Page:The Odyssey (Butler).djvu/176

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
142
ULYSSES TO BECOME A MISSIONARY.
[ODYSSEY

118"'When you get home you will take your revenge on these suitors; and after you have killed them by force or fraud in your own house, you must take a well made oar and carry it on and on, till you come to a country where the people have never heard of the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Neptune.[1] Then go home and offer hecatombs to all the gods in heaven one after the other. As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall bless you. All that I have said will come true].'[2]

138"'This,' I answered, 'must be as it may please heaven, but tell me and tell me true, I see my poor mother's ghost close by us; she is sitting by the blood without saying a word, and though I am her own son she does not remember me and speak to me; tell me, Sir, how I can make her know me.'

145"'That,' said he, 'I can soon do. Any ghost that you let taste of the blood will talk with you like a reasonable being, but if you do not let them have any blood they will go away again.'


  1. Ulysses was, in fact, to become a missionary and preach Neptune to people who knew not his name. I was fortunate enough to meet in Sicily a woman carrying one of these winnowing shovels; it was not much shorter than an oar, and I was able at once to see what the writer of the Odyssey intended.
  2. I suppose the lines I have enclosed in brackets to have been added by the writer when she enlarged her original scheme by the addition of books i.–iv. and xiii. (from line 187)–xxiv. The reader will observe that in the corresponding passage (xii. 137–141) the prophecy ends with "after losing all your comrades," and that there is no allusion to the suitors. For fuller explanation see "Authoress of the Odyssey," pp. 254, 255.