The Land of the Dead

THE LAND OF THE DEAD

The Land of the Dead in THE ODYSSEY 

VOCABULARY: 
Heifer: a young cow who has not had a calf yet.

Ewe: female sheep (pronounced like "you".)

Assuage: to make someone feel better; to calm ruffled feelings.

To assuage her girlfriend's hurt feelings, she bought her a 25 dollar gift certificate.

Pommel: the horn on a saddle or the knob on the sword's handle.

Woe: Sadness; pain, suffering, emotional pain, troubles

Sovereign: ruler; autonomous or independent or self-governing

Lance heads: head of a sharp spear

Flay: to strip the skin off the body.

Scabbard: sheath; like a holster but it holds a sword

Implacable: Unforgiving; unshakable, unbending

Rancor: deep lingering anger, a grudge

Bereft: deep sense of grief over a profound loss

The Sirens: Harpies; half birds/half women
Mast: the biggest beam in the middle of the ship from which the sails are fastened.

Scylla: is a huge creature, she yelps like a dog; she has twelve legs; she has six heads on each neck and each head has three rows of serrated teeth. 

Across the narrow strait from Scylla is Charybdis, which is a huge whirlpool. 

Stealth: by clever secretiveness; clever and sneaky

Winnowing fan: a farming implement used to remove the useless outer husk of grain. It looks vaguely like an oar.

Oar: A boating implement used to paddle a boat; a paddle used to steer a boat.

Hecatombs: the sacrifice of 100 cattle to each of the gods.
Strait: a narrow stretch of water between two outcroppings of land. Steep banks of land from two different continents bracket the narrow stretch of land which flows between them.

Atone: to make amends; to make up for a sin one has committed
Court: to woo

Brief Overview:

Circe, the sorceress, sends Odysseus to the Land of the Dead to speak to Teiresias in order to learn his destiny.  He is instructed by Circe to bring a black ewe to sacrifice to entice the cold shadowy shades to him. The warm dark blood of the sacrificed lamb draws forth the dead, who hover ever closer to mortal Odysseus, who draws  his sword to ward them off until Teiresias appears.  After the blind soothsayer drinks his fill of the sacrificed blood, he intones what he foresees of Odysseus' fate. But he warns him that horrible monsters lie in his path towards home: the sirens, Scylla, Charybdis, and a dangerous place lies in his future, the isle of the Sun God, Helios.  

The blind prophet tells Odysseus that he and his men will land on the island of Thrinakia, the island of Helios, the Sun God, who drives his chariot (the sun) across the sky each day and who sees all and hears all - nothing escapes him. Teiresias tells him of Helios' beloved beeves and kines (cows and sheep),  which have never experienced birth nor death, and warns him not to eat of these animals, for if he does,  he will meet death at the hands of a vengeful god. However, Teiresias continues,  his men will eat the animals,  which will enrage Helios, who will demand that Zeus send a lightning bolt to set fire to Odysseus’s ship.  All of them will die except for Odysseus who will drift for years alone, finally returning home on a boat no one will recognize, to his home ransacked and plundered by insolent men.

Teiresias warns him that his way home is fraught with peril for Poseidon is “not to be shaken from your track, implacable, in rancor for the son whose eye you blinded.”

 He is told not to tell the men that they are going to die for he needs their cooperation in order to get home, which poses a moral dilemma for Odysseus. 

He will be adrift for many years after the deaths of his men, and when he does finally return home he will be met by rogues and rude, insolent men who have been plundering his home and harassing his wife, Penelope to marry one of them. He must fight his way past the suitors to win back both his home and his wife. 

Teiresias continues with his advice: After Odysseus arrives home and has defeated the suitors, he must take an oar and walk inland far from shore, where men eat their meat unseasoned with salt from the ocean.  He will know that he has arrived at the ordained place when a farmer, mistaking the oar for a farming implement, calls it a winnowing fan. There he will plant the oar in the land, far from Poseidon's domain, and sacrifice many heads of cattle, 100 hecatombs to each god and goddess on Olympus. If he does this, Odysseus will be blessed with a long life and a soft, gentle death surrounded by his loved lone.

While Odysseus is in the Land of the Dead, he is shocked to see his mother wandering among the shades.  Depressed by her son's long absence, she committed suicide, which of course, Odysseus knew nothing about.  When he tries to embrace her, he finds he cannot grasp her for she is without substance, being without corporal body. She asks why is he wandering in the dark world of the dead and urges him to leave this place and seek the sun kissed land and seas of the living. 

The dead spend the rest of eternity in the same state as they died. If someone has died by decapitation, he will remain headless (carrying his head under his arm) for all eternity. If someone dies in battle, his body pierced by an arrow,  he will forever walk around Elysian Fields with the arrow protruding from his body.  Strangely, the Greek concept of the dead closely corresponds to the modern Western view of the dead - clear, shadowy forms that look a lot like they did when they were alive, but transparent, insubstantial. Once the dead cross the River of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, their memories of life above ground will wither away. 

Some of the language in THE ODYSSEY is difficult.  Let's look at the following stanza and analyze it.  This is one of the warning Teiresias gives him about the anger Poseidon still bears him: 

But in anguish lies ahead;

The god who thunders on the land prepares it,

Not to be shaken from your track, implacable,

In rancor for the son whose eye you blinded.

The subject is: the god who thunders on the land

Not to be shaken from your track refers to Poseidon (or the god)

Implacable: refers to the god

In rancor: in anger

Whose son: Poseidon's son