I would avenge their violence, he said. When I had killed the suitors by guile or open fight I must take an oar and walk inland until I met men who did not know the sea, ate no salt with their food. And mistook the oar for a winnowing-fan. There I must plant the oar and offer fine victims to Poseidon, then go home and sacrifice holy hecatombs to all the deathless gods in order. Death would come to me from the sea, the gentlest kind, in sleek old age with my people prospering round me. That was the truth.
“On Thrinacia the cattle and fat sheep of Helios pastured. If I left them untouched we might limp home to Ithaca; if I harmed them I foresaw destruction for ship and crew. I myself might escape, but late, in misery, in another’s ship, having lost all my men, and find trouble in my house.”
I asked him how my mother’s shade might know me. He said any dead soul I let drink the blood would speak truth; those I refused would turn back. When he had spoken the will of the gods he went back into the house of Hades. I stayed until my mother came and drank. She knew me then and asked how I had come alive to the misty dark. For between us lay great rivers and dread waters, Ocean first of all, which no man crosses on foot but only in a well-built ship.
“When I had killed the suitors I must take an oar inland until I met men who mistook it for a winnowing-fan. There I must plant the oar and offer fine victims to Poseidon, then go home and sacrifice to all the gods in order. Death would come from the sea, the gentlest kind, in sleek old age.”
She asked if I had not yet reached Ithaca, and whether my wife still held my house or some other man had married her. I said necessity had brought me to seek Tiresias’s counsel; I had not yet set foot in Achaea. She told me Penelope endured, staying in the hall, her nights and days worn with weeping. The kingship had not yet passed to another; Telemachus held the land in peace and was invited to the feasts as a magistrate should be. But my father stayed away on the farm, sleeping in ashes by the fire in winter, in the vineyard leaves in summer, grieving and longing for my return.
That was how she herself had died. Not by Artemis’s gentle arrows, nor by long disease, but by longing for me and my kindness. That longing had robbed her of honey-sweet life. I longed to hold her. Three times I sprang toward her; three times she slipped through my arms like a shadow or a dream. I cried out in pain. She told me this was the way of mortals when they die: the sinews no longer hold flesh and bone. The strong fire destroys them once life leaves the white bones, and the soul flies off like a dream. I must go back to the light quickly and remember all this for my wife.
“She asked if I had not yet reached Ithaca, and whether Penelope still held my house. I said necessity had brought me to seek Tiresias; I had not yet set foot in Achaea. She told me Penelope endured, Telemachus held the land in peace, but my father stayed on the farm, sleeping in ashes by the fire, grieving for my return.”