Book 11- The Book of the Dead

• ’Circe of the lovely tresses, the 


  Powerful goddess with a human voice, sent us the friendly escort of a favourable breeze’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘There I poured 


  libations to all the dead’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘And now the swarms of


  the dead came swarming up from Erebus’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘So urgent had our other task


  been that we had left his corpse unburied and unwept in Circe’s palace’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘Elepnor! How did you 


  come here, to the land of the shadows’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘I beg you, you master, to 


  remember me then and not to sail away and forsake me’ [ Elpenor ]
• ‘All this, my poor


  Elpenor, I will do. Nothing shall be forgotten’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘Who had still been alive when


  I left her and sailed for Sacred Ilium’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘My eyes filled with tears 


  when I saw her there, and I was stirred to compassion’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘Deeply moved though I 


  was, I would not allow her to approach the blood first, before I had questioned Tiresias’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘But a god is going


  to make your journey hard’ [ Tiresias ]
• ‘Enraged that you

  blinded his son’ [ Tiresias ]
• ‘You will find trouble too


  in your house - insolent men eating up your livelihood, courting your royal wife and offering wedding gifts’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘It is true you

  will take revenge on these men’ [ Tiresias ]
• ‘But when you have killed these


  suitors in your palace… you must set out once more’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘No doubt these are the

  threads of destiny which the gods themselves have spun’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘Is my kingdom safe in their


  Hands, or was it taken by some other man when it was assumed that I would never return?’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘And what of 


  my good wife?’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘That was my

  undoing too; it was that that brought me to the grave’ [ Anticleia ]
• ‘Three times like a shadow or


  dream she slipped through my hands and left me pierced by an even sharper pain‘ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘There came up all the women


  who had been the wives or the daughters of the great, and gathered round the black blood in a throng’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘It was Aegisthus who


  plotted my destruction and with my accursed wife put me to death’ [ Agamemnon ]
• ‘Never be too trustful 


  even of your wife, nor show her all that is in your mind’ [ Agamemnon ]
• ‘Not that your wife,


  Odysseus, will ever murder you. Icarius’ daughter is far too loyal in her thoughts and feelings’ [ Agamemnon ]
• ‘The wise 


  Penelope!’ [Agamemnon ]
• ‘Do not sail into


  port when you reach your home country’ [ Agamemnon ]
• ‘Women, I tell you,


  are no longer to be trusted‘ [ Agamemnon ]
• ‘It does no good

  to utter empty words’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘But have been

  dogged by misfortune‘ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘But you, Achilles, are


  the most fortunate man that ever was or will be!’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘I would rather work the soil as 


  a serf on hire to some landless impoverished peasant than be King of all these lifeless dead’ [ Achilles ]
• ‘I would make those who

  forcibly rob him of his position of honour cringe before the might of my unconquerable hands’ [ Achilles ]
• ‘Achilles passed with great strides


  down the meadow of asphodel, rejoicing in the news I had given him of his son’s renown’ [ Odysseus ]
• ’He was still embittered by 


  the defeat I had inflicted on him at the ships in the contest for the arms of Achilles’ [ Odysseus ]
• ‘Could not even death itself


  make you forget your anger with me on account of those fatal arms?’ [ Odysseus ]