Circe

by

Madeline Miller

Helios Character Analysis

Helios is the Titan god of the sun, an egotistical and tyrannical person whose personality reflects the horrific nature of the gods. He embodies a major theme of the novel, how power breeds abuse, since he uses his power to make the lives of others—particularly mortals—miserable. Circe is one of Helios’s daughters, but she never gets any affection from him. This is typical of Helios, for the only thing he cares about is power. When Aeëtes reveals to Helios that he, Circe, and their other siblings (Pasiphaë and Perses) have the power of magic, he is frightened that there is another power that “[is] not bound by the normal laws of divinity.” Zeus is also frightened, and he and Helios agree to exile Circe to an island for eternity. Helios doesn’t care about how his daughter feels about being sacrificed—he cares only about maintaining his alliance with Zeus, the most powerful god. Additionally, by exiling Circe, he and Zeus send a warning to the other sorcerers, a reminder that the gods still have power over them. This scramble for power is emblematic of Helios, and of the gods in general. Helios is a static character, never once deviating from his brutality and always intent on gaining more power and thoughtlessly abusing those beneath him. At the end of the story, Circe demands that he end her exile. At first he refuses, but then he relents when Circe threatens to use her powers—whose extent Helios does not know—on him. Essentially, Circe plays his game of using fear to gain control, and she succeeds.

Helios Quotes in Circe

The Circe quotes below are all either spoken by Helios or refer to Helios. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Power, Fear, and Self-Preservation Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“A girl,” my mother said to him, wrinkling her nose.

But my father did not mind his daughters, who were sweet-tempered and golden as the first press of olives. Men and gods paid dearly for the chance to breed from their blood, and my father’s treasury was said to rival that of the king of the gods himself […]

“She will make a fair match,” he said.

“How fair?” my mother wanted to know. This might be consolation, if I could be traded for something better.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios (speaker), Perse (speaker), Helios, Perse
Related Symbols: Gold
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

I had heard by then the stories whispered among my cousins, of what [mortals] might do to nymphs they caught alone. The rapes and ravishments, the abuses. I found it hard to believe. They looked weak as mushroom gills. They kept their faces carefully down, away from all those divinities. Mortals had their own stories, after all, of what happened to those who mixed with gods. An ill-timed glance, a foot set in an impropitious spot, such things could bring down death and woe upon their families for a dozen generations.

It was like a great chain of fear, I thought. Zeus at the top and my father just behind. Then Zeus’ siblings and children, then my uncles, and on down through all the ranks of river-gods and brine-lords and Furies and Winds and Graces, until it came to the bottom where we sat, nymphs and mortals both, eying each other.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Pasiphaë, Minos, Zeus
Page Number: 31-32
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

[Glaucos] pushed me from him. His face was caught, half in anger, half in a sort of fear. He looked almost like his old self […]

“No!” He slashed his hand through the air. “I will not think on those days. Every hour some new bruise upon me, some new ache, always weary, always burdened and weak. I sit at councils with your father now. I do not have to beg for every scrap. Nymphs clamor for me, and I may choose the best among them, which is Scylla.”

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Glaucos (speaker), Helios, Scylla
Related Symbols: Scars
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

My face was hot. “I suppose I should take you as my tutor and deny everything?”

“Yes,” [Aeëtes] said. “That is how it works, Circe. I tell father that my sorcery was an accident, he pretends to believe me, and Zeus pretends to believe him, and so the world is balanced. It is your own fault for confessing. Why you did that, I will never understand.”

It was true, he would not. He had not been born when Prometheus was whipped.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Aeëtes (speaker), Prometheus, Helios, Scylla, Zeus
Page Number: 75-76
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“Tell me,” he said, “who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one?”

“A happy one, of course.”

“Wrong,” he said. “A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.” […]

“So this is how Olympians spend their days. Thinking of ways to make men miserable.”

“There’s no cause for righteousness,” he said. “Your father is better at it than anyone.”

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Hermes (speaker), Prometheus, Helios, Scylla, Zeus
Page Number: 96-97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“You fools,” I said. “I am the one who made that creature. I did it for pride and vain delusion. And you thank me? Twelve of your men are dead for it, and how many thousands more to come? That drug I gave her is the strongest I have. Do you understand, mortals?” […]

The light from my eyes beat down upon them.

“I will never be free of her. She cannot be changed back, not now, not ever. What she is, she will remain. She will feast on your kind for all eternity. So get up. Get up and get to your oars, and let me not hear you speak again of your imbecile gratitude or I will make you sorry for it.”

The cringed and shook like the weak vessels they were, stuttering to their feet and creeping away […] I yanked off the cloak. I wanted the sun to burn me.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Pasiphaë, Daedalus, Hermes, Scylla
Page Number: 117
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

“Why can you not be more peaceful?” I whispered. “Why must it be so hard?”

As if in answer, a vision of my father’s halls drifted up: the sterile earth floor, the black gleam of obsidian […] I had laid quiet and still, but I remembered the ravening hunger that was in me always: to climb into my father’s lap, to rise and run and shout, snatch the draughts from the board and batter them against the walls […] shake [Helios] for every secret, as fruits are shaken from a tree. But if I had done even one of those things there would have been no mercy. He would have burnt me down to ash […]

Why should [Telegonus] be peaceful? I never was, nor his father either, when I knew him. The difference was that he was not afraid to be burnt.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Telegonus
Page Number: 258
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

My island lay around me. My herbs, my house, my animals. And so it would go, I thought, on and on, forever the same. It did not matter if Penelope and Telemachus were kind. It did not matter even if they stayed for their whole lives, if she were the friend I had yearned for and he were something else, it would only be a blink. They would wither, and I would burn their bodies and watch my memories of them fade as everything faded in the endless wash of the centuries […] For me there was nothing. I would go on through the countless millennia, while everyone I met ran through my fingers and I was left with only those who were like me. The Olympians and Titans. My sister and brothers. My father.

I felt something in me then […] I seemed to hear that pale creature in his black depths.

Then, child, make another.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Aeëtes, Telemachus, Pasiphaë, Penelope, Perses, Trygon
Page Number: 357-358
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Circe LitChart as a printable PDF.
Circe PDF

Helios Quotes in Circe

The Circe quotes below are all either spoken by Helios or refer to Helios. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Power, Fear, and Self-Preservation Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“A girl,” my mother said to him, wrinkling her nose.

But my father did not mind his daughters, who were sweet-tempered and golden as the first press of olives. Men and gods paid dearly for the chance to breed from their blood, and my father’s treasury was said to rival that of the king of the gods himself […]

“She will make a fair match,” he said.

“How fair?” my mother wanted to know. This might be consolation, if I could be traded for something better.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios (speaker), Perse (speaker), Helios, Perse
Related Symbols: Gold
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

I had heard by then the stories whispered among my cousins, of what [mortals] might do to nymphs they caught alone. The rapes and ravishments, the abuses. I found it hard to believe. They looked weak as mushroom gills. They kept their faces carefully down, away from all those divinities. Mortals had their own stories, after all, of what happened to those who mixed with gods. An ill-timed glance, a foot set in an impropitious spot, such things could bring down death and woe upon their families for a dozen generations.

It was like a great chain of fear, I thought. Zeus at the top and my father just behind. Then Zeus’ siblings and children, then my uncles, and on down through all the ranks of river-gods and brine-lords and Furies and Winds and Graces, until it came to the bottom where we sat, nymphs and mortals both, eying each other.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Pasiphaë, Minos, Zeus
Page Number: 31-32
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

[Glaucos] pushed me from him. His face was caught, half in anger, half in a sort of fear. He looked almost like his old self […]

“No!” He slashed his hand through the air. “I will not think on those days. Every hour some new bruise upon me, some new ache, always weary, always burdened and weak. I sit at councils with your father now. I do not have to beg for every scrap. Nymphs clamor for me, and I may choose the best among them, which is Scylla.”

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Glaucos (speaker), Helios, Scylla
Related Symbols: Scars
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

My face was hot. “I suppose I should take you as my tutor and deny everything?”

“Yes,” [Aeëtes] said. “That is how it works, Circe. I tell father that my sorcery was an accident, he pretends to believe me, and Zeus pretends to believe him, and so the world is balanced. It is your own fault for confessing. Why you did that, I will never understand.”

It was true, he would not. He had not been born when Prometheus was whipped.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Aeëtes (speaker), Prometheus, Helios, Scylla, Zeus
Page Number: 75-76
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“Tell me,” he said, “who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one?”

“A happy one, of course.”

“Wrong,” he said. “A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.” […]

“So this is how Olympians spend their days. Thinking of ways to make men miserable.”

“There’s no cause for righteousness,” he said. “Your father is better at it than anyone.”

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Hermes (speaker), Prometheus, Helios, Scylla, Zeus
Page Number: 96-97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“You fools,” I said. “I am the one who made that creature. I did it for pride and vain delusion. And you thank me? Twelve of your men are dead for it, and how many thousands more to come? That drug I gave her is the strongest I have. Do you understand, mortals?” […]

The light from my eyes beat down upon them.

“I will never be free of her. She cannot be changed back, not now, not ever. What she is, she will remain. She will feast on your kind for all eternity. So get up. Get up and get to your oars, and let me not hear you speak again of your imbecile gratitude or I will make you sorry for it.”

The cringed and shook like the weak vessels they were, stuttering to their feet and creeping away […] I yanked off the cloak. I wanted the sun to burn me.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Pasiphaë, Daedalus, Hermes, Scylla
Page Number: 117
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

“Why can you not be more peaceful?” I whispered. “Why must it be so hard?”

As if in answer, a vision of my father’s halls drifted up: the sterile earth floor, the black gleam of obsidian […] I had laid quiet and still, but I remembered the ravening hunger that was in me always: to climb into my father’s lap, to rise and run and shout, snatch the draughts from the board and batter them against the walls […] shake [Helios] for every secret, as fruits are shaken from a tree. But if I had done even one of those things there would have been no mercy. He would have burnt me down to ash […]

Why should [Telegonus] be peaceful? I never was, nor his father either, when I knew him. The difference was that he was not afraid to be burnt.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Telegonus
Page Number: 258
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

My island lay around me. My herbs, my house, my animals. And so it would go, I thought, on and on, forever the same. It did not matter if Penelope and Telemachus were kind. It did not matter even if they stayed for their whole lives, if she were the friend I had yearned for and he were something else, it would only be a blink. They would wither, and I would burn their bodies and watch my memories of them fade as everything faded in the endless wash of the centuries […] For me there was nothing. I would go on through the countless millennia, while everyone I met ran through my fingers and I was left with only those who were like me. The Olympians and Titans. My sister and brothers. My father.

I felt something in me then […] I seemed to hear that pale creature in his black depths.

Then, child, make another.

Related Characters: Circe (speaker), Helios, Aeëtes, Telemachus, Pasiphaë, Penelope, Perses, Trygon
Page Number: 357-358
Explanation and Analysis: