character, who is queen of the fairies. She is made to love an ass after, rather than before, he is transformed into his true animal likeness.


title: Circe

text: It has further been suggested that John Milton's "Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle" (1634) is a sequel to "Tempe Restored," a masque in which Circe had figured two years earlier, and that the situation presented there is a reversal of the Greek myth. At the start of the masque, the character Comus is described as the son of Circe by Bacchus, god of wine, and the equal of his mother in enchantment. He too changes travelers into beastly forms that 'roll with pleasure in a sensual sty'. Having waylaid the heroine and immobilized her on an enchanted chair, he stands over her, wand in hand, and presses on her a magical cup (representing sexual pleasure and intemperance), which she repeatedly refuses, arguing for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity. The picture presented is a mirror image of the Classical story. In place of the witch who easily seduces the men she meets, a male enchanter is resisted by female virtue.


title: Circe

text: In the 20th century, the Circe episode was to be re-evaluated in two poetic sequels to the "Odyssey". In the first of these, Giovanni Pascoli's "L'Ultimo Viaggio" ("The Last Voyage", 1906), the aging hero sets out to rediscover the emotions of his youth by retracing his journey from Troy, only to discover that the island of Eea is deserted. What in his dream of love he had taken for the roaring of lions and Circe's song was now no more than the sound of the sea-wind in autumnal oaks (Cantos 16–17).


title: Circe

text: This melancholy dispelling of illusion is echoed in "" (1938) by Nikos Kazantzakis. The fresh voyage in search of new meaning to life recorded there grows out of the hero's initial rejection of his past experiences in the first two sections. The Circe episode is viewed by him as a narrow escape from death of the spirit: "With twisted hands and thighs we rolled on burning sands, / a hanging mess of hissing vipers glued in sun!... / Farewell the brilliant voyage, ended! Prow and soul / moored in the muddy port of the contented beast! / O prodigal, much-traveled soul, is this your country?" His escape from this mire of sensuality comes one day when the sight of some fishermen, a mother and her baby enjoying the simple comforts of food and drink, recalls him to life, its duties and delights. Where the attempt by Pascoli's hero to recapture the past ended in failure, Kazantzakis' Odysseus, already realising the emptiness of his experiences, journeys into what he hopes will be a fuller future.


title: Circe

text: Scenes from the "Odyssey" are common on Greek pottery, the Circe episode among them. The two most common representations have Circe surrounded by the transformed sailors and Odysseus threatening the sorceress with his sword. In the case of the former, the animals are not always boars but also include, for instance, the ram, dog and lion on the 6th-century BC Boston kylix. Often the transformation is only partial, involving the head and perhaps a sprouting tail, while the rest of the body is human. In describing an otherwise obscure 5th-century Greek bronze in the Walters Art Museum that takes the form of a man on all fours with the foreparts of a pig, the commentator asks in what other way could an artist depict someone bewitched other than as a man with an animal head. In these scenes Circe is shown almost invariably stirring the potion with her wand, although the incident as described in Homer has her use the wand only to bewitch the sailors after they have refreshed themselves. One exception is the Berlin amphora on which the seated Circe holds the wand towards a half transformed man.


title: Circe

text: In the second scene, Odysseus threatens the sorceress with a drawn sword, as Homer describes it. However, he is sometimes depicted carrying spears as well, as in the Athens lekythos, while Homer reports that it was a bow he had slung over his shoulder. In this episode Circe is generally shown in flight, and on the Erlangen lekythos can clearly be seen dropping the bowl and wand behind her. Two curiously primitive wine bowls incorporate the Homeric detail of Circe's handloom, at which the men approaching her palace could hear her singing sweetly as she worked. In the 5th-century skyphos from Boeotia an apparently crippled Odysseus leans on a crutch while a woman with negroid features holds out a disproportionately large bowl. In the other, a pot-bellied hero brandishes a sword while Circe stirs her potion. Both these may depict the scene as represented in one or other of the comic satyr plays which deal with their encounter. Little remains of these now beyond a few lines by Aeschylus, Ephippus of Athens and Anaxilas. Other vase paintings from the period suggest that Odysseus' half-transformed animal-men formed the chorus in place of the usual satyrs. The reason that it should be a subject of such plays is that wine drinking was often central to their plot. Later writers were to follow Socrates in interpreting the episode as illustrating the dangers of drunkenness.


title: Circe

text: Other artefacts depicting the story include the chest of Cypselus described in the travelogue by Pausanias. Among its many carvings 'there is a grotto and in it a woman sleeping with a man upon a couch. I was of opinion that they were Odysseus and Circe, basing my view upon the number of the handmaidens in front of the grotto and upon what they are doing. For the women are four, and they are engaged on the tasks which Homer mentions in his poetry'. The passage in question describes how one of them 'threw linen covers over the chairs and spread fine purple fabrics on top. Another drew silver tables up to the chairs, and laid out golden dishes, while a third mixed sweet honeyed wine in a silver bowl, and served it in golden cups. The fourth fetched water and lit a roaring fire beneath a huge cauldron'. This suggests a work of considerable detail, while the Etruscan coffin preserved in Orvieto's archaeological museum has only four figures. At the centre Odysseus threatens Circe with drawn sword while an animal headed figure stands on either side, one of them laying his hand familiarly on the hero's shoulder. A bronze mirror relief in the Fitzwilliam Museum is also Etruscan and is inscribed with the names of the characters. There a pig is depicted at Circe's feet, while Odysseus and Elpenor approach her, swords drawn.


title: Circe

text: During the 18th century painters began to portray individual actors in scenes from named plays. There was also a tradition of private performances, with a variety of illustrated works to help with stage properties and costumes. Among these was Thomas Jefferys' "A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Antient and Modern" (1757–72) which included a copperplate engraving of a crowned Circe in loose dress, holding a goblet aloft in her right hand and a long wand in her left. Evidence of such performances during the following decades is provided by several portraits in character, of which one of the earliest was the pastel by Daniel Gardner (1750–1805) of "Miss Elliot as Circe". The artist had been a pupil of both George Romney and Joshua Reynolds, who themselves were soon to follow his example. On the 1778 engraving based on Gardner's portrait appear the lines from Milton's "Comus": "The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup / Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape / And downward fell into a grovelling swine", in compliment to the charm of this marriageable daughter of a country house. As in the Jefferys' plate, she wears a silver coronet over tumbled dark hair, with a wand in the right hand and a goblet in the left. In hindsight the frank eyes that look directly at the viewer and the rosebud mouth are too innocent for the role Miss Elliot is playing.


title: Circe

text: The subjects of later paintings impersonating Circe have a history of sexual experience behind them, starting with "Mary Spencer in the character of Circe" by William Caddick, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780. The subject here was the mistress of the painter George Stubbs. A portrait of "Mrs Nesbitt as Circe" by Reynolds followed in 1781. Though this lady's past was ambiguous, she had connections with those in power and was used by the Government as a secret agent. In the painting she is seated sideways, wearing a white, loose-fitting dress, with a wand in her right hand and a gilded goblet near her left. A monkey is crouching above her in the branches of a tree and a panther fraternizes with the kitten on her knee. While the painting undoubtedly alludes to her reputation, it also places itself within the tradition of dressing up in character.


title: Circe

text: Soon afterwards, the notorious Emma Hamilton was to raise this to an art form, partly by the aid of George Romney's many paintings of her impersonations. Romney's preliminary study of Emma's head and shoulders, at present in the Tate Gallery, with its piled hair, expressive eyes and mouth, is reminiscent of Samuel Gardener's portrait of Miss Elliot. In the full-length "Lady Hamilton as Circe" at Waddesdon Manor, she is placed in a wooded landscape with wolves snarling to her left, although the tiger originally there has now been painted out. Her left arm is raised to cast a spell while the wand points downward in her right. After Emma moved to Naples and joined Lord Hamilton, she developed what she called her "Attitudes" into a more public entertainment. Specially designed, loose-fitting tunics were paired with large shawls or veils as she posed in such a way as to evoke figures from Classical mythology. These developed from mere poses, with the audience guessing the names of the classical characters and scenes that she portrayed, into small, wordless charades.


title: Circe

text: The tradition of dressing up in character continued into the following centuries. One of the photographic series by Julia Margaret Cameron, a pupil of the painter George Frederic Watts, was of mythical characters, for whom she used the children of friends and servants as models. Young Kate Keown sat for the head of "Circe" in about 1865 and is pictured wearing a grape and vineleaf headdress to suggest the character's use of wine to bring a change in personality. The society portrait photographer Yevonde Middleton, also known as Madame Yevonde, was to use a 1935 aristocratic charity ball as the foundation for her own series of mythological portraits in colour. Its participants were invited to her studio afterwards to pose in their costumes. There Baroness Dacre is pictured as Circe with a leafy headdress about golden ringlets and clasping a large Baroque porcelain goblet.


title: Circe

text: A decade earlier, the illustrator Charles Edmund Brock extended into the 20th century what is almost a pastiche of the 18th-century conversation piece in his "Circe and the Sirens" (1925). In this the Honourable Edith Chaplin (1878–1959), Marchioness of Londonderry, and her three youngest daughters are pictured in a garden setting grouped about a large pet goat. Three women painters also produced portraits using the convention of the sitter in character. The earliest was Beatrice Offor (1864–1920), whose sitter's part in her 1911 painting of Circe is suggested by the vine-leaf crown in her long dark hair, the snake-twined goblet she carries and the snake bracelet on her left arm. Mary Cecil Allen was of Australian origin but was living in the United States at the time "Miss Audrey Stevenson as Circe" was painted (1930). Though only a head and shoulders sketch, its colouring and execution suggest the sitter's lively personality. Rosemary Valodon (born 1947), from the same country, painted a series of Australian personalities in her goddess series. "Margarita Georgiadis as Circe" (1991) is a triptych, the central panel of which portrays an updated, naked femme fatale reclining in tropical vegetation next to a pig's head.


title: Circe

text: One painting at least depicts an actress playing the part of Circe. This is Franz von Stuck's striking portrait of Tilla Durieux as Circe (1913). She played this part in a Viennese revival of Calderon's play in 1912 and there is a publicity still of her by Isidor Hirsch in which she is draped across a sofa and wearing an elaborate crown. Her enticing expression and the turn of her head there is almost exactly that of Van Stuck's enchantress as she holds out the poisoned bowl. It suggests the use of certain posed publicity photos in creating the same iconic effect as had paintings in the past. A nearly contemporary example was the 1907 photo of Mme Geneviève Vix as Circe in the light opera by Lucien Hillenacher at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. The posing of the actress and the cropping of the image so as to highlight her luxurious costume demonstrates its ambition to create an effect that goes beyond the merely theatrical. A later example is the still of Silvana Mangano in her part as Circe in the 1954 film "Ulysses", which is as cunningly posed for effect.


title: Circe

text: Beside the verse dramas, with their lyrical interludes, on which many operas were based, there were poetic texts which were set as secular cantatas. One of the earliest was Alessandro Stradella's "La Circe", in a setting for three voices that bordered on the operatic. It was first performed at Frascati in 1667 to honour Cardinal Leopoldo de Medici and contained references to its surroundings. In the opening recitative, Circe explains that it was her son Telegonus who founded Frascati. The other characters with whom she enters into dialogue are the south wind (Zeffiro) and the local river Algido. In the following century, Antonio Vivaldi's cantata "All'ombra di sospetto" (In the shadow of doubt, RV 678) is set for a single voice and depicts Circe addressing Ulysses. The countertenor part is accompanied by flute, harpsichord, cello, and theorbo and features two recitatives and two arias. The piece is famous for the dialogue created between flute and voice, conjuring the moment of flirtation before the two become lovers.


title: Circe

text: The most successful treatment of the Ulysses episode in French was Jean-Baptiste Rousseau's poem "Circé" (1703), that was specifically written to be a cantata. The different verse forms employed allow the piece to be divided by the musicians that set it in order to express a variety of emotions. The poem opens with the abandoned Circe sitting on a high mountain and mourning the departure of Ulysses. The sorceress then calls on the infernal gods and makes a terrible sacrifice: "A myriad vapours obscure the light, / The stars of the night interrupt their course, / Astonished rivers retreat to their source / And even Death's god trembles in the dark". But though the earth is shaken to its core, Love is not to be commanded in this way and the wintery fields come back to life.


title: Circe

text: The earliest setting was by Jean-Baptiste Morin in 1706 and was popular for most of the rest of the century. One of its final moralising minuets, "Ce n'est point par effort qu'on aime" (Love won't be forced) was often performed independently and the score reprinted in many song collections. The flautist Michel Blavet arranged the music for this and the poem's final stanza, "Dans les champs que l'Hiver désole" (In the fields that Winter wastes), for two flutes in 1720. The new setting of the cantata three years later by Francois Collin de Blamont was equally successful and made the name of its nineteen-year-old composer. Originally for voice and bass continuo, it was expanded and considerably revised in 1729, with parts for flute, violin and viol added. Towards the end of the century, the choral setting by Georges Granges de Fontenelle (1769–1819) was equally to bring its young composer fame.


title: Circe

text: Rousseau's poem was also familiar to composers of other nationalities. Set for mezzo-soprano and full orchestra, it was given almost operatic treatment by the court composer Luigi Cherubini in 1789. Franz Seydelmann set it for soprano and full orchestra in Dresden in 1787 at the request of the Russian ambassador to the Saxon Court, Prince Alexander Belosselsky, who spoke highly of Seydelmann's work. A later setting by Austrian composer Sigismond von Neukomm for soprano and full orchestra (Op. 4, 1810) was judged favorably by French musicologist Jacques Chailley in his 1966 article for the journal "Revue des études slaves".


title: Circe

text: Recent treatments of the Circe theme include the Irish composer Gerard Victory's radio cantata "Circe 1991" (1973–75), David Gribble's "A Threepenny Odyssey", a fifteen-minute cantata for young people which includes the episode on Circe's Isle, and Malcolm Hayes' "Odysseus remembers" (2003–04), which includes parts for Circe, Anticleia and Tiresias. Gerald Humel's song cycle "Circe" (1998) grew out of his work on his 1993 ballet with Thomas Höft. The latter subsequently wrote seven poems in German featuring Circe's role as seductress in a new light: here it is to freedom and enlightenment that she tempts her hearers. Another cycle of "Seven Songs for High Voice and Piano" (2008) by the American composer Martin Hennessey includes the poem "Circe's Power" from Louise Glück's "Meadowlands" (1997).


title: Circe

text: There have also been treatments of Circe in popular music, in particular the relation of the Odysseus episode in Friedrich Holländer's song of 1958. In addition, text in Homeric Greek is included in the "Circe's Island" episode in David Bedford's "The Odyssey" (1976). This was the ancestor of several later electronic suites that reference the Odysseus legend, with "Circe" titles among them, having little other programmatic connection with the myth itself.


title: Circe

text: After classical ballet separated from theatrical spectacle into a wordless form in which the story is expressed solely through movement, the subject of Circe was rarely visited. It figured as the first episode of three with mythological themes in "Les Fêtes Nouvelles" ("New Shows"), staged by Sieur Duplessis le cadet in 1734, but the work was taken off after its third performance and not revived. The choreographer Antoine Pitrot also staged "Ulysse dans l'isle de Circée", describing it as a "ballet sérieux, heroï-pantomime" in 1764. Thereafter there seems to be nothing until the revival of ballet in the 20th century.


title: Circe

text: In 1963, the American choreographer Martha Graham created her "Circe" with a score by Alan Hovhaness. Its theme is psychological, representing the battle with animal instincts. The beasts portrayed extend beyond swine and include a goat, a snake, a lion and a deer. The theme has been described as one of 'highly charged erotic action', although set in 'a world where sexual frustration is rampant'. In that same decade Rudolf Brucci composed his "Kirka" (1967) in Croatia.


title: Circe

text: There is a Circe episode in John Harbison's "Ulysses" (Act 1, scene 2, 1983) in which the song of the enchantress is represented by ondes Martenot and tuned percussion. After the sailors of Ullyses are transformed into animals by her spell, a battle of wills follows between Circe and the hero. Though the men are changed back, Ulysses is charmed by her in his turn. In 1993, a full scale treatment of the story followed in Gerald Humel's two-act "Circe und Odysseus". Also psychological in intent, it represents Circe's seduction of the restless hero as ultimately unsuccessful. The part played by the geometrical set in its Berlin production was particularly notable.


title: Circe

text: While operas on the subject of Circe did not cease, they were overtaken for a while by the new musical concept of the symphonic poem which, whilst it does not use a sung text, similarly seeks a union of music and drama. A number of purely musical works fall into this category from the late 19th century onwards, of which one of the first was Heinrich von Herzogenberg's "Odysseus" (Op.16, 1873). A Wagnerian symphony for large orchestra, dealing with the hero's return from the Trojan war, its third section is titled "Circe's Gardens" ("Die Gärten der Circe").


title: Circe

text: In the 20th century, 's cycle "Aus Odysseus Fahrten" ("From Odysseus' Voyage", Op. 6, 1903) was equally programmatic and included the visit to Circe's Isle ("Die Insel der Circe") as its second long section. After a depiction of the sea voyage, a bass clarinet passage introduces an ensemble of flute, harp and solo violin over a lightly orchestrated accompaniment, suggesting Circe's seductive attempt to hold Odysseus back from traveling further. Alan Hovhaness' "Circe Symphony" (No.18, Op. 204a, 1963) is a late example of such programmatic writing. It is, in fact, only a slightly changed version of his ballet music of that year, with the addition of more strings, a second timpanist and celesta.


title: Circe

text: With the exception of Willem Frederik Bon's prelude for orchestra (1972), most later works have been for a restricted number of instruments. They include Hendrik de Regt's "Circe" (Op. 44, 1975) for clarinet, violin and piano; Christian Manen's "Les Enchantements De Circe" (Op. 96, 1975) for bassoon and piano; and Jacques Lenot's "Cir(c)é" (1986) for oboe d'amore. The German experimental musician Dieter Schnebel's "Circe" (1988) is a work for harp, the various sections of which are titled "Signale" (signals), "Säuseln" (whispers), "Verlockungen" (enticements), "Pein" (pain), "Schläge" (strokes) and "Umgarnen" (snare), which give some idea of their programmatic intent.


title: Circe

text: Thea Musgrave's "Circe" for three flutes (1996) was eventually to become the fourth piece in her six-part "Voices from the Ancient World" for various combinations of flute and percussion (1998). Her note on these explains that their purpose is to 'describe some of the personages of ancient Greece' and that Circe was 'the enchantress who changed men into beasts'. A recent reference is the harpsichordist Fernando De Luca's Sonata II for viola da gamba titled "Circe's Cave" ("L'antro della maga Circe").


title: Circe

text: In later Christian opinion, Circe was an abominable witch using miraculous powers to evil ends. When the existence of witches came to be questioned, she was reinterpreted as a depressive suffering from delusions.


title: Circe

text: In botany, the Circaea are plants belonging to the enchanter's nightshade genus. The name was given by botanists in the late 16th century in the belief that this was the herb used by Circe to charm Odysseus' companions. Medical historians have speculated that the transformation to pigs was not intended literally but refers to anticholinergic intoxication with the plant "Datura stramonium". Symptoms include amnesia, hallucinations, and delusions. The description of "moly" fits the snowdrop, a flower that contains galantamine, which is a long lasting anticholinesterase and can therefore counteract anticholinergics that are introduced to the body after it has been consumed.


title: Circe

text: The "gens Mamilia" – described by Livy as one of the most distinguished families of Latium – claimed descent from Mamilia, a granddaughter of Odysseus and Circe through Telegonus. One of the most well known of them was Octavius Mamilius (died 498 BC), princeps of Tusculum and son-in-law of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus the seventh and last king of Rome.


title: Unicode

text: Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard, is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, which is maintained by the Unicode Consortium, defines as of the current version (15.0) 149,186 characters covering 161 modern and historic scripts, as well as symbols, emoji (including in colors), and non-visual control and formatting codes.


title: Unicode

text: Unicode's success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread and predominant use in the internationalization and localization of computer software. The standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, and most modern programming languages.


title: Unicode

text: The Unicode character repertoire is synchronized with ISO/IEC 10646, each being code-for-code identical with the other. "The Unicode Standard", however, includes more than just the base code. Alongside the character encodings, the Consortium's official publication includes a wide variety of details about the scripts and how to display them: normalization rules, decomposition, collation, rendering, and bidirectional text display order for multilingual texts, and so on. The "Standard" also includes reference data files and visual charts to help developers and designers correctly implement the repertoire.


title: Unicode

text: Unicode can be stored using several different encodings, which translate the character codes into sequences of bytes. The Unicode standard defines three and several other encodings exist, all in practice variable-length encodings. The most common encodings are the ASCII-compatible UTF-8, the ASCII-incompatible UTF-16 (compatible with the obsolete UCS-2), and the Chinese Unicode encoding standard GB18030 which is not an official Unicode standard but is used in China and implements Unicode fully.


title: Unicode

text: Unicode has the explicit aim of transcending the limitations of traditional character encodings, such as those defined by the ISO/IEC 8859 standard, which find wide usage in various countries of the world but remain largely incompatible with each other. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing (usually using Latin characters and the local script), but not multilingual computer processing (computer processing of arbitrary scripts mixed with each other).


title: Unicode

text: Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs (renderings) for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this sometimes leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs (see Han unification).


title: Unicode

text: In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique —a number, not a glyph—for each character. In other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering (size, shape, font, or style) to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicode's designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode.


title: Unicode

text: The first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO/IEC 8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. Many essentially identical characters were encoded multiple times at different code points to preserve distinctions used by legacy encodings and therefore, allow conversion from those encodings to Unicode (and back) without losing any information. For example, the "fullwidth forms" section of code points encompasses a full duplicate of the Latin alphabet because Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) fonts contain two versions of these letters, "fullwidth" matching the width of the CJK characters, and normal width. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode.


title: Unicode

text: Unicode Bulldog Award recipients include many names influential in the development of Unicode and include Tatsuo Kobayashi, Thomas Milo, Roozbeh Pournader, Ken Lunde, and Michael Everson.


title: Unicode

text: Based on experiences with the Xerox Character Code Standard (XCCS) since 1980, the origins of Unicode can be traced back to 1987, when Joe Becker from Xerox with Lee Collins and Mark Davis from Apple started investigating the practicalities of creating a universal character set. With additional input from Peter Fenwick and Dave Opstad, Joe Becker published a draft proposal for an "international/multilingual text character encoding system in August 1988, tentatively called Unicode". He explained that "the name 'Unicode' is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding".


title: Unicode

text: Unicode is intended to address the need for a workable, reliable world text encoding. Unicode could be roughly described as "wide-body ASCII" that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the world's living languages. In a properly engineered design, 16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose.


title: Unicode

text: His original 16-bit design was based on the assumption that only those scripts and characters in modern use would need to be encoded:


title: Unicode

text: Unicode gives higher priority to ensuring utility for the future than to preserving past antiquities. Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text (e.g. in the union of all newspapers and magazines printed in the world in 1988), whose number is undoubtedly far below 2 = 16,384. Beyond those modern-use characters, all others may be defined to be obsolete or rare; these are better candidates for private-use registration than for congesting the public list of generally useful Unicodes.


title: Unicode

text: In early 1989, the Unicode working group expanded to include Ken Whistler and Mike Kernaghan of Metaphor, Karen Smith-Yoshimura and Joan Aliprand of RLG, and Glenn Wright of Sun Microsystems, and in 1990, Michel Suignard and Asmus Freytag from Microsoft and Rick McGowan of NeXT joined the group. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, and a final review draft of Unicode was ready.


title: Unicode

text: The Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on 3 January 1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992.


title: Unicode

text: In 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. This increased the Unicode codespace to over a million code points, which allowed for the encoding of many historic scripts (e.g., Egyptian hieroglyphs) and thousands of rarely used or obsolete characters that had not been anticipated as needing encoding. Among the characters not originally intended for Unicode are rarely used Kanji or Chinese characters, many of which are part of personal and place names, making them much more essential than envisioned in the original architecture of Unicode.


title: Unicode

text: The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name 'Apple Unicode' instead of 'Unicode' for the Platform ID in the naming table.


title: Unicode

text: The Unicode Consortium is a nonprofit organization that coordinates Unicode's development. Full members include most of the main computer software and hardware companies with any interest in text-processing standards, including Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Netflix, and SAP SE.


title: Unicode

text: Over the years several countries or government agencies have been members of the Unicode Consortium. Presently only the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs (Oman) is a full member with voting rights.