Dire is the region, dismal is the way! Here lakes profound, there floods oppose their waves, There the wide sea with all his billows raves! Or since to dust proud Troy submits her towers Comest thou a wanderer from the Phrygian shores? Say, if my sire, good old Laertes, lives? If yet Telemachus, my son, survives? Say, if my spouse maintains her royal trust; Though tempted, chaste, and obstinately just? Thee in Telemachus thy realm obeys; In sacred groves celestial rites he pays, And shares the banquet in superior state, Graced with such honours as become the great Thy sire in solitude foments his care: The court is joyless, for thou art not there!
And when the autumn takes his annual round, The leafy honours scattering on the ground, Regardless of his years, abroad he lies, His bed the leaves, his canopy the skies. Thus cares on cares his painful days consume, And bow his age with sorrow to the tomb!
Wild with despair, I shed a copious tide Of flowing tears, and thus with sighs replied:. Turn to my arms, to my embraces turn! Is it, ye powers that smile at human harms! Too great a bliss to weep within her arms? But from the dark dominions speed the way, And climb the steep ascent to upper day: To thy chaste bride the wondrous story tell, The woes, the horrors, and the laws of hell.
For fair Enipeus, as from fruitful urns He pours his watery store, the virgin burns; Smooth flows the gentle stream with wanton pride, And in soft mazes rolls a silver tide. Three gallant sons the joyful monarch told, Sage Nestor, Periclimenus the bold, And Chromius last; but of the softer race, One nymph alone, a myracle of grace. Kings on their thrones for lovely Pero burn; The sire denies, and kings rejected mourn.
Proud of their strength, and more than mortal size, The gods they challenge, and affect the skies: Heaved on Olympus tottering Ossa stood; On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood. But should I all recount, the night would fail, Unequal to the melancholy tale: And all-composing rest my nature craves, Here in the court, or yonder on the waves; In you I trust, and in the heavenly powers, To land Ulysses on his native shores. But let our king direct the glorious way To generous acts; our part is to obey.
Be it my task to send with ample stores The stranger from our hospitable shores: Tread you my steps! If thou the circling year my stay control, To raise a bounty noble as thy soul; The circling year I wait, with ampler stores And fitter pomp to hail my native shores: Then by my realms due homage would be paid; For wealthy kings are loyally obeyed! Thy words like music every breast control, Steal through the ear, and win upon the soul; soft, as some song divine, thy story flows, Nor better could the Muse record thy woes.
And lo! Thy tale with raptures I could hear thee tell, Thy woes on earth, the wondrous scenes in hell, Till in the vault of heaven the stars decay. And the sky reddens with the rising day. Prepare to heir of murder and of blood; Of godlike heroes who uninjured stood Amidst a war of spears in foreign lands, Yet bled at home, and bled by female hands. But not with me the direful murder ends, These, these expired! Then though pale death froze cold in every vein, My sword I strive to wield, but strive in vain; Nor did my traitress wife these eyelids close, Or decently in death my limbs compose.
Back in the Underworld, Odysseus sees Agamemnon and hears the tragic story of his murder and his son Orestes' revenge against Aigisthos and Klytaimestra.
Agamemnon is understandably bitter against women and considers all of them treacherous. Oh, except for Penelope, whom he praises for her loyalty. Nice save. Odysseus praises Achilleus for having earned so much honor and glory in his life; surely his death is like, the greatest death ever.
Actually, Achilleus says, being dead sucks. He'd rather be a poor country farmer who is alive than a glorious lord in the Underworld. Wise words. He then asks Odysseus about his son, Neoptolemos; Odysseus responds with what he knows of the lad's brilliance and luck in battle. Then Odysseus pleads with Telamonian Aias to forget their earlier quarrel in Troy over Achilleus' arms. The arms were supposed to go to the bravest man, but the Greeks couldn't bring themselves to make a decision since they figured whoever lost would leave the war in a huff.
Since they couldn't afford to lose either of these great heroes, so they let the Trojan captives decide. The Trojans picked Odysseus, and the enraged Aias killed himself. Sore loser. These are all figures of Greek myth and, if you're interested in the specifics obviously you are , check out your text. And then check out Shmoop's handy-dandy mythology guides!
When all the shades come crowding in to drink the blood, Odysseus freaks out and runs back to his ship. Everyone leaves the Underworld a little bit wiser and less a few sacrificial animals.
Tired of ads? In one of the most moving scenes in the epic, Odysseus tries three times to hold his mother but cannot because she is no longer flesh and blood. Agamemnon and Achilles, comrades of Odysseus at Troy, are among the many other dead who approach. Agamemnon tells the story of his murder by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her paramour, Aegisthus, a story referred to repeatedly throughout the epic, effectively contrasting the murderous infidelity of Clytemnestra with the dedicated loyalty of Penelope.
More controversial is Achilles' appearance because it contradicts the heroic ideal of death with honor, resulting in some form of glorious immortality. Here, Achilles' attitude is that death is death; he would rather be a living slave to a tenant farmer than king of the dead. His only solace is to hear that his son fares well in life.
The dead flock toward Odysseus. He is overwhelmed and welcomes his departure, feeling that, whatever his struggles in life might be, he prefers them to residence in the Land of the Dead. Oedipus Abandoned at birth and raised by the king of Corinth, he unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. Leda a queen of Sparta and the mother, by Zeus in the form of a swan, of Helen and Pollux.
Crete an island in the Mediterranean off the southeastern coast of Greece. Tantalus a king punished in Hades by having to stand in water that recedes when he bends to drink it and beneath fruit that ascends when he reaches to eat it. Sisyphus a cruel king condemned in Hades to the eternal, frustrating effort of rolling a huge stone uphill, only to have it always roll down again.
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