Homer’s Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus, a veteran of the Trojan War, and his decade-long voyage back to the island of Ithaca. Odysseus’s journey home was fraught with peril because he and his crew offended the sea god Poseidon by blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemos. On the advice of the enchantress Circe, Odysseus traveled to the threshold of the underworld to ask the ghost of Tiresias of Thebes, a renowned prophet, to peer into the future and provide advice about his best course back to Ithaca.
The summoning of Tiresias takes place in book eleven of The Odyssey, which provided a description of the underworld and its inhabitants that subsequently had a profound influence on their depiction in Western literature from Virgil’s Aeneid to Dante’s Divine Comedy. The land of the dead is a somber place in Homer’s imagination, a dark and comfortless realm. The hardships of Odysseus’s travels often led him to thoughts of suicide, but once he visited the House of Death, he came to realize that living is much better than dying. The ghost of Achilles warned Odysseus directly not to glorify the condition of death: “No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” (The Odyssey 11.488–491). While Odysseus performed his necromantic ritual specifically to speak to Tiresias, he was unprepared for the great number of ghosts that responded to his summons—“hordes of them, thousands raising unearthly cries” (The Odyssey 11.724)—among them his recently deceased companion Elpenor and his beloved mother Anticlea, who had died of grief in his long absence. Their heartbreaking conversation provided a brief respite from the otherworldly horrors that surrounded them.
And [our ship] made the outer limits, the Ocean River’s bounds, where Cimmerian people have their homes—their realm and city shrouded in mist and cloud. The eye of the Sun can never flash his rays through the dark and bring them light, not when he climbs the starry skies or when he wheels back down from the heights to touch the earth once more—an endless, deadly night overhangs those wretched men. There, gaining that point, we beached our craft and bearing out the sheep, we picked our way by the Ocean’s banks until we gained the place that Circe made our goal.
Here at the spot Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims fast, and I, drawing my sharp sword from beside my hip, dug a trench of about a forearm’s depth and length, and around it poured libations out to all the dead, first with milk and honey, and then with mellow wine, then water third and last, and sprinkled glistening barley over it all, and time and again I vowed to all the dead, to the drifting, listless spirits of their ghosts, that once I returned to Ithaca I would slaughter a barren heifer in my halls, the best I had, and load a pyre with treasures—and to Tiresias, alone, apart, I would offer a sleek black ram, the pride of all my herds. And once my vows and prayers had invoked the nations of the dead, I took the victims, over the trench I cut their throats and the dark blood flowed in—and up out of Erebus they came, flocking toward me now, the ghosts of the dead and gone: brides and unwed youths and old men who had suffered much and girls with their tender hearts freshly scarred by sorrow and great armies of battle dead, stabbed by bronze spears, men of war still wrapped in bloody armor—thousands swarming around the trench from every side—unearthly cries—blanching terror gripped me!2 I ordered the men at once to flay the sheep that lay before us, killed by my ruthless blade, and burn them both, and then say prayers to the gods, to the almighty god of death and dread Persephone.3 But I, the sharp sword drawn from beside my hip, sat down on alert there and never let the ghosts of the shambling, shiftless dead come near that blood till I had questioned Tiresias myself.
But first the ghost of Elpenor, my companion, came toward me. He’d not been buried under the wide ways of earth, not yet, we’d left his body in Circe’s house, unwept, unburied—this other labor pressed us. But I wept to see him now, pity touched my heart and I called out a winged word to him there: “Elpenor, how did you travel down to the world of darkness? Faster on foot, I see, than I in my black ship.”
My comrade groaned as he offered me an answer: “Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner, the doom of an angry god, and god knows how much wine—they were my ruin, captain. I’d bedded down on the roof of Circe’s house but never thought to climb back down again by the long ladder—headfirst from the roof I plunged, my neck snapped from the backbone, my soul flew down to Death. Now, I beg you by those you left behind, so far from here, your wife, your father who bred and reared you as a boy, and Telemachus, left at home in your halls, your only son. Well I know when you leave this lodging of the dead that you and your ship will put ashore again at the island of Aeaea—then and there, my lord, remember me, I beg you!4 Don’t sail off and desert me, left behind unwept, unburied, don’t, or my curse may draw god’s fury on your head. No, burn me in full armor, all my harness, heap my mound by the churning gray surf—a man whose luck ran out—so even men to come will learn my story. Perform my rites and plant on my tomb that oar I swung with mates when I rowed among the living.”
“All this, my unlucky friend,” I reassured him, “I will do for you. I won’t forget a thing.” So we sat and faced each other, holding my sword above the blood, he across from me there, my comrade’s phantom dragging out his story.
But look, the ghost of my mother came, my mother, dead and gone now. Anticlea—daughter of that great heart Autolycus—whom I had left alive when I sailed for sacred Troy. I broke into tears to see her here, but filled with pity, even throbbing with grief, I would not let her ghost approach till I had questioned Tiresias myself.
At last he came. The shade of the famous Theban prophet, holding a golden scepter, knew me at once and hailed me: “Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, master of exploits, man of pain, what now, what brings you here, forsaking the light of day to see this joyless kingdom of the dead? Stand back from the trench—put up your sharp sword so I can drink the blood and tell you the truth.”
Moving back, I thrust my silver-studded sword deep in its sheath, and once he had drunk the dark blood the words came ringing from the prophet in his power: “A sweet smooth journey home, renowned Odysseus, that is what you seek, but a god will make it hard for you—I know—you will never escape the one who shakes the earth, quaking with anger at you still, still enraged because you blinded the Cyclops, his dear son. Even so, you and your crew may still reach home, suffering all the way, if you only have the power to curb their wild desire and curb your own, what’s more, from the day your good trim vessel first puts in at Thrinacia Island, flees the cruel blue sea. There you will find them grazing, herds and fat flocks, the cattle of Helios, god of the sun who sees all, hears all things. Leave the beasts unharmed, your mind set on home, and you all may still reach Ithaca—bent with hardship, true—but harm them in any way, and I can see it now: your ship destroyed, your men destroyed as well. And even if you escape, you’ll come home late and come a broken man—all shipmates lost, alone in a stranger’s ship—and you will find a world of pain at home, crude, arrogant men devouring all your goods, courting your noble wife, offering gifts to win her. No doubt you will pay them back in blood when you come home! But once you have killed those suitors in your halls—by stealth or in open fight with slashing bronze—go forth once more, you must. Carry your well-planed oar until you come to a race of people who know nothing of the sea, whose food is never seasoned with salt, strangers all to ships with their crimson prows and long slim oars, wings that make ships fly. And here is your sign—unmistakable, clear, so clear you cannot miss it: When another traveler falls in with you and calls that weight across your shoulder a fan to winnow grain, then plant your bladed, balanced oar in the earth and sacrifice fine beasts to the lord god of the sea, Poseidon—a ram, a bull, and a ramping wild boar—then journey home and render noble offerings up to the deathless gods who rule the vaulting skies, to all the gods in order. And at last your own death will steal upon you, a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age with all your people there in blessed peace around you. All that I have told you will come true.”
“Oh Tiresias,” I replied as the prophet finished, “surely the gods have spun this out as fate, the gods themselves. But tell me one thing more, and tell me clearly. I see the ghost of my long-lost mother here before me. Dead, crouching close to the blood in silence, she cannot bear to look me in the eyes—her own son—or speak to me. How, lord, can I make her know me for the man I am?”
“One rule there is,” the famous seer explained, “and simple for me to say and you to learn. Any one of the ghosts you let approach the blood will speak the truth to you. Anyone you refuse will turn and fade away.”
And with those words, now that his prophecies had closed, the awesome shade of lord Tiresias strode back to the House of Death. But I kept watch there, steadfast till my mother approached and drank the dark, clouding blood. She knew me at once and wailed out in grief and her words came winging toward me, flying home: “Oh my son! What brings you down to the world of death and darkness? You are still alive! It’s hard for the living to catch a glimpse of this. Great rivers flow between us, terrible waters, the Ocean first of all—no one could ever ford that stream on foot, only aboard some sturdy craft. Have you just come from Troy, wandering long years with your men and ship? Not yet returned to Ithaca? You’ve still not seen your wife inside your halls?”
“Mother,” I replied, “I had to venture down to the House of Death to consult the shade of Tiresias, seer of Thebes. Never yet have I neared Achaea, never once set foot on native ground, always wandering—endless hardship from that day I first set sail with King Agamemnon bound for Troy, the stallion-land, to fight the Trojans there. But tell me about yourself and spare me nothing. What form of death overcame you, what laid you low, some long, slow illness? Or did Artemis showering arrows come with her painless shafts and bring you down? Tell me of Father, tell of the son I left behind: do my royal rights still lie in their safekeeping? Or does some stranger hold the throne by now because men think that I’ll come home no more? Please, tell me about my wife, her turn of mind, her thoughts. Still standing fast beside our son, still guarding our great estates, secure as ever now? Or has she wed some other countryman at last, the finest prince among them?”
“Surely, surely,” my noble mother answered quickly, “she’s still waiting there in your halls, poor woman, suffering so, her life an endless hardship like your own. Wasting away the nights, weeping away the days. No one has taken over your royal rights, not yet. Telemachus still holds your great estates in peace, he attends the public banquets shared with all, the feasts a man of justice should enjoy, for every lord invites him. As for your father, he keeps to his own farm—he never goes to town—with no bed for him there, no blankets, no glossy throws; all winter long he sleeps in the lodge with servants, in the ashes by the fire, his body wrapped in rags. But when summer comes and the bumper crops of harvest, any spot on the rising ground of his vineyard rows he makes his bed, heaped high with fallen leaves, and here he lies in anguish, with his old age bearing hard upon him, too, and his grief grows as he longs for your return. And I with the same grief, I died and met my fate. No sharp-eyed huntress showering arrows through the halls approached and brought me down with painless shafts, nor did some hateful illness strike me, that so often devastates the body, drains our limbs of power. No, it was my longing for you, my shining Odysseus—you and your quickness, you and your gentle ways—that tore away my life that had been sweet.”
And I, my mind in turmoil, how I longed to embrace my mother’s spirit, dead as she was! Three times I rushed toward her, desperate to hold her, three times she fluttered through my fingers, sifting away like a shadow, dissolving like a dream, and each time the grief cut to the heart, sharper, yes, and I, I cried out to her, words winging into the darkness: “Mother, why not wait for me? How I long to hold you! So even here, in the House of Death, we can fling our loving arms around each other, take some joy in the tears that numb the heart. Or is this just some wraith that great Persephone sends my way to make me ache with sorrow all the more?”
My noble mother answered me at once: “My son, my son, the unluckiest man alive! This is no deception sent by Queen Persephone, this is just the way of mortals when we die. Sinews no longer bind the flesh and bones together—the fire in all its fury burns the body down to ashes once life slips from the white bones, and the spirit, rustling, flitters away, flown like a dream. But you must long for the daylight. Go, quickly. Remember all these things so one day you can tell them to your wife.”