In
Homer'sOdyssey,
Hermes gave
his herb to
Odysseus to protect him from
Circe's poison and magic when he went to her palace to rescue his friends.[2] These friends came together with him from the island
Aeolus after they escaped from the
Laestrygonians.
According to the "New History" of
Ptolemy Hephaestion (according to
Photius) and
Eustathius, the plant mentioned by Homer grew from the blood of the
GiantPicolous killed on
Circe's island, by
Helios, father and ally of Circe, when the Giant tried to attack Circe. In this description the flower had a black root, for the colour of the blood of the slain Giant, and a white flower, either for the white Sun that killed him, or the fact that Circe had grown pale with terror. A derivation of the name was given, from the "hard" (Greek malos) combat with the Giant.[3][4][5]
Homer also describes moly by saying "The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk; the gods call it Moly, Dangerous for a mortal man to pluck from the soil, but not for the deathless gods. All lies within their power".[6]
So
Ovid describes in book 14 of his Metamorphoses: "A white bloom with a root of black".
Assignment to a real species
There has been much controversy as to the identification, and some authors point out that as a fictional element of the story, it does not necessarily correspond to any real plant.
Kurt Sprengel believed that the plant is identical to Allium nigrum as Homer describes it.[7] Some also believe that it may have been Allium moly, instead, which is named after the mythical herb. Philippe Champault decides in favour of the Peganum harmala (of the family Nitrariaceae),[9] the Syrian or African rue (Greek πἠγανον), from the seeds and roots of which the vegetable alkaloid
harmaline is extracted. The flowers are white with green stripes.
Victor Bérard (1906)[8] relying partly on a Semitic root,[10] prefers the Atriplex halimus[a]
family Amaranthaceae – a herb or low shrub common on the south European coasts. These identifications are noticed by R. M. Henry (1906),[12] who illustrates the Homeric account by passages in the Paris and Leiden
magical papyri, and argues that moly is probably a magical name, derived perhaps from Phoenician or Egyptian sources, for a plant which cannot be certainly identified. He shows that the "difficulty of pulling up" the plant is not a merely physical one, but rather connected with the peculiar powers claimed by magicians.[12]
Medical historians have speculated that the transformation to pigs was not intended literally, but instead refers to
anticholinergic intoxication whose symptoms include
amnesia,
hallucinations, and
delusions.[13] This diagnosis would make "moly" align well with the
snowdrop, a
flower of the region that contains
galantamine, an
anticholinesterase that therefore might counteract anticholinergics. In 2024, a study suggested the possibility that the plant in question is, in fact, an ethnobotanical complex composed of several phylogenetically close species, which could have been used interchangeably due to their similar properties.[14]
Linnaeus identified the mythical plant with golden garlic ( Allium moly), although the perianth of this species is yellow, not white.
Thom Gunn made his poem Moly the title poem of his 1971 collection.[16]
In the Harry Potter universe, moly is a powerful plant that can be eaten to counteract enchantments.[citation needed]
In
John Lyly's play Gallathea,
Diana instructs her
nymphs to "think love like Homer's moly, a white leaf and a black root, a fair show, and a bitter taste."[17]
John Milton referred to "... that Moly / that Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave" in lines 636–637 of Comus.[18]
In
Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged's aunt, a witch, is mentioned to have moly among the herbs in her hut. In The Farthest Shore, the true names of the moly plant's parts are taught to students at Roke: "Now the petal of the flower of moly hath a name, which is iebera, and so also the sepal, which is partonath; and stem and leaf and root hath each his name ...".
In
A.E. Harrow's The Once and Future Witches, moly is used in a spell to turn a man into a swine: "Moly and spite a woman make, / May every man his true form take / ... A spell for swine, requiring wine & wicked intent".
In the Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger (Japanese television series) episode "Terror! Eaten In An Instant", the heroes face a monster called Dora Circe (Pudgy Pig in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) which requires moly to defeat.
Footnotes
^
Mediterranean saltbush or sea orache, Atriplex halimus from atriplex, a Latin form of Greek ἀτράφαξυς, and halimosἅλιμος, "marine".
^
abcBérard, Victor (1906). Phéniciens et Grecs en Italie d'après l'Odyssée [Phoenicians and Greeks in Italy according to the Odyssey] (in French). pp. ii, 288 ff, 504 ff.
^Molina-Venegas, R. & Verano, R. (2024) The quest for Homer's moly: exploring the potential of an early ethnobotanical complex. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 20, 11.