by Homer
plains and still wearing their blood-matted armor.
They all came thronging around that hole as a sallow
fear took hold of me—cries they made were unearthly.
Then I called to my men, I heartened and told them
to flay and burn the sheep cut down with my ruthless
bronze and sprawled out there. ‘Pray to the Death-Gods,’
I told them, ‘to strong Aides and fearsome Persephoneia.’
Drawing the sharp sword myself from its thigh-sheath
I sat and allowed none of the frail heads of the dead ones
close to the blood before I heard from Teiresies.
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Bury Your Dead
♦ “The ghost of my war-friend, Elpenor, came to me first off,
not yet buried under the earth with its broad ways.
We’d left his body behind, unmourned and unburied
in Kirke’s hall, for another task overwhelmed us.
Now my heart felt pity, I wept when I saw him
and spoke to him shortly, the words with a feathery swiftness:
‘Elpenor, how are you under this hazy darkness?
You came here faster on foot than I in my black ship.’
“I spoke that way, he moaned and gave me an answer.
‘Son of Laertes, nourished by Zeus, wily Odysseus,
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some Power harshly doomed me—and endless wine-draughts.
I slept on Kirke’s house but thoughtlessly failed to
go back down by the long ladder I’d climbed up.
I fell from the roof head first, breaking my neck-bone
clear of the spine. My soul went down into Aides’.
I beg you now by our friends you left behind who are not here,
your wife, by the father who raised you from childhood,
yes and Telemakhos, left alone in your great hall.
I know when you leave this place, the household of Aides,
your well-built ship will stand on the shore of Aiaie.
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There and then, my lord, I beg you, remember:
don’t sail and leave me behind unmourned and unburied.
Lest I become a curse on you, rankling the high Gods,
burn my corpse and weapons, such as they are now.
Build me a marker, a mound on the shore of the gray sea
recalling a sorry man, so men in the future will know me.
Make that end for me. Plant my oar in the death-mound:
when I was alive I used it to row with my shipmates.’
“After he spoke that way I answered by saying,
‘I’ll do it, my sorry man. I’ll make you a good end.’
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We sat that way, exchanging words that we hated,
I on one side, holding my sword by the spilled blood,
my war-friend’s ghost on the other, saying a good deal.
A Mother’s Ghost
“Then the ghost of my laid-out Mother approached us,
Antikleia, the great-hearted Autolukos’s daughter.
I’d left her alive when I sailed to the holy city of Trojans.
I heartily pitied her now, I wept to behold her.
I stopped her, though, for all my sorrow, from stepping
close to the blood before I heard from Teiresies.
The Dead Seer
“The ghost of Teiresies came then, a prophet of Thebes,
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holding a staff of gold. He knew me and questioned,
‘Son of Laertes, nourished by Zeus, wily Odysseus,
wretched man: why did you go from the Sun-God’s
brightness to look at the dead, this pleasureless country?
Move away from the hole: spare me your sharp sword
and let me drink that blood. I’ll tell you the whole truth.’
No Words without That Blood
“He stopped and I moved back, sliding the silver-
studded sword in its sheath. After the faultless
prophet drank that dark blood he started by saying,
‘You ask for a honeyed return, my shining Odysseus;
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a God will make it hard. I know that you cannot
avoid the Earth-Trembler who stores that outrage
deep in his heart: you angered him, blinding his own son.
Sacred Herds
‘Yet you could make it home, for all the harm you will suffer,
♦ if only you check your spirits and those of your war-friends
after your well-built vessel approaches Thrinakie
Island. Free at last from violet sea-swells,
you’ll find cattle grazing with fattening sheep-flocks—
Helios’s livestock. He watches everything closely.
If only you leave them unharmed! Minding your way home
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you might reach Ithaka still, despite the harm you will suffer.
Yet if you hurt them I foresee death for your war-friends,
your own ship wrecked and you, though you avoid it,
will come home poor and late with all of your men lost.
You’ll find a foreign ship and your house full of trouble:
a crowd of overbearing men will devour your resources,
dote on your godlike wife and offer her bride-gifts.
Yet you’ll avenge their brutal ways when you get home,
killing all the suitors there in your great hall,
whether by guile or slashing bronze in the open.
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The Last Days of a War-Chief
‘In time you’ll go on a journey. Taking a well-made
oar you’ll reach a land of people who don’t know
seaways. No salt savors the food that they eat there.
They know nothing at all about purple-cheeked vessels
and well-made oars that act as the wings of a fast ship.
I’ll tell you a sign, quite plain: it cannot escape you.
The time another traveler meets you and tells you
you’re holding a winnowing tool on your bright arm,
then you should drive the well-made oar in the ground there.
Offer beautiful victims to lordly Poseidon:
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a ram, a bull and a boar that’s mated with females.
Go back home then. Offer hecatombs duly
to deathless Gods who rule broadly in heaven,
each in order. Death will come from the salt sea,
arriving very gently and taking your long life,
glowing and burdened with age. The people around you
will all be blessed. Those are the truths I can tell you.’
No Words without the Blood
“After he spoke that way I answered by saying,
‘Teiresies, Gods themselves are the weavers of all that.
Come on now, tell me something, answer me truly.
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I’ve watched my dead Mother, a spirit beside me
sitting close to the blood. She’s quiet and cannot
look at my face, her son’s, or speak to me plainly.
Tell me, lord: how can she know I am right here?’
“I spoke that way and he promptly answered by saying,
‘Let me place my easeful words in your mind then.
Of all these ghosts, people who’ve died and gone under,
whoever you let up close to the blood will be truthful.
Those you stop will move back from you once more.’
Alive in a Dead World
“The ghost of lordly Teiresies left for the household
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of Aides after he’d spoken and told me the future.
I stayed right there myself. Shortly my Mother
came and drank the dark blood. Promptly she knew me,
she wailed and spoke out, the words with a feathery swiftness:
‘My child, how are you under this hazy darkness,
being alive?
It’s hard for the living to watch us,
what with great rivers—their flow is fearsome—between us.
It’s mainly Okeanos: no one crosses that water
on foot but only a man with a ship that is well built.
Have you come just now from Troy with your war-friends
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and ship a long time roaming, never a landfall
on Ithaka, not yet seeing your wife in the great hall?’
The Curse of Troy
“After she spoke that way I answered by saying,
‘Mother, I needed to come down to the household of Aides
to speak with the ghost of Teiresies, prophet of Thebes.
I haven’t drawn close to Akhaia or walked on my own land
yet for I go on wandering always with sadness,
right from the start when I joined with bright Agamemnon
to fight with war-chiefs at Troy, well known for its horses.
Questions about Home
‘Come on now, tell me something, answer me truly.
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What doom brought you down? What death overwhelmed you?
A long sickness? Or Artemis, Goddess and Archer,
aiming her gentle arrows in order to kill you?
Tell me about my Father and son whom I left there:
is all my esteem still theirs? Or maybe some other
man has taken hold. Do they say I’ll never return home?
Tell me the thoughts and plans of the woman I married,
whether she stays by our child, keeping a safe home,
or whether she’s married now to the best of Akhaians.’
Pain and Longing at Home
“I stopped and my honored Mother answered me promptly:
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♦ ‘Your wife has waited too long. But her spirits have borne up
well in your hall, although she grieves over the always
wasting nights and days there, letting her tears fall.
No one has handsome esteem like yours. Telemakhos watches,
holding your land unharmed, dining at well-shared
banquets—those would be right for a judge to be sharing—
they all invite him. Ah, but your father stays in the farmland,
never going to town. No, and his bedding’s
without woolen covers and glistening blankets
all through winter: he sleeps with slaves in the farmhouse,
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close to the fire’s ashes, with poor clothes on his body.
When late summer arrives and the teeming of autumn,
he makes a lowly bed where leaves have been falling
here and there on the sloping, wine-yielding vineyard.
He lies there sadly, his heart with a growing and great pain.
He longs for your homecoming. Hard old age is upon him.
A Mother’s Death
‘I too died and met my doom in the same way,
not from the sharp-eyed Archer there in our great hall,
aiming her gentle arrows in order to kill me.
No long sickness came on, the kind that will often
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take the soul from the body, wasting and loathsome.
Instead I longed for you, my shining Odysseus,
your counsel and kindness. That longing stole me from sweet life.’
Long for the Light Now
“Those were her words. I wondered, I heartily wished it,
how to embrace my Mother’s ghost—she was long dead.
I reached out three times, my heart told me, ‘Embrace her’;
three times she flitted away from my hands like a shadow
or dream. The pain sharpened now in my own heart,
I spoke to the woman, my words with a feathery swiftness,
‘Mother, why don’t you stay? I’m longing to hold you.
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Even in Aides’ world, throwing our arms out
to clasp each other, can’t we relish a cold grief?
Or are you a phantom sent by high-born Persephoneia
to make me moan and wail still more than before here?’
“I stopped and my honored Mother answered me promptly,
‘Ah, my son, you’re more luckless than all men.
Persephoneia, the daughter of Zeus, is no trickster.
It’s only the way, in truth, of humankind’s dying:
flesh and bone no longer held by the sinews,
it’s all destroyed in the powerful blaze of the death-fire.
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Soon as the spirit leaves its body and white bones,
the dreamlike soul is flying away and is quite gone.
‘So hurry and long for Daylight! Take what you learn here,
♦ all of it, back to your wife and tell her in good time.’
The Long Line of Women
“We spoke that way with each other. Women had come close
meanwhile, sent by the high-born Persephoneia:
all those ghosts had been daughters or wives of the best men.
They gathered around the dark blood, crowding together.
I pondered myself the ways of questioning each one
and shortly it came to my mind which plan was the best one.