![]() ![]() Never does the bright sun look down on them with his rays either when he mounts the starry heaven or when he turns again to earth from heaven, but baneful night is spread over wretched mortals. “She came to deep-flowing Oceanus, that bounds the Earth, where is the land and city of the Cimmerians, wrapped in mist and cloud. All the day long her sail was stretched as she sped over the sea and the sun set and all the ways grew dark. So when we had made fast all the tackling throughout the ship, we sat down, and the wind and the helms man made straight her course. And for our aid in the wake of our dark-prowed ship a fair wind that filled the sail, a goodly comrade, was sent by fair-tressed Circe, dread goddess of human speech. “But when we had come down to the ship and to the sea, first of all we drew the ship down to the bright sea, and set the mast and sail in the black ship, and took the sheep and put them aboard, and ourselves embarked, sorrowing, and shedding big tears. Odysseus & Laertes THE ODYSSEY BOOK 11, TRANSLATED BY A. “Within the hero’s mind his joys renew’d” (Aeneid 5: 904) and so he eagerly sets sails for the new homeland.Odysseus' Tale: Aeolus, Laestrygones & Circe ![]() ![]() ![]() In contrast, Aeneas returns with the vision of the great future and he is now decisive to work hard for it. So Odyssey becomes aware of futility of war that sends heroes to this dark place. Achilles says that he would rather be a living serf and a landless peasant than a King of the Dead. Homer has a gloomy idea of the underworld. Odyssey’s dead friends the can only tell how they died and got to this dark kingdom. For example, when Odyssey meets Trojan heroes like Patroclus, they run away frightened, as if the struggle for Troy still went on. In fact, for Homer living after death is just a continuation of earthly vain. Homer describes the underworld as a dull place of suffering, where warriors who died in battle have to continue carrying their wounds. Meeting his father he symbolically passes through the golden gate to become a recognized ruler, and a tool of destiny that has chosen to make Aeneas’s people great. In contrast to Odyssey, Aeneas’s purpose is choosing the way. Her suicide and sorrowful events in Ithaca is a kind of punishment for Odyssey’s false pride. In Hades he meets his mother of whom he did not know that she was dead. He says that he “had to come down here to Hades’ home, to meet the he shade of Teiresias of Thebes, and hear his prophecy”. He would perhaps never go to Hades, in case there was another way to Ithaca. Odyssey is driven by “unhappy fate below the sunlight” (Odyssey 11:798-799), and his ultimate purpose is finding the way. But when Circe learns that Odyssey has no love for her, she nobly explains him that the only man who knows the way to Ithaca is Tiresias who can be found only in the afterworld. Odyssey also has a kind of dream on Circe’s island where he spends seven years thinking that only seven days have passed. ![]()
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