4.15.16

Close read prophecy from Tiresias: pg. 252-253

‘A sweet smooth journey home, renowned Odysseus, that is what you seek, but a god will make it hard for you—I know— you will never escape the one who shakes the earth, quaking with anger at you still, still enraged because you blinded the Cyclops, his dear son. Even so, you and your crew may still reach home, suffering all the way, if you only have the power to curb their wild desire and curb your own, what’s more, from the day your good trim vessel first puts in at Thrinacia Island, flees the cruel blue sea. There you will find them grazing, herds and fat flocks, the cattle of Helios, god of the sun who sees all, hears all things. Leave the beasts unharmed, your mind set on home, and you all may still reach Ithaca—bent with hardship, true—but harm them in any way, and I can see it now: your ship destroyed, your men destroyed as well. And even if you escape, you’ll come home late and come a broken man—all shipmates lost, alone in a stranger’s ship — and you will find a world of pain at home, crude, arrogant men devouring all your goods, courting your noble wife, offering gifts to win her. No doubt you will pay them back in blood when you come home! But once you have killed those suitors in your halls— by stealth or in open fight with slashing bronze— go forth once more, you must … carry your well-planed oar until you come to a race of people who know nothing of the sea, whose food is never seasoned with salt, strangers all to ships with their crimson prows and long slim oars, wings that make ships fly.And here is your sign— unmistakable, clear, so clear you cannot miss it: When another traveler falls in with you and calls that weight across your shoulder a fan to winnow grain, then plant your bladed, balanced oar in the earth and sacrifice fine beasts to the lord god of the sea, Poseidon—a ram, a bull and a ramping wild boar— then journey home and render noble offerings up to the deathless gods who rule the vaulting skies, to all the gods in order. And at last your own death will steal upon you … a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age with all your people there in blessed peace around you.

Read: Book 12 Add: Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Thrinacia, Calypso's Island, Phaeacians, and Ithaca to map

HW: Finish Map Assignment--Due Tuesday 4/19