Thou wilt touch at the Aeaean isle with thy well-built ship. Now I beseech thee by those whom we left behind, who are not present with us, by thy wife and thy father who reared thee when a babe, and by Telemachus whom thou didst leave an only son in thy halls for I know that as thou goest hence from the house of Hades Was broken away from the spine and my spirit went down to the house of Hades. When I had lain down to sleep in the house of Circe I did not think to go to the long ladder that I might come down again, but fell headlong from the roof, and my neck ‘Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, an evil doom of some god was my undoing, and measureless wine. “So I spoke, and with a groan he answered me and said: “‘Elpenor, how didst thou come beneath the murky darkness? Thou coming on foot hast out-stripped me in my black ship.’ When I saw him I wept, and my heart had compassion on him and I spoke and addressed him with winged words: Not yet had he been buried beneath the broad-wayed earth, for we had left his corpse behind us in the hall of Circe, unwept and unburied, since another task was then urging us on. “The first to come was the spirit of my comrade Elpenor. To draw near to the blood until I had enquired of Teiresias. And I myself drew my sharp sword from beside my thigh and sat there, and would not suffer the powerless heads of the dead The sheep that lay there slain with the pitiless bronze, and to make prayer to the gods, to mighty Hades and dread Persephone. Then I called to my comrades and bade them flay and burn These came thronging in crowds about the pit from every side, with a wondrous cry and pale fear seized me. Then there gathered from out of Erebus the spirits of those that are dead, brides, and unwedded youths, and toil-worn old men, and tender maidens with hearts yet new to sorrow,Īnd many, too, that had been wounded with bronze-tipped spears, men slain in fight, wearing their blood-stained armour. I had made supplication to the tribes of the dead, I took the sheep and cut their throats over the pit, and the dark blood ran forth. Vowing that when I came to Ithaca I would sacrifice in my halls a barren heifer, the best I had, and pile the altar with goodly gifts, and to Teiresias alone would sacrifice separately a ram, wholly black, the goodliest of my flocks. And I earnestly entreated the powerless heads of the dead, “Here Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, while I drew my sharp sword from beside my thigh,Īnd dug a pit of a cubit's length this way and that, and around it poured a libation to all the dead, first with milk and honey, thereafter with sweet wine, and in the third place with water, and I sprinkled thereon white barley meal. Thither we came and beached our ship, and took out the sheep, and ourselves went beside the stream of Oceanus until we came to the place of which Circe had told us. Never does the bright sun look down on them with his rays either when he mounts the starry heaven or when he turns again to earth from heaven, but baneful night is spread over wretched mortals. “She came to deep-flowing Oceanus, that bounds the Earth, 1 where is the land and city of the Cimmerians, All the day long her sail was stretched as she sped over the sea and the sun set and all the ways grew dark. We sat down, and the wind and the helms man made straight her course. So when we had made fast all the tackling throughout the ship, And for our aid in the wake of our dark-prowed ship a fair wind that filled the sail, a goodly comrade, was sent by fair-tressed Circe, dread goddess of human speech. “But when we had come down to the ship and to the sea, first of all we drew the ship down to the bright sea, and set the mast and sail in the black ship, and took the sheep and put them aboard,Īnd ourselves embarked, sorrowing, and shedding big tears.

The kingdom of the dead odyssey