Characters
- Ajax — shade present in the asphodel gathering (background)
- Amphimedon — slain suitor; narrator to Agamemnon
- Lyssa — leads the suitors’ souls
- Suitors’ ghosts — the company led down
- Telemachus — subjects of Amphimedon’s tale and Agamemnon’s blessing
- Thyestes — shade; questions; praises Penelope vs. Clytemnestra
Places
- Mycenae — scene Amphimedon recounts
- Underworld — meeting of shades
- White Rock — Hermes’s route
Themes
Narrative
Hermes of Cyllene summons the suitors’ ghosts with his golden wand and leads them past Oceanus, the White Rock, the gates of the Sun, and the land of Dreams to the meadow of asphodel. There they meet Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s shades (and other Danaans). Agamemnon recognizes Amphimedon—his host’s son from Ithaca—and asks what destroyed so many picked men. Amphimedon tells the whole intrigue: Penelope’s shroud-ruse, the beggar’s arrival, the bow contest, the locking of the hall, Athena’s aid, and the slaughter; he ends blaming the gods and Odysseus. Agamemnon blesses Odysseus and contrasts Penelope’s fidelity with Clytemnestra’s betrayal—Odysseus’s fame for a loyal wife will never die, while Agamemnon’s house is a song of horror.
The scene seals the mnesterophonia in Hades and revisits Agamemnon’s murder through another man’s loyal marriage. Catalogue Amphimedon’s report and Agamemnon’s encomium of Penelope apart from Hermes’s brief psychopomp notice and from the earthly peace with the suitors’ kin.