Summary11

Odysseus follows Circe’s instructions, and performs libations to attract the dead. Elpenor, Odysseus’ dead companion, then appears and asks him to please bury his corpse, still in Circe’s island. Next, Odysseus speaks to Teirêsias, a blind prophet, who tells him about his future voyage: he will return to his home, defeat the suitors, and then go on another journey to appease Poseidon because of blinding his son Polyphemus. When a spirit drank the blood from the lamb that Odysseus had sacrificed, it could talk with Odysseus. Because of this, he has the opportunity to talk with his mother (Antikleia), who had died of grief and longing for his son, and updates him on the life at Ithaca. Odysseus asks the Phaiakians if he can go to sleep, but the hosts urge him to finish the story. Odysseus then talks about when he met Achilles, who asks about his son Neoptolemus, and Agamemnon, who was assassinated by his wife. He also tries to talk to Ajax, who was with him in the Trojan War, but he walks away. Finally, he sees two men who were punished by the gods: Sisyphus and Tantalus. Sisyphus struggles to push a boulder over a hill, but it always rolls back down, and Tantalus is tortured by hunger and thirst, because whenever he reached for water or grapes, they moved out of his reach. Odysseus ends up frightened and immediately sails away from that place.