Circe sends a fair wind and they sail all day, weeping, with the sheep on board. Night brings them into Oceanus, where the Cimmerians live in mist the sun never breaks at rising or at going down. They beach the ship and take the sheep along the water. Odysseus digs a trench a cubit each way, pours honey, milk, wine, and water, sprinkles barley, and cuts a ram and a black ewe so the dead can drink and speak. Ghosts crowd the blood screaming. He sits with his sword drawn and will not let them near until the prophet Teiresias drinks.
Elpenor comes first, still unburied on Circe's roof. He fell when he heard them stirring, forgot the stairs, and broke his neck. He begs for a cairn, a burning, and his oar on the grave, or he will become a curse to them. Then Teiresias drinks and names the fork. Leave the Sun's cattle on Thrinacia unharmed and Ithaca is still possible after hardship. Harm them and the ship and crew are finished. Suitors will be eating the house. Odysseus will kill them by force or fraud. After that he must carry a well-made oar inland until people who never mix salt with food mistake it for a winnowing shovel. Plant it. Sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Neptune. Death will come from the sea, late and gentle, when he is full of years.
His mother Anticlea drinks next and knows him at once. How did a living man cross Oceanus? Penelope still waits. Telemachus holds the land and sits at the public feasts. Laertes lives in rags on the farm and will not go to town. She died of longing, not illness. Three times Odysseus springs to hold her, and three times she slips through like a dream or phantom. Famous women follow, sent by Proserpine. Then Agamemnon comes, surrounded by the men who died with him in Aegisthus's house. He was not lost at sea. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra butchered him at table like a fat beast, mixing bowls still loaded, Cassandra screaming as she died beside him. He warns Odysseus not to tell a wife every secret. He still calls Penelope admirable.
Achilles will not hear that death is an honour. He would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house, alive and above ground, than king of kings among the dead. He asks after Neoptolemus and Peleus. Ajax stands apart and will not speak because of Achilles's armour. Odysseus sees Minos judging with a golden sceptre, Tantalus reaching water that dries and fruit the wind tosses back, Sisyphus rolling the stone that always falls, sweat steaming off him. Hercules speaks and goes down again. Odysseus would have stayed for Theseus and Pirithous, but thousands of shades scream and he fears Proserpine will send the Gorgon's head. He runs for the ship. They row down Oceanus until a fair wind rises. Teiresias's cattle rule is now his to keep. He has not yet had to keep it.
