Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

At Circe’s bidding Odysseus digs a trench at the edge of Ocean, pours drink-offerings, and slits the victims so that the blood runs. The shade of Theban Tiresias comes holding a golden scepter. Odysseus holds the other shades off with his sword until the seer has drunk. Tiresias then prophesies: Poseidon will not forget the blinding of Polyphemus; Odysseus may still reach Ithaca late, in evil case, with the loss of all companions, if he does not harm the cattle of Helios on Thrinacia; if he does harm them, his ship and crew will perish, and he will come home alone to find trouble in the house—suitors devouring his livelihood—whom he must kill. Afterward he must take a well-cut oar inland until men who know nothing of the sea mistake it for a winnowing-fan; there he must plant the oar and sacrifice to Poseidon, then return home and offer hecatombs to the gods. Death will come from the sea, gentle in old age, among his people. Tiresias’s speech is the structural map of the rest of the *Odyssey* and of the post-Odyssean inland atonement. Catalogue the consultation as its own hero-entry focused on the seer’s shade, distinct from the compressed nekyia overview and from Elpenor, Anticleia, and the hero-shades.