CHAPTER XXI
ODYSSEUS CONVERSES WITH HIS MOTHER AND AGAMEMNON
"When Tiresias had gone, my mother came back to the dark trench and drank of the blood. She knew me at once and cried out: 'Oh, my child, how didst thou ever come down to this gloomy place alive? Art thou on thy way home from Troy? And hast thou not seen Ithaca yet, nor thy wife and child?'
"I answered her: 'Dear mother, I was compelled to come down here in order to consult the soul of the prophet Tiresias about my return; for I have not yet touched foot to Grecian soil. I have been driven about on strange seas from year to year, and have suffered misfortune after misfortune. Oh, tell me, my mother, how didst thou die? Did some lingering disease waste thy life, or didst thou meet a sudden, painless death?
"'Tell me of my father and of my son. Do they still hold rule over Ithaca? Or has someone snatched it away from them, thinking I was never to return? How fares my wife, Penelope? Is she still faithful to the husband of her youth, or has she married another?'
"To all this my mother answered: 'My son, Penelope is in the home where thou didst leave her, and she weeps for thee day and night. Nobody has usurped thy kingdom, and Telemachos has charge of thy royal estates. But thy father dwells on thy farm, and shares the life of the servants. He seldom goes down to the city. The grief he feels for loss of thee has made him old, and will hasten his death, as it caused mine, for I could not live without thee.'
"So spake my mother, and I longed to clasp her to my heart. Three times I threw my arms around her, and three times she passed through them like a shadow. Then I cried out in sorrow: 'Oh, my dear mother! why can I not clasp thee to my heart and hold thee in my arms, that we may lose for a while our sense of loneliness and misery?'
"My mother spoke and said: 'It is the lot of all our race when they are dead. When life departs we have no bones and flesh, but the soul flies off and flits about from one place to another. Hasten back to the pleasant daylight, and when thou dost reach home tell thy wife what I have said.'
"When my mother had gone, I saw the soul of Agamemnon approaching, together with the shades of those of his companions who had perished with him. The moment he had drunk of the blood he knew me and raised a loud wail. He stretched out his hands to me, and I tried to seize them, but I clutched only the empty air.
"Then I began to weep, too, and said to him: 'Famous son of Atreus, King Agamemnon, tell me how thou didst die. Did Poseidon wreck thee on the sea in a terrible storm, or didst thou fall in war, fighting on the land?'