Half a Hundred Hero Tales of Ulysses and The Men of Old

by Unknown

As the sun sank, and all the ways were darkened, they reached the utmost bounds of Ocean, a lonely land, where the sun never shines, where darkness broods perpetually over bare and rocky crags, the abode of the Cimmerians. Off their desolate shore Ulysses cast anchor, and leaping from his ship, descried the awful chasm that leads to the realms of the dead.

His two companions bore with them the black sheep as Circe had bidden, and Ulysses drew his shining sword and carved a great trench, a cubit long and wide, in the black earth. This was filled with wine, milk, and honey, and the blood of the newly offered sacrifices. Thus, with solemn rites and holy vows, they invoked the nations of the dead. And lo! among the frowning caverns and all along the dusky shores appeared the phantom shapes of unsubstantial ghosts. Old and young, warriors ghastly with wounds, matrons and maids, rich and poor, they crowded about the trench filled with the reeking blood of sacrifice. But Ulysses in terror brandished his sword above the flowing blood, and the pale throngs started back and stood silently about him.

Then he saw Elpenor, new to the realms of Death. Astonished, he demanded of the shade how it was that he had outrun their swift sail, and was found wandering with the dead. To which the youth replied that his feet, unsteady through excess of wine, had betrayed him and sent him headlong from the tower, and as he fell his neck was broken and his soul plunged in Hell.

But he implored Ulysses, by all he held most dear, to give his unburied limbs a peaceful grave, and set up a barrow, and on it plant his oar to show that he had been one of Ulysses' crew. And Ulysses granted the boon, and the spirit of Elpenor departed content.

Then, as Ulysses sat watching the trench, he saw the shade of his royal mother, Anticlea, approach; but though the tears bedewed his cheek at the sight, the pale shade stood regardless of her son.

Next came the mighty Theban, Tiresias, bearing a scepter of gold; and he knew him and spake: "Why, son of Laertes, wanderest thou from cheerful day to tread this sorrowful path? What angry gods have led thee, alive, to be companion of the dead? If thou wilt sheathe thy sword I will relate thy future and the high purposes of Heaven towards thee."

Ulysses sheathed his glittering blade, and the seer bent down and drank of the dark blood. Then he foretold all the strange disasters that would threaten and detain Ulysses on his homeward way. He told how at length he alone of all his crew would survive to reach his country—there to find his labors not yet at an end, with foes in power at his court, lordly suitors besieging his wife, and wasting his substance in riot and debauch. But a peaceful end to his long and toilsome life should come at last, and see him sink to the grave blessed by all his people. "This is thy life to come, and this is Fate," said the seer.

To whom Ulysses, unmoved, made answer: "All that the gods ordain the wise endure."

So the prophet went his way, and Ulysses waited on for his mother to come. And anon, Anticlea came and stooped and drank of the dark blood, and straightway all the mother in her soul awoke, and she addressed her son, asking whence he came and why.

"To seek Tiresias, and learn my doom," Ulysses answered, "for I have been a roamer and an exile from home ever since the fall of Troy." Then he asked her how her own death had happened, whether his good father Laertes still lived, if Telemachus his son ruled in Ithaca, and if Penelope yet waited and watched for her absent lord, or if she had taken a new mate.