Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In Hades, after drinking the blood, Theban Tiresias tells Odysseus his road. Poseidon will make the nostos hard because Odysseus blinded the god’s son Polyphemus; yet Odysseus may still reach home if he restrains himself and his comrades when they touch Thrinacia, island of Helios’s cattle—if they harm the herds, the ship and men perish, and Odysseus returns late, alone, on a foreign ship, to find trouble in the house. Even after killing the suitors, Odysseus must take a well-shaped oar and walk until he comes to men who do not know the sea, eat no salt with food, and mistake the oar for a winnowing-fan. There he must plant the oar and sacrifice to Poseidon—a ram, a bull, and a boar—then return and offer holy hecatombs to all the gods. Death will come gently from the sea in sleek old age, with his people prosperous about him. Odysseus later repeats this charge to Penelope as the labor still remaining after recognition. Catalogue the inland-oar prophecy as the Odyssey’s map of post-Ithacan atonement, distinct from the cattle episode itself and from the final Ithacan peace.