A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Odysseus
prepares to
speak with
the spirits of
the dead.
Odyssey xi.
34 ff-
Persephone,
wife of Hades.
Elpenor.
Left unburied.
90 Myth and Religion
the country over which Hades rules. He himself tells how he communicated
with certain spirits of the dead. From the passage we
learn the view of the future life held by the Greeks of Homer's time.
Homer, Odyssey, xi. 34-223.
a. But when I had besought the tribes of the dead
with vows and prayers, I took the sheep and cut their
throats over the trench, and the dark blood flowed forth,
and lo,
the spirits of the dead that be departed gathered
them from out of Erebus. Brides and youths unwed,
and old men of many and evil days, and tender maidens
with grief yet fresh at heart; and many there were,
wounded with bronze-shod spears, men slain in fight with
their bloody mail about them. And these many ghosts
flocked together from every side of the trench with a
wondrous cry, and pale fear gat hold on me. Then did I
speak to my company and command them to flay the sheep
that lay slain by the pitiless sword, and to consume them
with fire, and to make prayer to the gods, to mighty Hades
and to dread Persephone, and I myself drew the sharp
sword from my thigh and sat there, suffering not the
strengthless heads of the dead to draw nigh to the blood,
ere I had word of Teiresias.
And first came the soul of Elpenor my companion, that
had not yet been buried beneath the wide-wayed earth;
for we left the corpse behind us in the hall of Circe, unwept
and unburied, seeing that another task was instant
upon us. At the sight of him I wept and had compassion
on him, and uttering my voice spake to him winged words:
"Elpenor, how hast thou come beneath the darkness and
the shadow? Thou hast come fleeter on foot than I in
my black ship."
So spake I, and with a moan he answered me, saying:
"Son of Laertes, of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many