IF YOU’VE EVER passed your finger through a flame, then you know what I’m talking about. There is this awful fascination that compels you to hold your finger in that flame a moment longer. And perhaps a moment longer still. And who does not wonder, when the stakes are high enough, how long he can hold it there before the pain overwhelms him?
Imagine, then, what it would be like to hold your finger over a flame until the fire burned through. That is what I did for three thousand years. Except that it wasn’t merely my hand that burned—it was my whole body and my soul too, surrounded by oceans of emptiness. Can you imagine such suffering? Yet of my own free will, I remained encased in fire. For three thousand years, I burned in the eighth circle of Hell among liars, frauds, and sowers of discord; and if there was comfort for me in that sea of pain, it was this: that my friend Diomedes remained there with me, the two of us imprisoned in a single flame.
I am Odysseus, Sacker of Cities, Son of Laertes, Raider of Troy, Blinder of the Cyclops, Teller of Tales, Man of Many Faces. Sing, heavenly Muse, the last adventure of flame-tossed Odysseus.
Tedium. Tedium. Emptiness and grief. The dull, incessant groan of countless souls. The hiss of flame on flesh. Looking beyond the smoke and fire, I saw only a ragged wall of blackened stone. Looking within myself, I saw only rage and despair. There was no sun to mark the days, no star to measure the nights, but only a sort of visible darkness. One year dissolved into a thousand. Time turned in on itself like a snake eating its tail. A thousand years passed, and two thousand more.
Then a voice: “You there—you two, who burn together, speak. Tell us who you are and how you died.”
I opened my eyes and squinted through the fire. The owner of the voice was very tall, and he stood with his chin raised, looking down his long nose at us like someone with a secret. A heavy gray cloak hung from his shoulders.
Beside me, Diomedes stirred. “I don’t like him.” It was the first time he had spoken in a thousand years, and already he was grumbling. Even so, I had to agree. The stranger had a precious, pampered look—the pale skin and the thin, soft hands of a man who spent his time reclining in the shade with a quill and parchment. Worse still, his voice had a faintly Trojan ring—a languid rolling of the tongue between syllables that tainted every word with a sort of gargle. But after three millennia of boredom, anything is a relief.
“I am Odysseus, King of Ithaca. And this blistered mess to my left is brave Diomedes, Conqueror of Thebes.”
Diomedes growled.
“Speak to us, then, Odysseus of Ithaca,” said the tall stranger, “for I am Publius Vergilius Maro, singer of tales. With me walks the poet Dante of the Alighieri.” Cowering behind him, clinging to his robes was a dwarfish, pudgy, hook-nosed man. He reminded me of a parrot, the way he cringed and ducked, snapping his head to and fro.
“It was my curiosity that killed me,” I answered. “Had to see the far ends of the earth. Fell right off the edge and landed here.” It was mostly truth, and it seemed to satisfy the visitor, who touched his thumb to his chin, nodded twice, whispered something to his charge, then led him away by the arm.
And that was that. All might have returned to tedium and despair had I not noticed the footprints. The stranger—not the tall one, but the pudgy one named Dante—had left a trail in the soot as he walked. In Hades, where the only things of substance are the walls, a footprint is a sign of life. I looked at those footprints, and something surfaced in my soul—a bright spring of hope, like water from a rock—and lifting my arms to Heaven, I cried out the first prayer that Hell had ever heard: “Athena, goddess of the glowing smile, ancient patroness of Greece, bright-eyed virgin whom my people call Parthenos, if ever you have heard my prayers, hear me now. In life, you stood beside me. So now in death, stand by me once more. Rescue me from this prison.”
I had no sooner finished my prayer than the flame died away, and calling to me from the very place I had seen the poet stand was a woman, robed in stars. I might have expected her to descend from the heavens on a cloud or burst forth in a flash of light, but no, she was simply there—as though she had been waiting for me all along and I hadn’t noticed. She was impossibly tall, carried the golden aegis, the storm shield of Zeus in her left hand, and wore a shining, silver helmet low upon her head, so that, although I recognized her at once, I couldn’t quite see her face. Timid as fawns at a stream, Diomedes and I crept forward from the fire into her shining presence.
“Odysseus.” Her voice rang clear as a bell on a cold night. “You called. I have come.” Each word was a song. “Tell me, though, why have you waited so long to invoke my assistance?”
That was a question I couldn’t answer. The simple truth is, I have always been a proud and stubborn man. I would no sooner have admitted my powerlessness than lost my shield in battle. And to ask forgiveness, even of a god, was as foreign to me as running from a fight. O moi ego! What a fool I was, no less in death than in life!
“And you, Diomedes,” she said, turning to my friend, who lay face down beside me, his blond hair spread in the ash like a dirty crown, “have you no words of your own?”
Diomedes didn’t answer. He didn’t even raise his eyes. He was no coward, but he knew when to hold his tongue.
I’ve never known when to hold my tongue, so I said, “Virgin Goddess, forgive us. You know everything already, so you must know that we have always had more courage than wisdom. Release us from this prison, and we will offer you a hundred bulls, pour out rich, honeyed wine at your temple, and dust the fires of your altar with barley.”
She looked down at me, the plume of her helm shaking. “You used your wit as a weapon, Odysseus. You squandered your talent among brutes like Agamemnon and Achilles. And the worst of it, you son of Laertes, is that you knew better. Therefore it is fitting that you should find yourself in this prison.”
“Gentle Virgin,” I answered, “there was an age when you smiled on the men of Achaea. Will you not smile on us once more? I was clever and quick. Diomedes was brave and strong. But look at us now, broken and bowed before you. If we wasted those gifts in life, give us one last chance to serve you with honor. Is there not some deed, some sacrifice, some work of atonement?”
The goddess looked away over the sea of fire and nodded. “There is perhaps.”
Diomedes lifted his head.
I held my breath.
“A general is needed,” she said, “a leader of men who knows the geography of Hell. We need a man who can be gentle as a dove and shrewd as a snake.”
“That settles it,” I said, rising on hands and knees. “Here I am. I am a general. Choose me. Choose me!” I must have looked rather doglike.
The goddess laughed, her gray eyes glittering from the shadows of her helm. “My king has no use for a lying, thieving, adulterous, idolatrous crook such as you.”
Those words stung, and all the more because they were true. There wasn’t much in the realm of vice that I hadn’t experienced firsthand. I bowed my head. For the first time in my existence, I was too ashamed to speak.
“If you are to be worthy of my service,” she continued, casting her eyes from me to Diomedes, “you must prove yourselves. Before you can enter the land of the living, you must bear witness to the nine rings of torment and learn the limits of evil. This you must do, my sons, because, as you stand before me now, the geography of Hades is the geography of your souls.”
Silence. I knew well—and was learning better by the second—that there is no way to justify oneself before a god. One might as well uproot a mountain or empty the sea with a shell.
The goddess smiled. “No clever retort, Odysseus?” Now her voice was milk and honey. “Very well. Do not lose heart. I would never give you a task you could not complete. I come bearing gifts.”
With her right hand, she lifted the corner of her cloak, and there at her feet lay a mound of glittering armor: two shining swords, two sets of well-wrought greaves, two leather corselets studded with bronze, two helmets, two shields, and glowing like gold from the furnace, my polished bow. This lay apart from the rest along with a small leather pouch, a coil of rope, and a quiver of arrows.
“Weapons,” I gasped. “You’ve come to guide us out of Hades.”
“No,” she said, and now her voice was laced with thunder. “You lied and swindled your way here. Fight your way out.”
“But Athena,” cried Diomedes, stretching out his hands—man-killing hands, now trembling and streaked with soot—“we don’t even know the way!”
“Truth at last,” she said. “Stalwart Diomedes, slow to speak and still slower to comprehend. You do not know the way. You do not even know my true name. But now you know your weakness, and that is a good way to begin. With patience and fortitude, you and your companion may yet see the light of Heaven. So here is my counsel to you, Son of Tydeus: prefer your wit to your sword, trust in your armor over your arms, and let mercy triumph over justice. Do this, and you will find your way.”
Pointing up the cavern wall, she continued. “You will begin at the uppermost ring, where the small-souled chase the wind. There you will see the upper door. But do not dare open it. The weight of the living world would crush you. You will not have the strength until you have descended through all nine rings of Hell and passed through the lower portal. You will not be ready until you have discovered—and used—the eighth arrow. The Authority has willed it. This is to be your purgation and your witness, a fitting and final labor.”
Then I cried out, “Virgin Goddess, where can we find this Authority? Was it Zeus who consigned us to this prison?”
But even as I spoke, she vanished, and her voice, trailing on the hot, hopeless wind, whispered back to me, “He of the four-letter name.”