Back to the Island of Circe

Back to the Island of Circe

Odysseus returns to the island of Circe after visiting the Land of the Dead

Circe gives further instructions to Odysseus on how to avoid the Sirens, get past Scylla and to avoid being sucked down by the whirlpool Charybdis.

Circe warns Odysseus about the Isle of Sirens which is where the Sirens live, hideous half-bird, half-women creatures who sing men to their deaths. Men who hear the beautiful singing of these wretched creatures will leap overboard to swim to the island to be closer to the music, but there they will die. The island is littered with the dried bones of those men who couldn’t resist the hideous creatures’ music.

Circe tells Odysseus that he should hear this music – he is after all Odysseus! - but that he should put beeswax in the ears of his men so they cannot hear. (Being ordinary men they would not be able to resist the Sirens’ music.) He should instruct the men to tie him firmly (to lash him) to the mast of the boat and if, while listening to the Sirens’ music, he is so overwhelmed by their seductive powers that he begs the men to untie him, then his men must tie him even more firmly to the mast.

Circe then warns him about the even more hideous Scylla. She has twelve legs, unjointed tentacles like an octopus. Scylla has serpent necks with six heads on each swaying neck. Each head has a mouth of triple serried teeth (like a knife).
Vocabulary:
Den: a cave where an animal or monster sleeps.
Abominably: So horrible as to be deserving of hatred.
Gullet: throat and esophagus (the tube that runs from the throat to the stomach).
From each ship she takes one man for each gullet.
Vocabulary:
Promontory: a high cliff overlooking a body of water.

Circe tells him that on the other side of the strait (narrow body of water between two land masses) lies Charybdis (Ka rib dis) which is a huge whirlpool that sucks down all the water three times a day and then vomits it back up (spews) like a geyser. Avoid it and stick as close as you can, Cire warns him, to the opposite side of the strait (close to Scylla) and away from Charybdis. Better you lose a few men than the entire ship.

Circe then warns him about the Island of Thrinakia, the Island of Helios, the sun god who sees all and hears all as he, in his chariot, drives his thundering steeds across the sky each day. Nothing escapes him. He keeps on his island cattle and sheep which he loves very much. These beeves and kine have never been born nor never die. Do not eat them, Circe warns Odysseus, for if you do you will meet certain death at the hands of the angry gods.

The Land of the Dead

The Land of the Dead

Heifer: a young cow before she has calved.
Ewe: female sheep
Vocabulary:
Assuage: to make better, to make someone feel better or to make a difficult situation better
Odysseus sacrifices animals to the dead. The Dead gather around eager to drink the warm blood of the sacrificed animals.
Flay: to skin
Sovereign: independent; ruler over oneself or a country
Odysseus slits the throats of the animals to attract Teiresias.
Rancor: ill will; anger
Implacable: unyielding; merciless
Scabbard: Sheath to hold a sword
Pommel: A rounded head on a sword or a saddle
Strait: a narrow stretch of water between two close bodies of land.
Teiresias tells him that Poseidon will keep him from returning home for many years.

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. Helios has beeves and kines (cows and sheep) he is partial to. These animals have never been born nor will ever die. Teiresias tells him that his men will eat the animals which will enrage Helios. Helios will demand that Zeus send a lightning bolt to set fire to Odysseus’s ship, which will either burn the men alive or cause them to drown. 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.
Vocabulary:
Insolent: rude, disrespectful to one of a higher position.
Bereft: a profound sense of loss; to feel pain as a result of a great loss
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.”
Teiresias warns him about Thrinikia, the island of the Sun God Helios, and tells him not to eat of the beeves and kines (cattle and sheep) of Helios, those that have never experienced birth nor death. For if you do, then you will mee death at the hands of a vengeful god.

Teiresias tells him that his men will eat the cows and sheep of Helios and that they will be destroyed and only he will survive. He is told not to tell the men that they are going to die for he needs their cooperation in order to get home.
Moral dilemma.

Vocabulary:
Court: to woo, to flirt with in order to convince someone to marry him.
Oar: a paddle used to navigate a boat.
Winnowing fan: a farming device used to separate the outer covering of the grain.

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 bothering his wife, Penelope to marry one of them.

After he kills them through stealth (trickery) or outright in battle, he must take an oar and walk inland far from the shore where men eat their meat unsalted (salt comes from the ocean) and he will know he has arrived at the right place for a farmer, mistaking the oar for a farming tool, will call it a winnowing fan. There Odysseus will plant the oar into the earth and then go home to carry out hecatombs (sacrifice of 100 cattle) for each god and goddess in the Greek Pantheon.

If he carries out the sacrifice to Poseidon as thanks for sparing him, then the gods will grant him an easy “sea borne death soft as this hand of mist” many years from now when he is “wearied out with rich old age” surrounded by his family and his loved ones.

In order to have a good death, Odysseus must give a sacrifice to Poseidon of hundreds of cattle.

Odysseus returns to Circe’s Island for further instructions.

Haiti is the name of the island country that has been devastated by the earthquake.
Hades is the name of the Greek underworld.