Put up your weapon in the sheath. We two
shall mingle and make love upon our bed.
So mutual trust may come of play and love.
(Kirke to Odysseus; Odyssey, X:375-7, Fitzgerald's translation)
This line popped up in a fortune today, and I remembered that it really struck me last time I read the Odyssey.
First of all, in this entire scene, Kirke and Odysseus are negotiating from the perspective of equals. I suppose one could say to this that it's only because she has frightening and magical powers that a woman can be his equal, but I think that misses a key point: it's not obvious why Homer would have been able to write any characters who were both distinctly female and distinctly loci of power. I think the existence of this passage (and similar ones about Helen, Athena, Klytemnestra and so on) suggest that we should be digging a bit more into the social models he may have had in archaic Greece.
Second, and on a less historical note: This is a rather interesting use of sex in the text. It reminds me of little more than Bonobo chimps. But it's a rather surprising thing to see in an 8th-century BC heroic epic.
For that matter, even outside of its literary context, it's an interesting approach to sex: essentially as the ultimate "getting-to-know-you" exercise.
I will also assume that the double meaning of the first sentence still holds in Greek.
