Unit 12 Primary Source Readings

Introduction:

The three primary sources for Unit 12 are all from works you have seen before: Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Each of these selections deals with a katabasis, a descent to the underworld, by a male hero: Odysseus, Aeneas, and Orpheus, respectively. We have already encountered Odysseus and Aeneas in the this course. Orpheus was another ancient Greek mythological hero. His special skill was playing the lyre (a stringed musical instrument) better than anyone else– his playing and singing were so beautiful that he was said to be able to move the very rocks. Wild animals would gather around, charmed and entranced by his music. 

Homer Odyssey Book 11 excerpts, translated by A.S. Kline

Bk XI:1-50 Odysseus tells his tale: Ghosts out of Erebus

‘On reaching the shore, we dragged the vessel down to the glittering sea, and set up mast and sail in our black ship. Then we hauled the sheep aboard, and embarked ourselves, weeping, shedding huge tears. Still, Circe of the lovely tresses, dread goddess with a human voice, sent us a good companion to help us, a fresh wind from astern of our dark-prowed ship to fill the sail. And when we had set the tackle in order fore and aft, we sat down, and let the wind and the helmsman keep her course. All day long with straining sail she glided over the sea, till the sun set and all the waves grew dark.

So she came to the deep flowing Ocean that surrounds the earth, and the city and country of the Cimmerians, wrapped in cloud and mist. The bright sun never shines down on them with his rays neither by climbing the starry heavens nor turning back again towards earth, but instead dreadful Night looms over a wretched people. There we beached our ship, and landed the sheep, and made our way along the Ocean stream, till we came to the place Circe described.

Perimedes and Eurylochus restrained the sacrificial victims while I drew my sharp sword from its sheath, and with it dug a pit two foot square, then poured a libation all around to the dead, first of milk and honey, then of sweet wine, thirdly of water, sprinkled with white barley meal. Then I prayed devoutly to the powerless ghosts of the departed, swearing that when I reached Ithaca I would sacrifice a barren heifer in my palace, the best of the herd, and would heap the altar with rich spoils, and offer a ram, apart, to Teiresias, the finest jet-black ram in the flock. When, with prayers and vows, I had invoked the hosts of the dead, I led the sheep to the pit and cut their throats, so the dark blood flowed.

Then the ghosts of the dead swarmed out of Erebus – brides, and young men yet unwed, old men worn out with toil, girls once vibrant and still new to grief, and ranks of warriors slain in battle, showing their wounds from bronze-tipped spears, their armour stained with blood. Round the pit from every side the crowd thronged, with strange cries, and I turned pale with fear. Then I called to my comrades, and told them to flay and burn the sheep killed by the pitiless bronze, with prayers to the divinities, to mighty Hades and dread Persephone. I myself, drawing my sharp sword from its sheath, sat there preventing the powerless ghosts from drawing near to the blood, till I might question Teiresias.

Bk XI:51-89 Odysseus tells his tale: The Soul of Elpenor

‘The first ghost to appear was that of my comrade Elpenor. He had not yet been buried beneath the broad-tracked earth, for we left his corpse behind in Circe’s hall, unburied and unwept, while another more urgent task drove us on. I wept now when I saw him, and pitied him, and I spoke to him with winged words: “Elpenor, how came you here, to the gloomy dark? You are here sooner on foot than I in my black ship.”

The shade of Elpenor explains that he died by falling off Circe’s roof. He begs Odysseus to properly bury him before Odysseus continues on his way home to Ithaca. Odysseus agrees to build a funeral pyre for Elpenor.

Bk XI:90-149 Odysseus tells his tale: The Ghost of Teiresias

‘Then the ghost of Theban Teiresias appeared, carrying his golden staff, ad he knew me, and spoke: “Odysseus, man of many resources, scion of Zeus, son of Laertes, how now, luckless man? Why have you left the sunlight, to view the dead in this joyless place? Move back from the trench and turn aside your blade so I may drink the blood, and prophesy truth to you.”

At this, I drew back and sheathed my silver-embossed sword. When he had drunk the black blood, the infallible seer spoke and said: “Noble Odysseus, you ask about your sweet homecoming, but the god will make it a bitter journey. I think you will not escape the Earth-Shaker, who is angered at heart against you, angered because you blinded his son. Even so, though you shall suffer, you and your friends may yet reach home when you have sailed your good ship to the island of Thrinacia, and escaped the dark blue sea, and found there the cattle and the fat flocks of Helios, he who sees and hears everything, if only you can control your own and your comrades’ greed. If you keep your hands off them, and think only of your homeward course, you may yet reach Ithaca, though you will suffer. But if you lay hands on them, then I foresee shipwreck for you and your friends, and even if you yourself escape, you will come unlooked-for to your home, in sore distress, losing all comrades, in another’s vessel, to find great trouble in your house, insolent men who destroy your goods, who court your wife and offer gifts of courtship.

Yet, I speak truth, when you arrive there you will take revenge on them for their outrages. When, though, you have killed the Suitors in your palace, by cunning or openly, with your sharp sword, then pick up a shapely oar and travel on till you come to a race that knows nothing of the sea, that eat no salt with their food, and have never heard of crimson-painted ships, or the well-shaped oars that serve as wings. And let this be your sign, you cannot miss it: that meeting another traveller he will say you carry a winnowing-fan on your broad shoulder. There you must plant your shapely oar in the ground, and make rich sacrifice to Lord Poseidon, a ram, a bull, and a breeding-boar. Then leave for home, and make sacred offerings there to the deathless gods who hold the wide heavens, to all of them, and in their due order.

And death will come to you far from the sea, the gentlest of deaths, taking you when you are bowed with comfortable old age, and your people prosperous about you. This that I speak to you is the truth.”

He finished, and I replied, saying: “Teiresias, no doubt the gods, themselves, have spun this fate for me. Come tell me the truth of this now. Here I see my dead mother’s ghost: she sits beside the blood silently, and cannot look on her own son’s face or speak with him. Tell me, my lord, how she may know it is I.”

Swiftly he answered my words: “It is a simple thing to explain to you. Whoever of the dead departed you allow to approach the blood will speak to you indeed: but whoever you deny will draw back.”’

Bk XI:150-224 Odysseus tells his tale: The Spirit of Anticleia

Odysseys allows the shade of his mother, Anticleia, to drink the black blood and she is able to speak with him. Odysseus tells her that he has been wandering for many years since leaving Troy and has not yet reached Ithaca and home. Anticleia fills him in on what has been happening in Ithaca in his absence.

So she spoke, and I wondered how I might embrace my dead mother’s ghost. Three times my will urged me to clasp her, and I started towards her, three times she escaped my arms like a shadow or a dream.  And the pain seemed deeper in my heart. Then I spoke to her with winged words: “Mother, since I wish it why do you not let me embrace you, so that even in Hades’ House we might clasp our arms around each other and sate ourselves with chill lament? Are you a mere phantom royal Persephone has sent, to make me groan and grieve the more?

My revered mother replied quickly: “Oh, my child, most unfortunate of men, Persephone, Zeus’ daughter, does not deceive you: this is the way it is with mortals after death. The sinews no longer bind flesh and bone, the fierce heat of the blazing pyre consumes them, and the spirit flees from our white bones, a ghost that flutters and goes like a dream. Hasten to the light, with all speed: remember these things, to speak to your wife of them.”’

Bk XI:465-540 Odysseus tells his tale: The Spirit of Achilles

‘So we stood, exchanging words of sadness, grieving and shedding tears. And now the spirit of Achilles son of Peleus appeared, and the spirits of Patroclus and peerless Antilochus, and Ajax who for beauty and stature was supreme among the Danaans, save only for Peleus’ flawless son. And the ghost of swift-footed Achilles, grandson of Aeacus, knew me, and spoke through the tears: “Odysseus of many resources, scion of Zeus, son of Laertes, what could your resolute mind devise that exceeds this: to dare to descend to Hades, where live the heedless dead, the disembodied ghosts of men?”

So he spoke, and I replied: “Achilles, son of Peleus, greatest of Achaean warriors, I came to find Teiresias, to see if he would show me the way to reach rocky Ithaca. I have not yet touched Achaea, not set foot in my own land, but have suffered endless troubles, yet no man has been more blessed than you, Achilles, nor will be in time to come, since we Argives considered you a god while you lived, and now you rule, a power, among the un-living. Do not grieve, then, Achilles, at your death.”

These words he answered, swiftly: “Glorious Odysseus: don’t try to reconcile me to my dying. I’d rather serve as another man’s labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead. Give me news of my son, instead. Did he follow me to war, and become a leader?

Odysseus tells Achilles about his son, Neoptolomus, and then about the final sack of Troy:

Then again, when we Argive leaders climbed into the Horse that Epeius made, and it fell to me to open the hatch of our well-made hiding place, or keep it closed, the other Danaan generals and counsellors kept on wiping the tears from their eyes and their limbs trembled, but he begged me endlessly to let him leap from the Horse, toying with his sword hilt and his heavy bronze spear, eager to wreak havoc on the Trojans. And when we had sacked Priam’s high city, he took ship with his share of the spoils and a noble prize, and never a wound, untouched by the sharp spears, unmarked by close combat, something rare in battle, since Ares, the God of War, is indiscriminate in his fury.”

When I had spoken, the spirit of Achilles, Aeacus’ grandson, went away with great strides through the field of asphodel, rejoicing at my news of his son’s greatness.’

Bk XI:541-592 Odysseus tells his tale: The Ghost of Ajax and others

Odysseus sees the shade of Ajax, but Ajax refused to come near or speak to him. After the death of Achilles there was a contest over Achilles armor between Odysseus and Ajax. When Odysseus won, Ajax went mad, killing his own men and then himself. Odysseus moves on and sees some of the great heroes and villains in the underworld:

Know that I saw Minos there, Zeus’ glorious son, seated with the golden sceptre in his hand, passing judgement on the dead as they sat or stood around him, making their case, in the broad-gated House of Hades.

I next saw great Orion, carrying his indestructible bronze club, driving the phantoms of wild creatures he once killed in the lonely hills over the fields of asphodel.

I saw Tityos, son of glorious Gaea, spread out over a hundred yards of ground, while a vulture sat on either side tearing his liver, plucking at his entrails, his hands powerless to beat them away. He is punished for his rape of Leto, Zeus’ honoured consort, as she journeyed to Pytho through lovely Panopeus.

I saw Tantalus in agonising torment, in a pool of water reaching to his chin. He was tortured by thirst, but could not drink, since every time he stooped eagerly the water was swallowed up and vanished, and at his feet only black earth remained, parched by some god. Fruit hung from the boughs of tall leafy trees, pears and pomegranates, juicy apples, sweet figs and ripe olives. But whenever the old man reached towards them to grasp them in his hands, the wind would sweep them off into the shadowy clouds.’

Bk XI:593-640 Odysseus tells his tale: The Ghost of Heracles

‘And I saw Sisyphus in agonising torment trying to roll a huge stone to the top of a hill. He would brace himself, and push it towards the summit with both hands, but just as he was about to heave it over the crest its weight overcame him, and then down again to the plain came bounding that pitiless boulder. He would wrestle again, and lever it back, while the sweat poured from his limbs, and the dust swirled round his head.

Then I caught sight of mighty Heracles, I mean his phantom, since he joys in feasting among the deathless gods, with slim-ankled Hebe for wife, she the daughter of great Zeus and golden-sandaled Hera. Round Heracles a clamour rose from the dead, like wild birds flying up in terror, and he dark as night, his bow unsheathed and an arrow strung, glared round fiercely as if about to shoot. His golden shoulder-belt was terrifying too, where marvellous things were wrought, bears, wild boars, lions with glittering eyes, battle and conflict, murder and mayhem. I hope that whatever craftsman retained the design of that belt he never made another, and never will.

When he saw me, he in turn knew me, and weeping spoke in winged words: “Odysseus of many resources, scion of Zeus, son of Laertes, wretched spirit are you too playing out your evil fate such as I once endured under the sun? A son of Zeus, Cronos’ son, I still suffered misery beyond all measure, since I served a man far inferior to me, and he set me difficult tasks. He even sent me here to bring back the Hound of Hades, unable to think of a harder labour. I carried off the creature too, and led him away. Hermes and bright-eyed Athene were my guides.”

With this he departed into Hades’ House, but I stood fast, hoping some other heroic warrior of ancient times might still appear. And I might have seen those men of the past I longed to see, Theseus and Peirithous, bright sons of the gods. But long before that the countless hosts of the dead came thronging with eerie cries, and I was gripped by pale fear lest royal Persephone send up the head of that ghastly monster, the Gorgon, from Hades’ House.

So I hastened to the ship, and ordered my friends to embark, and let loose the cables. Swiftly they climbed aboard, and took their seats at the oars, and as we rowed the force of the current carried her down the River of Ocean, till afterwards a fair breeze blew.

VIRGIL AENEID BOOK 6 EXCERPTS, translated by A.S. Kline (Some of these chapters are just summaries)

BKVI:98-155 AENEAS ASKS ENTRY TO HADES  

Aeneas goes to the Sibyl of Cumae and asks for entrance to the underworld so that he can see his deceased father one more time. He appeals to the examples of Orpheus, Herakles, and Theseus, who were all allowed to go down to the underworld and return. The Sibyl tells him how he can access the underworld, appease Persephone, queen of the dead, and potentially return again by using a golden bough.

BKVI:156-182 THE FINDING OF MISENUS’S BODY

Before Aeneas can descend to the underworld, he must give a proper burial and funeral for this companion, Misenus, a fellow Trojan who has just died.

BKVI:183-235 THE FUNERAL PYRE

Aeneas and his men start to build the funeral pyre, when two doves, signs from Aeneas’ mother, the goddess Venus, appear to guide him to the golden bough. The men perform the funeral rites for Misenus.

BKVI:236-263 THE SACRIFICE TO HECATE

Aeneas and the Sibyl approach the entrance to the underworld.

Here the priestess first of all tethered four black heifers,

poured wine over their foreheads, and placed

the topmost bristles that she plucked, growing

between their horns, in the sacred fire, as a first offering,

calling aloud to Hecate, powerful in Heaven and Hell.

Others slit the victim’s throats and caught the warm blood

in bowls. Aeneas himself sacrificed a black-fleeced lamb

to Night, mother of the Furies, and Earth, her mighty sister,

and a barren heifer to you, Persephone.

Then he kindled the midnight altars for the Stygian King,

and placed whole carcasses of bulls on the flames,

pouring rich oil over the blazing entrails.

See now, at the dawn light of the rising sun,

the ground bellowed under their feet, the wooded hills began

to move, and, at the coming of the Goddess [Hecate], dogs seemed to howl

in the shadows. ‘Away, stand far away, O you profane ones,’

the priestess cried, ‘absent yourselves from all this grove:

and you now, Aeneas, be on your way, and tear your sword

from the sheathe: you need courage, and a firm mind, now.’

So saying, she plunged wildly into the open cave:

he, fearlessly, kept pace with his vanishing guide.

BKVI:264-294 THE ENTRANCE TO HADES

The Sibyl leads Aeneas into Dis through the entrance to the underworld.

Right before the entrance, in the very jaws of Orcus,

Grief and vengeful Care have made their beds,

and pallid Sickness lives there, and sad Old Age,

and Fear, and persuasive Hunger, and vile Need,

forms terrible to look on, and Death and Pain:

then Death’s brother Sleep, and Evil Pleasure of the mind,

and, on the threshold opposite, death-dealing War,

and the steel chambers of the Furies, and mad Discord,

her snaky hair entwined with blood-wet ribbons.

In the centre a vast shadowy elm spreads its aged trunks

and branches: the seat, they say, that false Dreams hold,

thronging, clinging beneath every leaf.

And many other monstrous shapes of varied creatures,

are stabled by the doors, Centaurs and bi-formed Scylla,

and hundred-armed Briareus, and the Lernean Hydra,

hissing fiercely, and the Chimaera armed with flame,

Gorgons, and Harpies, and the triple bodied shade, Geryon.

At this, trembling suddenly with terror, Aeneas grasped

his sword, and set the naked blade against their approach:

and, if his knowing companion had not warned him

that these were tenuous bodiless lives flitting about

with a hollow semblance of form, he would have rushed at them,

and hacked at the shadows uselessly with his sword.

BKVI:295-336 THE SHORES OF ACHERON

From here there is a road that leads to the waters

of Tartarean Acheron. Here thick with mud a whirlpool seethes

in the vast depths, and spews all its sands into Cocytus.

A grim ferryman watches over the rivers and streams,

Charon, dreadful in his squalor, with a mass of unkempt

white hair straggling from his chin: flames glow in his eyes,

a dirty garment hangs, knotted from his shoulders.

He poles the boat and trims the sails himself,

and ferries the dead in his dark skiff,

old now, but a god’s old age is fresh and green.

Here all the crowd streams, hurrying to the shores,

women and men, the lifeless bodies of noble heroes,

boys and unmarried girls, sons laid on the pyre

in front of their father’s eyes: as many as the leaves that fall

in the woods at the first frost of autumn, as many as the birds

that flock to land from ocean deeps, when the cold of the year

drives them abroad and despatches them to sunnier countries.

They stood there, pleading to be first to make the crossing,

stretching out their hands in longing for the far shore.

But the dismal boatman accepts now these, now those,

but driving others away, keeps them far from the sand.

Then Aeneas, stirred and astonished at the tumult, said:

‘O virgin, tell me, what does this crowding to the river mean?

What do the souls want? And by what criterion do these leave

the bank, and those sweep off with the oars on the leaden stream?

The ancient priestess spoke briefly to him, so:

‘Son of Anchises, true child of the gods, you see

the deep pools of Cocytus, and the Marsh of Styx,

by whose name the gods fear to swear falsely.

All this crowd, you see, were destitute and unburied:

that ferryman is Charon: those the waves carry were buried:

he may not carry them from the fearful shore on the harsh waters

before their bones are at rest in the earth. They roam

for a hundred years and flit around these shores: only then

are they admitted, and revisit the pools they long for.’

The son of Anchises halted, and checked his footsteps,

thinking deeply, and pitying their sad fate in his heart.

He saw Leucaspis and Orontes, captain of the Lycian fleet,

there, grieving and lacking honour in death, whom a Southerly

overwhelmed, as they sailed together from Troy on the windswept

waters, engulfing both the ship and crew in the waves.

BKVI:384-416 CHARON THE FERRYMAN

So they pursued their former journey, and drew near the river.

Now when the Boatman saw them from the Stygian wave

walking through the silent wood, and directing their footsteps

towards its bank, he attacked them verbally, first, and unprompted,

rebuking them: ‘Whoever you are, who come armed to my river,

tell me, from over there, why you’re here, and halt your steps.

This is a place of shadows, of Sleep and drowsy Night:

I’m not allowed to carry living bodies in the Stygian boat.

Truly it was no pleasure for me to take Hercules on his journey

over the lake, nor Theseus and Pirithous, though they may

have been children of gods, unrivalled in strength.

The first came for Cerberus the watchdog of Tartarus,

and dragged him away quivering from under the king’s throne:

the others were after snatching our Queen from Dis’s chamber.’

To this the prophetess of Amphrysian Apollo briefly answered:

‘There’s no such trickery here (don’t be disturbed),

our weapons offer no affront: your huge guard-dog

can terrify the bloodless shades with his eternal howling:

chaste Proserpine can keep to her uncle’s threshold.

Aeneas the Trojan, renowned in piety and warfare,

goes down to the deepest shadows of Erebus, to his father.

If the idea of such affection does not move you, still you

must recognise this bough.’ (She showed the branch, hidden

in her robes.) Then the anger in his swollen breast subsided.

No more was said. Marvelling at the revered offering,

of fateful twigs, seen again after so long, he turned the stern

of the dark skiff towards them and neared the bank.

Then he turned off the other souls who sat on the long benches,

cleared the gangways: and received mighty Aeneas

on board. The seamed skiff groaned with the weight

and let in quantities of marsh-water through the chinks.

At last, the river crossed, he landed the prophetess and the hero

safe, on the unstable mud, among the blue-grey sedge.

BKVI:417-439 BEYOND THE ACHERON

The Sibyl pacifies Cerberus with a drugged honey-cake.

Immediately a loud crying of voices was heard, the spirits

of weeping infants, whom a dark day stole at the first

threshold of this sweet life, those chosen to be torn

from the breast, and drowned in bitter death.

Nearby are those condemned to die on false charges.

Yet their place is not ordained without the allotted jury:

Minos, the judge, shakes the urn: he convenes the voiceless court,

and hears their lives and sins. Then the next place

is held by those gloomy spirits who, innocent of crime,

died by their own hand, and, hating the light, threw away

their lives. How willingly now they’d endure

poverty and harsh suffering, in the air above!

Divine Law prevents it, and the sad marsh and its hateful

waters binds them, and nine-fold Styx confines them.

 BKVI:535-627 THE SIBYL DESCRIBES TARTARUS

While they spoke Aurora and her rosy chariot had passed

the zenith of her ethereal path, and they might perhaps

have spent all the time allowed in such talk, but the Sibyl,

his companion, warned him briefly saying:

‘Night approaches, Aeneas: we waste the hours with weeping.

This is the place where the path splits itself in two:

there on the right is our road to Elysium, that runs beneath

the walls of mighty Dis: but the left works punishment

on the wicked, and sends them on to godless Tartarus.’

Deiphobus replied: ‘Do not be angry, great priestess:

I will leave: I will make up the numbers, and return to the darkness.

Go now glory of our race: enjoy a better fate.’

So he spoke, and in speaking turned away.

Aeneas suddenly looked back, and, below the left hand cliff,

he saw wide battlements, surrounded by a triple wall,

and encircled by a swift river of red-hot flames,

the Tartarean Phlegethon, churning with echoing rocks.

A gate fronts it, vast, with pillars of solid steel,

that no human force, not the heavenly gods themselves,

can overturn by war: an iron tower rises into the air,

and seated before it, Tisiphone, clothed in a blood-wet dress,

keeps guard of the doorway, sleeplessly, night and day.

Groans came from there, and the cruel sound of the lash,

then the clank of iron, and dragging chains.

Aeneas halted, and stood rooted, terrified by the noise.

‘What evil is practised here? O Virgin, tell me: by what torments

are they oppressed? Why are there such sounds in the air?’

Then the prophetess began to speak as follows: ‘Famous leader

of the Trojans, it is forbidden for the pure to cross the evil threshold:

but when Hecate appointed me to the wood of Avernus,

she taught me the divine torments, and guided me through them all.

Cretan Rhadamanthus rules this harshest of kingdoms,

and hears their guilt, extracts confessions, and punishes

whoever has deferred atonement for their sins too long

till death, delighting in useless concealment, in the world above.

Tisiphone the avenger, armed with her whip, leaps on the guilty immediately,

lashes them, and threatening them with the fierce

snakes in her left hand, calls to her savage troop of sisters.

Then at last the accursed doors open, screeching on jarring hinges.

You comprehend what guardian sits at the door, what shape watches

the threshold? Well still fiercer is the monstrous Hydra inside,

with her fifty black gaping jaws. There Tartarus itself

falls sheer, and stretches down into the darkness:

twice as far as we gaze upwards to heavenly Olympus.

Here the Titanic race, the ancient sons of Earth,

hurled down by the lightning-bolt, writhe in the depths.

And here I saw the two sons of Aloeus, giant forms,

who tried to tear down the heavens with their hands,

and topple Jupiter from his high kingdom.

And I saw Salmoneus paying a savage penalty

for imitating Jove’s lightning, and the Olympian thunder.

Brandishing a torch, and drawn by four horses

he rode in triumph among the Greeks, through Elis’s city,

claiming the gods’ honours as his own, a fool,

who mimicked the storm-clouds and the inimitable thunderbolt

with bronze cymbals and the sound of horses’ hoof-beats.

But the all-powerful father hurled his lighting from dense cloud,

not for him fiery torches, or pine-branches’ smoky light

and drove him headlong with the mighty whirlwind.

And Tityus was to be seen as well, the foster-child

of Earth, our universal mother, whose body stretches

over nine acres, and a great vulture with hooked beak

feeds on his indestructible liver, and his entrails ripe

for punishment, lodged deep inside the chest, groping

for his feast, no respite given to the ever-renewing tissue.

Shall I speak of the Lapiths, Ixion, Pirithous,

over whom hangs a dark crag that seems to slip and fall?

High couches for their feast gleam with golden frames,

and a banquet of royal luxury is spread before their eyes:

nearby the eldest Fury, crouching, prevents their fingers touching

the table: rising up, and brandishing her torch, with a voice of thunder.

Here are those who hated their brothers, in life,

or struck a parent, or contrived to defraud a client,

or who crouched alone over the riches they’d made,

without setting any aside for their kin (their crowd is largest),

those who were killed for adultery, or pursued civil war,

not fearing to break their pledges to their masters:

shut in they see their punishment. Don’t ask to know

that punishment, or what kind of suffering drowns them.

Some roll huge stones, or hang spread-eagled

on wheel-spokes: wretched Theseus sits still, and will sit

for eternity: Phlegyas, the most unfortunate, warns them all

and bears witness in a loud voice among the shades:

“Learn justice: be warned, and don’t despise the gods.”

Here’s one who sold his country for gold, and set up

a despotic lord: this one made law and remade it for a price:

he entered his daughter’s bed and a forbidden marriage:

all of them dared monstrous sin, and did what they dared.

Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,

a voice of iron, could I tell all the forms of wickedness

or spell out the names of every torment.’

BKVI:628-678 THE FIELDS OF ELYSIUM

When she had spoken of this, the aged priestess of Apollo said:

‘But come now, travel the road, and complete the task set for you:

let us hurry, I see the battlements that were forged

in the Cyclopean fires, and the gates in the arch opposite us

where we are told to set down the gifts as ordered.’

She spoke and keeping step they hastened along the dark path

crossing the space between and arriving near the doors.

Aeneas gained the entrance, sprinkled fresh water

over his body, and set up the branch on the threshold before him.

Having at last achieved this, the goddess’s task fulfilled,

they came to the pleasant places, the delightful grassy turf

of the Fortunate Groves, and the homes of the blessed.

Here freer air and radiant light clothe the plain,

and these have their own sun, and their own stars.

Some exercise their bodies in a grassy gymnasium,

compete in sports and wrestle on the yellow sand:

others tread out the steps of a dance, and sing songs.

There Orpheus too, the long-robed priest of Thrace,

accompanies their voices with the seven-note scale,

playing now with fingers, now with the ivory quill.

Here are Teucer’s ancient people, loveliest of children,

great-hearted heroes, born in happier years,

Ilus, Assaracus, and Dardanus founder of Troy.

Aeneas marvels from a distance at their idle chariots

and their weapons: their spears fixed in the ground,

and their horses scattered freely browsing over the plain:

the pleasure they took in chariots and armour while alive,

the care in tending shining horses, follows them below the earth.

Look, he sees others on the grass to right and left, feasting,

and singing a joyful paean in chorus, among the fragrant

groves of laurel, out of which the Eridanus’s broad river

flows through the woodlands to the world above.

Here is the company of those who suffered wounds fighting

for their country: and those who were pure priests, while they lived,

and those who were faithful poets, singers worthy of Apollo,

and those who improved life, with discoveries in Art or Science,

and those who by merit caused others to remember them:

the brows of all these were bound with white headbands.

As they crowded round, the Sibyl addressed them,

Musaeus above all: since he holds the centre of the vast crowd,

all looking up to him, his tall shoulders towering above:

‘Blessed spirits, and you, greatest of Poets,

say what region or place contains Anchises. We have

come here, crossing the great rivers of Erebus, for him.’

And the hero replied to her briefly in these words:

‘None of us have a fixed abode: we live in the shadowy woods,

and make couches of river-banks, and inhabit fresh-water meadows.

But climb this ridge, if your hearts-wish so inclines,

and I will soon set you on an easy path.’

He spoke and went on before them, and showed them

the bright plains below: then they left the mountain heights.

BKVI:679-702 THE MEETING WITH ANCHISES

Aeneas finds his father, Anchises, in the Elysian Fields and attempts to embrace him. But his father is merely a wispy shade. Nonetheless they can speak with each other and Aeneas weeps.  

BKVI:703-723 THE SOULS DUE FOR RE-BIRTH

And now Aeneas saw a secluded grove

in a receding valley, with rustling woodland thickets,

and the river of Lethe gliding past those peaceful places.

Innumerable tribes and peoples hovered round it:

just as, in the meadows, on a cloudless summer’s day,

the bees settle on the multifarious flowers, and stream

round the bright lilies, and all the fields hum with their buzzing.

Aeneas was thrilled by the sudden sight, and, in ignorance,

asked the cause: what the river is in the distance,

who the men are crowding the banks in such numbers.

Then his father Anchises answered: ‘They are spirits,

owed a second body by destiny, and they drink

the happy waters, and a last forgetting, at Lethe’s stream.

Indeed, for a long time I’ve wished to tell you of them,

and show you them face to face, to enumerate my children’s

descendants, so you might joy with me more at finding Italy.’

‘O father, is it to be thought that any spirits go from here

to the sky above, returning again to dull matter?’

‘Indeed I’ll tell you, son, not keep you in doubt,’

Anchises answered, and revealed each thing in order.

BKVI:724-751 THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS

‘Firstly, a spirit within them nourishes the sky and earth,

the watery plains, the shining orb of the moon,

and Titan’s star, and Mind, flowing through matter,

vivifies the whole mass, and mingles with its vast frame.

From it come the species of man and beast, and winged lives,

and the monsters the sea contains beneath its marbled waves.

The power of those seeds is fiery, and their origin divine,

so long as harmful matter doesn’t impede them

and terrestrial bodies and mortal limbs don’t dull them.

Through those they fear and desire, and grieve and joy,

and enclosed in night and a dark dungeon, can’t see the light.

Why, when life leaves them at the final hour,

still all of the evil, all the plagues of the flesh, alas,

have not completely vanished, and many things, long hardened

deep within, must of necessity be ingrained, in strange ways.

So they are scourged by torments, and pay the price

for former sins: some are hung, stretched out,

to the hollow winds, the taint of wickedness is cleansed

for others in vast gulfs, or burned away with fire:

each spirit suffers its own: then we are sent

through wide Elysium, and we few stay in the joyous fields,

for a length of days, till the cycle of time,

complete, removes the hardened stain, and leaves

pure ethereal thought, and the brightness of natural air.

All these others the god calls in a great crowd to the river Lethe,

after they have turned the wheel for a thousand years,

so that, truly forgetting, they can revisit the vault above,

and begin with a desire to return to the flesh.’

Ovid Metamorphoses Book 10 translated by A.S. Kline

Bk X:1-85 Orpheus and Eurydice

Hymen, called by the voice of Orpheus, departed, and, dressed in his saffron robes, made his way through the vast skies to the Ciconian coast: but in vain. He was present at Orpheus’s marriage, true, but he did not speak the usual words, display a joyful expression, or bring good luck. The torch, too, that he held, sputtered continually, with tear-provoking fumes, and no amount of shaking contrived to light it properly. The result was worse than any omens. While the newly wedded bride, Eurydice, was walking through the grass, with a crowd of naiads as her companions, she was killed, by a bite on her ankle, from a snake, sheltering there.  When Thracian Orpheus, the poet of Rhodope, had mourned for her, greatly, in the upper world, he dared to go down to Styx, through the gate of Taenarus, also, to see if he might not move the dead.

Through the weightless throng, and the ghosts that had received proper burial, he came to Persephone, and the lord of the shadows, he who rules the joyless kingdom. Then striking the lyre-strings to accompany his words, he sang: ‘O gods of this world, placed below the earth, to which, all, who are created mortal, descend; if you allow me, and it is lawful, to set aside the fictions of idle tongues, and speak the truth, I have not come here to see dark Tartarus, nor to bind Cerberus, Medusa’s child, with his three necks, and snaky hair. My wife is the cause of my journey. A viper, she trod on, diffused its venom into her body, and robbed her of her best years. I longed to be able to accept it, and I do not say I have not tried: Love won.

He is a god well known in the world above, though I do not know if that is so here: though I imagine him to be here, as well, and if the story of that rape in ancient times is not a lie, you also were wedded by Amor. I beg you, by these fearful places, by this immense abyss, and the silence of your vast realms, reverse Eurydice’s swift death. All things are destined to be yours, and though we delay a while, sooner or later, we hasten home. Here we are all bound, this is our final abode, and you hold the longest reign over the human race. Eurydice, too, will be yours to command, when she has lived out her fair span of years, to maturity. I ask this benefit as a gift; but, if the fates refuse my wife this kindness, I am determined not to return: you can delight in both our deaths.’

The bloodless spirits wept as he spoke, accompanying his words with the music. Tantalus did not reach for the ever-retreating water: Ixion’s wheel was stilled: the vultures did not pluck at Tityus’s liver: the Belides, the daughters of Danaüs, left their water jars: and you, Sisyphus, perched there, on your rock. Then they say, for the first time, the faces of the Furies were wet with tears, won over by his song: the king of the deep, and his royal bride, could not bear to refuse his prayer, and called for Eurydice.

She was among the recent ghosts, and walked haltingly from her wound. The poet of Rhodope received her, and, at the same time, accepted this condition, that he must not turn his eyes behind him, until he emerged from the vale of Avernus, or the gift would be null and void.

They took the upward path, through the still silence, steep and dark, shadowy with dense fog, drawing near to the threshold of the upper world. Afraid she was no longer there, and eager to see her, the lover turned his eyes. In an instant she dropped back, and he, unhappy man, stretching out his arms to hold her and be held, clutched at nothing but the receding air. Dying a second time, now, there was no complaint to her husband (what, then, could she complain of, except that she had been loved?). She spoke a last ‘farewell’ that, now, scarcely reached his ears, and turned again towards that same place.

Stunned by the double loss of his wife, Orpheus was like that coward who saw Cerberus, the three-headed dog, chained by the central neck, and whose fear vanished with his nature, as stone transformed his body. Or like Olenos, and you, his Lethaea, too proud of your beauty: he wished to be charged with your crime, and seem guilty himself: once wedded hearts, you are now rocks set on moist Mount Ida.

Orpheus wished and prayed, in vain, to cross the Styx again, but the ferryman fended him off. Still, for seven days, he sat there by the shore, neglecting himself and not taking nourishment. Sorrow, troubled thought, and tears were his food. He took himself to lofty Mount Rhodope, and Haemus, swept by the winds, complaining that the gods of Erebus were cruel.

Three times the sun had ended the year, in watery Pisces, and Orpheus had abstained from the love of women, either because things ended badly for him, or because he had sworn to do so. Yet, many felt a desire to be joined with the poet, and many grieved at rejection. Indeed, he was the first of the Thracian people to transfer his love to young boys, and enjoy their brief springtime, and early flowering, this side of manhood.

Your final primary text is a poem by the Scottish LGBT poet Carol Ann Duffy, who was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009 until 2019. Her books are now assigned reading in British schools. Her collection The World’s Wife, published in 1999, has a zany perspective on familiar stories from western culture: in these poems Duffy sets out to imagine the unspoken stories of the wives of famous men of myth and history. Poems in the volume include Queen Herod, Mrs Midas, Mrs Tiresias, Mrs Darwin, Mrs Faust, Queen Kong, Mrs Quasimodo, The Devil’s Wife, Mrs Rip Van Winkle, Frau Freud, and more. Carol Ann Duffy is brilliant at making the characters of myth into modern believable people and she has fun imagining contemporary versions of the ancient myths, stripping away the exoticism and inserting telling domestic details–in the process making unstrange and at the same time making strange too, because of how she brings the story closer to us so that we can marvel at it. Your assigned text is ‘Eurydice’. Which is in many ways hilarious.

Carol Ann Duffy ‘Eurydice’ from The World’s Wife (1999)

 Girls, I was dead and down
in the Underworld, a shade,
a shadow of my former self, nowhen.
It was a place where language stopped,
a black full-stop, a black hole
where words had to come to an end
And end they did there,
last words,
famous or not.
It suited me down to the ground.
So imagine me there,
unavailable,
out of this world,
then picture my face in that place
of Eternal Repose,
in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe
from the kind of a man
who follows her round
writing poems
hovers about
while she reads them,
calls her his Muse,
and once sulked for a night and a day
because she remarked on his weakness for abstract noouns;
just picture my face
when I heard –
Ye Gods –
a familiar knock-knock-knock at Death’s door.
Him.
Big O.
Larger than life.
With his lyre
and a poem to read with me as the prize.
Things were different back then.
For the men, verse-wise,
Big O, was the boy.
Legendary. The blurb
on the back of his books claimed
that animals,
aardvark to Zebra,
flocked to his side when he sang,
fish leapt from their waves
at the sound of his voice,
even the mute, sullen stones at his feet
wept wee silver tears.
Bollocks. Furthermore,
we’ve all, let’s be honest,
been bored half to death by a man
who fucks like he’s writing a book.
And, given my time all over again,
I know that I’d rather write for myself
than be dearest, beloved, dark lady, white goddess, etc. etc.
In fact, girls, I’d rather be dead.
But the Gods are like publishers –
usually male –
and what you doubtless know of my tale
is the deal.
Orpheus strutted his stuff.
The bloodless ghosts were in tears.
Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years.
Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers.
The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears.
Like it or not,
I must follow him back to our life –
Eurydice, Orpheus’s wife –
to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,
octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets,
elegies, limericks,villanelles,
histories, myths…
He’d been told that he mustn’t look back
or turn round,
but walk steadily upwards,
myself right behind him,
out of the Underworld
into the upper air that for me was the past.
He’d been warned
that one look would lose me
for ever and ever.
So onwards we walked.
Nobody talked.
Girls, forget what you’ve read,
it happened like this –
I did everything in my power
to make him look back.
What did I have to do, I said,
to make him see we were through?
I was dead Deceased.
I was Resting in Peace. Passe.
Late. Past my sell-by date –
and here I stretched out my hand
and touched him once
on the back of the neck –
Please let my stay.
But already the light had saddened from purple to grey.
It was an uhill schlep
from death to life
and with every step
I willed him to turn.
I’d managed to filch the poem
out of his cloak
when inspiration finally struck.
I stopped, thrilled.
He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke –
Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece.
I’d love to hear it again.
He was smiling modestly
when he turned
when he turned and he looked at me.
What else?
I noticed he hadn’t shaved.
I waved once and was gone.
The dead are so talented.
The living walk by the edge of a vast lake
near the wise, drowned silence of the dead.