The sacrifices having been duly
performed, the spirits appeared,--Elpenor, my yet unburied comrade, whose
body lay on Circe's isle, my own dead mother, and the Theban seer,
Tiresias, with his golden wand. 'Neptune is wroth with thee,' he said,
'but thou mayst yet return if thou and thy comrades leave undisturbed the
cattle of the Sun. If thou do not, destruction awaits thee. If thou escape
and return home it will be after long journeyings and much suffering, and
there thou wilt slay the insolent suitor crew that destroy thy substance
and wrong thy household.' After Tiresias had spoken I lingered to speak
with other spirits,--my mother, Ajax, Antiope, Agamemnon, Achilles,
Patroclus, and Antilochus. Having conversed with all these, we set sail
for Circe's isle, and thence started again on our homeward voyage.
"Circe had instructed me to stop the ears of my men with wax as we
approached the isle of the Sirens, and to have myself tied to the boat
that I might not leap into the ocean to go to the beautiful maidens who
sang so entrancingly. We therefore escaped without adding our bones to
those on the isle of the Sirens, and came next to Scylla and Charybdis.
Charybdis is a frightful whirlpool. The sailor who steers too far away in
his anxiety to escape it, is seized by the six arms of the monster Scylla
and lifted to her cavern to be devoured.
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