Page 179 - the-odyssey

and offer them as a burnt sacrifice with prayers to Hades
and to Proserpine. Then draw your sword and sit there, so
as to prevent any other poor ghost from coming near the
spilt blood before Teiresias shall have answered your ques-
tions. The seer will presently come to you, and will tell you
about your voyage—what stages you are to make, and how
you are to sail the sea so as to reach your home.’
‘It was day-break by the time she had done speaking,
so she dressed me in my shirt and cloak. As for herself she
threw a beautiful light gossamer fabric over her shoulders,
fastening it with a golden girdle round her waist, and she
covered her head with a mantle. Then I went about among
the men everywhere all over the house, and spoke kindly to
each of them man by man: ‘You must not lie sleeping here
any longer,’ said I to them, ‘we must be going, for Circe has
told me all about it.’ And on this they did as I bade them.
‘Even so, however, I did not get them away without mis-
adventure. We had with us a certain youth named Elpenor,
not very remarkable for sense or courage, who had got drunk
and was lying on the house-top away from the rest of the
men, to sleep off his liquor in the cool. When he heard the
noise of the men bustling about, he jumped up on a sudden
and forgot all about coming down by the main staircase, so
he tumbled right off the roof and broke his neck, and his
soul went down to the house of Hades.
‘When I had got the men together I said to them, ‘You
think you are about to start home again, but Circe has ex-
plained to me that instead of this, we have got to go to the
house of Hades and Proserpine to consult the ghost of the

1 The Odyssey