Over a field of characteristic zero, a reduced matrix-symmetric skew circuit on an $n × n$ matrix with support size at most $k$, where $2 ≤ k$ and $2k + 1 ≤ n$, computes a linear combination of homomorphism polynomials of patterns of pathwidth at most $2k$. Together with symmetric ABPs for patterns of bounded pathwidth, it follows that a family of polynomials $(p_n)$ is computed by matrix-symmetric skew circuits of polynomial orbit size if, and only if, there is a constant $k$ such that every $p_n$ is a linear combination of homomorphism polynomials $\hom_{F,n}$ of patterns $F$ of pathwidth at most $k$.