Book 11
"‘Sir,’ he answered with a groan, ‘it was all bad luck of a daimôn, and my own unspeakable drunkenness. I was lying asleep on the top of Circe's house, and never thought of coming down again by the great staircase, but fell right off the roof and broke my neck, so my soul [psukhê] went down to the house of Hades. And now I beseech you by all those whom you have left behind you, though they are not here, by your wife, by the father who brought you up when you were a child, and by Telemakhos who is the one hope of your house, do what I shall now ask you. I know that when you leave this limbo you will again hold your ship for the Aeaean island. Do not go thence leaving me unwaked and unburied behind you, or I may bring the gods' anger upon you; but burn me with whatever armor I have, build a grave marker [sêma] for me on the sea shore that may tell people in days to come what a poor unlucky man I was, and plant over my grave the oar I used to row with when I was yet alive and with my messmates.’ And I said, ‘My poor man, I will do all that you have asked of me.’
1
"Thus, then, did we sit and hold sad talk with one another, I on the one side of the trench with my sword held over the blood, and the ghost of my comrade saying all this to me from the other side. Then came the ghost [psukhê] of my dead mother Antikleia, daughter to Autolykos. I had left her alive when I set out for Troy and was moved to tears when I saw her, but even so, for all my sorrow I would not let her come near the blood till I had asked my questions of Teiresias.
81
"Then came also the ghost [psukhê] of Theban Teiresias, with his golden scepter in his hand. He knew me and said, ‘Odysseus, noble son of Laertes, why, poor man, have you left the light of day and come down to visit the dead in this sad place? Stand back from the trench and withdraw your sword that I may drink of the blood and answer your questions truly.’
"So I drew back, and sheathed my sword, whereon when he had drank of the blood he began with his prophecy [mantis].
