She (the ship of Odysseus) came to the limits of the world, to the deep flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe had declared to us.
There Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but I drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with sweet wine and for the third time with water.... 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 griefs 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 about the trench with a wondrous cry, and pale fear gat hold on me.... I 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....
Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticleia, the daughter of Autolycus, the great-hearted, whom I left alive when I departed for sacred Ilios. At the sight of her I wept, and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias.
Anon came the soul of Theban Teiresias, with a golden sceptre in his hand, and he knew me and spake unto me: “Son of Laertes of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, what seekest thou now, wretched man—wherefore hast thou left the sunlight and come hither to behold the dead and a land desolate of joy? Nay, hold off from the ditch and draw back thy sharp sword, that I may drink of the blood and tell thee sooth.” So spake he, and I put up my silver-studded sword into the sheath, and when he had drunk the dark blood, even then did the noble seer speak unto me....
Odyssey, Bk. XI. (Butcher & Lang’s translation).
In this weird scene Odysseus is summoning the shade of Teiresias from the under-world. He has with his sword to keep off the host of spirits, including that of his own mother, whom the spilt blood has attracted—and the hero is himself terrified at the awful spectacle.
What adds to the interest of such a passage is that to the ancient Greeks this was no imaginary picture but a statement of actual facts. It will be observed that the dead live in a dark land, “desolate of joy.”
To the little-travelled Greeks the ocean was a river.
For—see your cellarage!