Book+XI

=The Odyssey - Book XI=

Odysseus needs to get home. Then only way that he can do this is by going through the Land of The Dead. Odysseus seeks to learn his destiny. The source of his information is from Teiresias, the famous blind prophet, whose lack of external sight suggests the presence of true insight (being able to tell the truth inside you). Circe has told Odysseus exactly what he must do to bring Teiresias up from the dead. even sacrificing his own men for the dead to consume. Odysseus

Odysseus travels to the River of Ocean in the land of the Cimmerians. There he pours libations and performs sacrifices as Circe earlier instructs him to do to attract the souls of the dead. the first person that he meets is one of his crew. the member asks odysseus to go back to Circe’s home to give him a proper burial.Odysseus then finds and speaks with the Theban prophet Tiresias, who reveals that Poseidon is punishing the Achaeans for blinding his son Polyphemus. He foretells Odysseus’s fate,that he will return home, reclaim his wife and palace from the horible suitors, and then make another trip to a distant land to appease Poseidon and find his father. He warns Odysseus not to touch the flocks of the Sun when he reaches the land of Thrinacia; otherwise, he won’t return home without suffering much more hardship and losing all of his crew. Tiresias XI

Odysseus now stops the conversation and asks his Phaeacian hosts to allow him to sleep, but the king and queen tell him to continue his journey.he meets Agamemnon, who tells him of his death by the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra. Next he meets Achilles, who asks about his son, Neoptolemus. Odysseus then tries to speak with Ajax, an Achaean who killed himself after he lost a contest with Odysseus over the arms of Achilles, but Ajax refuses to speak and slips away. He sees Heracles, King Minos, the hunter Orion, and others. He sees and observes the punishment of Sisyphus, struggling eternally to push a boulder over a hill only to have it roll back down whenever it reaches the top. All of these men have been put down to hades only to be brutaly tourtured. He then sees Tantalus, agonized by hunger and thirst. Tantalus sits in a pool of water overhung by bunches of grapes, but whenever he reaches for the grapes, they rise out of grasp, and whenever he bends down to drink, the water sinks out of reach. Odysseus wanted to see more but the dead were swarming so they rushed to the boat to get away.