why did odysseus visit the underworld

The Odyssey

Everything you need for every book you read..

Fate, the Gods, and Free Will Theme Icon

Skip to Content

Classical Wisdom Weekly

Master of Stories: Odysseus in the Kingdom of the Dead

by KristinD on February 26, 2021

Written by Justin D. Lyons, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom

Just as the adventures described in Books 9-12 of the Odyssey are often the most-remembered episodes due to their fantastic character, so Odysseus ’ account of the underworld is one of his most striking. But did it “ really” happen? Are we meant to believe that, within the horizon of the poem, Odysseus actually traveled to the underworld—or is he telling another tall tale?

Of all the stories Odysseus tells the Phaeacians, his account of the underworld is the only one to contain an interruption, emphasizing that this is a story being told to an audience. Odysseus pauses to suggest that it may be time to break off story-telling and go to sleep. But King Alcinous urges him to continue: “ The night ’ s still young, I ’ d say the night is endless. For us in the palace now, it ’ s hardly time for sleep. Keep telling us your adventures—they are wonderful.” Odysseus is spinning a yarn to please a king from whom he has much to gain, and the King wants more.

Alcinous prompts Odysseus by asking if he saw any heroes in Hades: “ But come now, tell me truly: your godlike comrades—did you see any heroes down in the House of Death, any who sailed with you and met their doom at Troy?”   His host and benefactor has indicated a subject he would like to hear about, and Odysseus obliges in style, dropping a great many well-known names to help set the stage.

why did odysseus visit the underworld

Odysseus in Hades by Russell Flint

But if this is theater—if Odysseus is not relating something that “ really” happened—what are we to make of this tale?

The story of the underworld can be seen as an expression of the hopes, fears, and doubts of a man who has been away from home for a very long time. These feelings are the material around which Odysseus builds his story. The driving themes are laid out when he questions his mother in the underworld:

‘ But tell me about yourself and spare me nothing. What form of death overcame you, what laid you low, some long slow illness? Or did Artemis showering arrows come with her painless shafts and bring you down? Tell me of father, tell of the son I left behind: do my royal rights still lie in their safekeeping? Or does some stranger hold the throne by now because men think that I ’ ll come home no more? Please, tell me about my wife, her turn of mind, her thoughts…still standing fast beside our son, still guarding our great estates, secure as ever now? Or has she wed some other countryman at last, the finest prince among them? ’ ( Odyssey XI.193-205)

why did odysseus visit the underworld

Odysseus attempting to embrace the ghost of his mother in the Underworld, by Jan Styka, 1901

Anyone in Odysseus’ shoes would wonder if their aged parents were still living. The other concerns, also very natural, are reflected not only in these questions, but also in his conversations with the other shades. These concerns can be characterized as follows:

1) The faithfulness of his wife 2) The fortunes of his son 3) The honor of his house.

In the underworld, Odysseus is first confronted with a great crowd of wives and daughters of princes, whom he interviews one by one, reflecting his anxiety for the purity and success of the household. These women represent the theme of womanhood—some are faithful, some treacherous (unfaithfulness to the marriage bed receives much attention).

His conversations with dead heroes reflect the same anxiety. Agamemnon tells the awful story of how he and his men were slaughtered through the machinations of a treacherous wife and the lover she took in his absence.

But Odysseus reassures himself about Penelope ’ s character using Agamemnon ’ s voice: “ Not that you, Odysseus will be murdered by your wife. She ’ s much too steady, her feelings run too deep, Icarius ’ daughter Penelope, that wise woman.”   Yet doubt still remains, as is evident the circumspect way he deals with her upon his homecoming.

Agamemnon also enquires about his son, Orestes. Odysseus must be wondering what kind of man his own son Telemachus has become, and how he is faring. Odysseus ’ words about Orestes could just as truly be spoken of his own son: “ I know nothing, whether he ’ s dead or alive.” Achilles also asks after the fortunes of his son. In Odysseus ’ s response we may see his hopes for Telemachus—that he will take his place among great men, proficient in feats of war and good counsel.

why did odysseus visit the underworld

The Shade of Tiresias Appearing to Odysseus during the Sacrifice (Book XI of the Odyssey), by Johann Heinrich Füssli (c. 1780-85)

Achilles brings up another concern likely to resonate with Odysseus: the honor of his father and house without him there to defend them. Odysseus has already asked his mother about such things, and in Achilles ’ comments we catch a glimpse of the thoughts of a son who returned to find his father abused and the honor of his house diminished: “ Oh to arrive at father ’ s house—the man I was, for one brief day—I ’ d make my fury and my hands, invincible hands, a thing of terror to all those men who abuse the king with force and wrest away his honor!”

The story of Odysseus ’ journey to the underworld underlines our common humanity and the ever-lasting value of classical works. Thousands of years after its composition, readers can still identify with the hopes and fears of the hero of the Odyssey .

Posted in Homer - No comments

Tags: Ancient Greek Literature , Ancient Greek Myth , Homer , mythology , Odysseus , The Odyssey

« Previous post

Next Post »

No comments

  • Horror – Ancient Greek Style | Classical Wisdom Weekly

Our apologies, you must be logged in to post a comment.

Ancient Wisdom for Young Minds!

Sappho Children's book

Most Popular Posts

  • Top Ten: Most Terrifying Monsters Of Greek Mythology
  • Plato and the Disaster of Democracy
  • The Cult Of Pythagoras
  • The 5 Most Powerful Creatures From Mythology
  • Five Reasons Why Socrates Was A Terrible Husband
  • Prometheus The Creation of Man and a History of Enlightenment
  • The Tumultuous Tale of Heracles and Hera
  • The Myth of Daedalus and Icarus
  • 12 Ancient Greek Terms that Should Totally Make a Comeback

The Titans of Greek Mythology

Greek Gods

  • Ancient Greek books
  • Architecture
  • Mathematicians
  • Military History
  • Oedipus Trilogy
  • Philosophers
  • Pre-Socratics
  • Socrates-Plato
  • Uncategorized
  • Unusual Greek Myths

Ancient Wonders Reconstructed

A sport for fanatics.

Chariot Racing

HELL or UTOPIA? Plato’s Republic

Republic's Utopia

Beware the Ides of March!

Julius Caesar

Bust of Caesar

The Land of Demons

The Land of Demons

Book of the Week

BC-Aristotle-Ethics

  • Archaeology

why did odysseus visit the underworld

  • My Preferences
  • My Reading List
  • The Odyssey
  • Literature Notes
  • The Odyssey at a Glance
  • Poem Summary
  • About The Odyssey
  • Character List
  • Summary and Analysis
  • Books 13-14
  • Books 15-16
  • Character Analysis
  • Athena (Pallas)
  • Polyphemus (the Cyclops) and King Alcinous
  • Circe and Calypso
  • Character Map
  • Homer Biography
  • Critical Essays
  • Major Themes in The Odyssey
  • Major Symbols in The Odyssey
  • Literary Devices of The Odyssey
  • Famous Quotes from Homer's The Odyssey
  • Film Versions of Homer's The Odyssey
  • Full Glossary for The Odyssey
  • Essay Questions
  • Practice Projects
  • Cite this Literature Note

Summary and Analysis Book 11

The Land of the Dead is near the homes of the Cimmerians, who live "shrouded in mist and cloud" (11.17), never seeing the sun. Odysseus follows Circe's instructions, digging a trench at the site prescribed and pouring libations of milk, honey, mellow wine, and pure water. He ceremoniously sprinkles barley and then sacrifices a ram and a ewe, the dark blood flowing into the trench to attract the dead.

First to approach is Elpenor, one of Odysseus' men who died just before the crew left Circe's home. Elpenor had spent the last night in a drunken stupor on Circe's roofs, breaking his neck as he fell off when he arose at dawn. Because of the urgency of Odysseus' journey to the Land of the Dead, Elpenor was left unburied, and his spirit requests proper rites when the Greeks return to Aeaea. Others are drawn to the blood: Odysseus' mother, Anticleia; Tiresias the prophet; and old comrades Agamemnon and Achilles, among others.

The journey to the Land of the Dead — where the dead ("souls") receive reciprocity ("Justice") — is not so much a test for Odysseus as it is an epiphany. His mortality is put in context as he watches the shades of warrior comrades, legendary figures, and even his own mother. Following instructions, he must speak with Tiresias, the blind seer from Thebes, before he can allow his mother or any others to approach. Drinking the blood temporarily revitalizes the dead; briefly they can communicate with Odysseus and speak only truth.

Tiresias observes that one of the gods, the earth shaker (Poseidon), is angry with Odysseus for blinding his son (Polyphemus, the Cyclops) and will cause Odysseus and his men many problems. However, Tiresias reports, the Greeks can get home alive if they use proper judgment and control. Above all, they must not harm the cattle of Helios, the Sungod, no matter the temptation. If they do, Odysseus' men will die. Echoing the curse of the Cyclops (9.590-95), Tiresias warns that Odysseus himself might eventually arrive home, but he will be "a broken man — all shipmates lost" (11.130) and find his household in disarray. Furthermore, the prophet instructs Odysseus that he must eventually pursue yet another quest, carrying his oar inland until he meets a race of men who know so little about the sea that they think the oar is "a fan to winnow grain" (11.146). At that place, Odysseus is to make certain sacrifices to Poseidon. If he follows these and other instructions, Odysseus can live out his life and die in peace. (The journey inland, however, takes place after the events told of in The Odyssey .)

Odysseus' own mother, who died of grief and longing for him, is allowed to approach only after his audience with the seer. Until seeing her among the dead, Odysseus was unaware of his mother's death. She tells him of his father, Laertes, who still lives but similarly grieves and has lost his will. In one of the most moving scenes in the epic, Odysseus tries three times to hold his mother but cannot because she is no longer flesh and blood.

Agamemnon and Achilles, comrades of Odysseus at Troy, are among the many other dead who approach. Agamemnon tells the story of his murder by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her paramour, Aegisthus, a story referred to repeatedly throughout the epic, effectively contrasting the murderous infidelity of Clytemnestra with the dedicated loyalty of Penelope.

More controversial is Achilles' appearance because it contradicts the heroic ideal of death with honor, resulting in some form of glorious immortality. Here, Achilles' attitude is that death is death; he would rather be a living slave to a tenant farmer than king of the dead. His only solace is to hear that his son fares well in life.

The dead flock toward Odysseus. He is overwhelmed and welcomes his departure, feeling that, whatever his struggles in life might be, he prefers them to residence in the Land of the Dead.

Creon king of Thebes, successor to Oedipus.

Oedipus Abandoned at birth and raised by the king of Corinth, he unwittingly killed his father and married his mother.

Leda a queen of Sparta and the mother, by Zeus in the form of a swan, of Helen and Pollux.

Crete an island in the Mediterranean off the southeastern coast of Greece.

Achilles famed warrior, hero of Homer's Iliad.

Tantalus a king punished in Hades by having to stand in water that recedes when he bends to drink it and beneath fruit that ascends when he reaches to eat it.

Sisyphus a cruel king condemned in Hades to the eternal, frustrating effort of rolling a huge stone uphill, only to have it always roll down again.

Previous Book 10

Next Book 12

has been added to your

Reading List!

Removing #book# from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title.

Are you sure you want to remove #bookConfirmation# and any corresponding bookmarks?

Why did Odysseus go to the Underworld?

Odysseus went to the underworld to seek advice from the ghost of Theban Teiresias about his return home. Teiresias warned Odysseus that he would face much suffering on his journey home and that he must restrain himself and his companions when they reach the Thrinacian island. He also warned Odysseus that if he harms the flocks of the sun, he and his men will face destruction. Teiresias also forewarned Odysseus of the destruction of his men and his ship, and of the trouble he will find in his house when he returns home. He advised Odysseus to take revenge on the suitors in his house and to carry a well-made oar with him on his journey. 

Here’s the key passage from Book XI, in which Odysseus meets and talks with Teiresias.

“Thus, then, did we sit and hold sad talk with one another, I on the one side of the trench with my sword held over the blood, and the ghost of my comrade saying all this to me from the other side. Then came the ghost of my dead mother Anticlea, daughter to Autolycus. I had left her alive when I set out for Troy and was moved to tears when I saw her, but even so, for all my sorrow I would not let her come near the blood till I had asked my questions of Teiresias.

“Then came also the ghost of Theban Teiresias, with his golden sceptre in his hand. He knew me and said, ‘Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, why, poor man, have you left the light of day and come down to visit the dead in this sad place? Stand back from the trench and withdraw your sword that I may drink of the blood and answer your questions truly.’”

why did odysseus visit the underworld

Why did Odysseus leave Circe’s Island?

Did the cia kill jfk.

  • Corrections

14 Journeys to the Underworld in Greek and Roman Mythology

In ancient Greek and Roman Mythology, only a handful of mortals successfully witnessed the Underworld and returning to the living realm.

brausewetter charon fris orpheus euridice ainting

In ancient Greek and Roman Mythology, the Underworld or Hades was where the souls of the dead resided. Thanatos, the deity of death, made no exceptions. All mortals would inevitably reach the Underworld and stay there forever. Still, there were a few instances where a mortal went to the Underworld and returned to the living, a mythological journey known as a katabasis .

The Basics of the Underworld 

lycurgus painter underworld hades persephone vase

The Underworld constituted a fundamental aspect of Greek and Roman Mythology and Religion. Most commonly called the realm of Hades, the Underworld was ruled by Pluto and his wife, Persephone (or Proserpina). In Hades, the souls of the dead resided alongside a series of deities, better known as the Chthonic Gods .

otto brausewetter barke charon painting

In passing from the living to the dead, the souls were guided by the God Hermes in his form known as psychopompos (soul guide). To reach their final destination, the dead had to offer a coin to the immortal ferryman Charon, who would take them down the river Styx or Acheron , depending on the source. Cerberus, the terrifying three-headed hound, guarded the gates of Hades, ensuring that no one could enter or leave without permission.

A katabasis was a journey into the Underworld and entailed two parts: the traveling down ( katabasis ) and the traveling up ( anabasis ). These fascinating, mythical journeys offer us glimpses into the way the ancients imagined the afterlife. Some of the myths offer extensive descriptions of the journey, such as those of Odysseus and Aeneas, while others only mention that a certain hero, mortal, or god simply went to Hades and returned, as is the case with Alcestis and Semele.

Get the latest articles delivered to your inbox

Please check your inbox to activate your subscription, journeys into the underworld .

moreau gustave jupiter semele painting

Semele, the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, was impregnated by Zeus. Filled with jealousy, Hera caused the girl to doubt that Zeus was her lover. Semele then asked Zeus to swear on the waters of Styx that he would grant her whatever she asked. Zeus swore, and Semele asked to witness his real nature. Zeus begged her to change the request, but Semele insisted. Left with no other option, Zeus revealed his divine form, and Semele, unable to withstand it, burst into flames. At the last moment, Zeus saved Semele’s fetus and sewed it into his thigh.

The deity that came out of the thigh was Dionysus , god of wine and revelry. When he grew up, he went to Hades and rescued his mother, bringing her to Olympus to live among the gods.

frans francken mankind eternal dilemma painting

The myth of Er is detailed towards the end of Plato’s Republic . Er is a warrior who died in battle but did not drink from the waters of Lethe, the river that makes the dead forget. Thus, he is able to recall what took place before his reincarnation.

In his journey, the good are rewarded with an afterlife in the sky, among wondrous sights. The bad are sent underground to be punished tenfold for the evils they caused while alive. After four days, the souls are led to the Spindle of Necessity, given a number by lot, and form a line to choose their next life.

An interesting idea is that the ones who were rewarded in the afterlife recklessly chose lives that would wield power but suffer misfortunes. Those who were punished tended to appreciate a simpler and presumably happier life. In addition, animals sought human lives, and humans who had experienced the anguish of human life sought the simplicity of an animal’s life. In Er’s vision, everyone went after what they didn’t have. Finally, the souls are taken to the river Lethe to become blank slates and be reincarnated.

According to Plato, only by understanding the Forms of Good through the study of philosophy could someone make informed choices repeatedly, ensuring that they picked good, happy lives.

12. Castor and Pollux

cipriani castor pollux painting

Castor and Pollux were the legendary Spartan twin heroes and half-brothers known as the Dioscuri. Their mother was Leda, but Castor was the son of the Spartan king Tyndareus and Pollux of Zeus. Together they went on many adventures, including the Argonautic expedition. However, here, we will only examine the story of their death.

The story began when the Dioscuri abducted Phoebe and Hilaeira, who were betrothed to their cousins, Idas and Lycaeus. Sometime later, during a common raid in Arcadia, as the Dioscuri and their cousins were about to divide the loot — some cattle — Idas and Lycaeus tricked the Dioscuri and left with the whole herd.

When, at a later time, the Dioscuri attempted to steal the herd under their cousins’ noses, Idas and Lycaeus ambushed them. In the ensuing combat, Idas stabbed Castor, Pollux killed Lycaeus, and Zeus struck Idas with his thunder to save his son, Pollux. Zeus then asked Pollux to choose between keeping his immortality, he was a god’s son, after all, or sharing it with his dying brother.

Pollux chose to save Castor, and the brothers were allowed to spend “half the time below the earth, and half the time in the golden homes of heaven.” (Pindar, Nemean Ode 10). In another version of the myth, the Dioscuri became the Gemini constellation.

11. Alcestis

leighton lord frederic hercules wrestling death painting

Alcestis, the princess of Iolcus, became the wife of Admetus, the ruler of a Thessalian kingdom. In a post-marriage sacrifice, Admetus forgot to sacrifice properly to the goddess Artemis causing her rage. When Admetus went to his chambers, he found them filled with snakes, an omen of his approaching death.

Apollo, who liked Admetus, convinced the three Fates to accept someone else’s life in Admetus’s stead. Though his mother and father did not wish to take Admetus’ place in Hades, the young and beautiful Alcestis did.

According to Apollodorus’ Library (1.9.15), in the end, Alcestis returned to life either with the help of Heracles, who freed her in response to the hospitality Admetus had offered him, or by the will of Persephone.

10. Hippolytus

tempesta hippolytus asclepius ressurection painting

Although there are many versions of Hippolytus’ story, more or less, the main narrative goes as follows.

Hippolytus — the son of Theseus — worshipped Artemis and refused to honor Aphrodite. To punish him, Aphrodite cursed his stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him. As Hippolytus refused her advances, Phaedra committed suicide and left a note blaming her stepson for raping her. Theseus asked his father, Poseidon, to punish Hippolytus for the alleged crime. The god caused the horses of Hippolytus’ chariot to go mad, overturning the chariot and dragging Hippolytus to death.

According to Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus , Artemis ultimately revealed the truth to Theseus and ensured that Hippolytus’ memory would never be forgotten. However, Pausanias relates that after his death, Hippolytus was transformed into the constellation of the charioteer (Auriga) or was resurrected by Asclepius — the god of medicine — who was in his turn punished by Zeus for this act.

vouet-adonis-venus-painting

According to the tragic myth, king Cynyras of Cyprus was deceived into sleeping with Myrrha, his daughter. When he found out what had occurred, he sought to kill her. Myrrha begged the gods for mercy, and they transformed her into the myrrh tree from which the god Adonis was born.

Adonis was so beautiful that, according to Apollodorus’ Library (3.14.4), Aphrodite and Persephone argued over him while he was still an infant. Finally, they agreed that Adonis would stay with Aphrodite for two-thirds of the year and for the remaining one-third with Persephone in the Underworld.

8. Theseus 

peirithous theseus vessel painting

Theseus, the legendary founder of Athens, was good friends with Pirithous, king of the Lapiths. After losing their wives, the two men took an oath to help each other marry to daughters of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen of Sparta and, with the help of his friend, took her as his wife. Pirithous, however, was more reckless and chose Persephone. Theseus understood that going to Hades, abducting the Queen right under Pluto’s nose, and returning to the surface was impossible. In vain, he urged his friend to reconsider, but Pirithous was not listening.

Unfortunately, their quest in Hades ended unsuccessfully. According to different versions of the myth, when they sat down to rest, they were either shackled or enchanted to remain still. In both cases, they remained trapped in Hades.

Heracles later tried to help them but only managed to save Theseus. Pirithous’ offense was apparently too grave to be allowed to return to the surface.

psyche in the underworld

Psyche , a young princess of unrivaled beauty, fell in love with Cupid (or Eros), the god of love. At some point in the story, as found in Apuleius’ Golden Ass , Cupid was imprisoned by his mother, Venus (Aphrodite).

To release Cupid, the goddess requested three “impossible” tasks. The final task required the delivery of a box to Persephone. The Queen of Hades would fill the box with some of her beauty, and Psyche would have to return it to Venus without peaking inside.

To reach the Underworld, Psyche traveled to cape Taenaron near Sparta and followed a certain path while holding a barley cake soaked in honeyed wine in each hand and two coins in her mouth.

A series of challenges occurred, all designed to make Psyche leave the cakes on the ground. A man with a donkey asked for help with some sticks that had fallen on the road. Charon, the ferryman, requested a coin, but Psyche ensured that he took it from her mouth with his own hands. Psyche also ignored the calls of a corpse who asked to be taken aboard the ferry and some women looming who requested her.

Psyche offered one barley cake to Cerberus and entered the gates of Persephone’s halls. The Queen asked Psyche to sit, but she squatted and asked for common bread when offered food. After Persephone left part of her beauty in the box, Psyche offered the second cake to Cerberus, gave Charon the other coin, and left the Underworld.

In the daylight, however, she succumbed to the temptation and opened the box. Instead of beauty, she only found death-like sleep inside. To her luck, Cupid escaped prison, used his arrows to lift the dark spell that caused her to fall asleep, and married her with the blessings of Zeus. Psyche was finally granted immortality and became the goddess of the soul.

6. Persephone 

frederic leighton return persephone painting

Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess of agriculture, Demeter . According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Zeus allowed Pluto to take Persephone with him into the Underworld ad his bride. So, one day, as Persephone gathered flowers, Pluto rose to the surface with his chariot and abducted Demeter’s daughter, who desperately cried for help.

Demeter, with the help of Hecate , went to Helios, god of the sun, and enquired about her daughter’s whereabouts. Helios revealed that Zeus had offered Persephone to Hades. Furious, Demeter caused the earth to go barren. Humanity faced an existential threat.

To resolve the crisis, Zeus sent Hermes to Demeter, who clarified that she would not stop the famine or return to Olympus until her daughter was returned. The messenger god immediately left for Hades. Pluto agreed to return Persephone but secretly gave her pomegranate seeds. Having tasted the food of the Underworld, Persephone would have to return. Finally, it was arranged that she would spend two-thirds of the year with her mother and one-third (the winter months) in the Underworld as Pluto’s Queen .

brueghel aeneas sybyl underworld painting

In an episode of Virgil’s Aeneid , Aeneas — the legendary Trojan hero and ancestor of the Romans — seeks to visit his father in the Underworld. In his quest, he receives help from Deiphobe, a Sybyl (oracle), who instructs him to bury a dead comrade with proper rites and find a golden bough that will grant him access to Hades. Having completed the tasks, Aeneas and Deiphobe reach the entrance of the Underworld, offer sacrifices to the gods of darkness, and begin their katabasis surrounded by spirits.

Upon reaching Acheron, they encounter the spirits of those who weren’t buried properly and must wait 100 years before boarding Charon’s ship. Aeneas, despite being alive, gets on the ferry thanks to the golden bough.

On the other shore, they first encounter the souls of dead infants, then those executed for crimes they didn’t commit, and finally, those who committed suicide. In the latter, they find Dido, who had taken her own life when Aeneas abandoned her. Next, they reach a place with the souls of famous heroes and come across Deiphobus, a Trojan hero and friend of Aeneas. He informs them that if they follow the path on their left, they’ll find Tartarus, the prison of the Titans and the place where the damned are tortured eternally. The way on the right will take them to Elysium.

Aeneas and Deiphobe choose Elysium and enter the grounds by offering the golden bow. There, they meet Aeneas’ father, Anchises, accompanied by the poet Musaeus. They also see Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, and a gathering of souls who, drunk from its waters, await their return to life in newly appointed bodies. Anchises also explains the concept of reincarnation and offers a glimpse into the future, talking about spirits who will be reincarnated as important figures in subsequent Roman history, such as Romulus , Caesar , and Augustus .

Successful in their quest, Aeneas and Deiphobe pass through the gates of sleep and ascend to the light.

4. Heracles

aelst nicolo hercules cerberus print

Heracles , the son of Zeus and Alcmene, is especially famous for his twelve labors, the last and most difficult of which saw him capturing Cerberus and taking him to King Eurustheus of Tyrins.

Knowing the dangers of Hades, Herakles first visited Eleusis to be cleansed and initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries . Then, he visited Taenarum, near Sparta, where the Underworld’s entrance was hidden. The souls of the dead fled in front of him. Only Meleager and the Gorgon Medusa stayed, and as Hercules prepared to fight Medusa, Hermes, who accompanied the hero, told him that she was but a mere phantom.

Near the gates of Hades, Hercules met Theseus and Pirithus, who were trapped for attempting to abduct Persephone. Heracles saved Theseus, but Pirithus could not be lifted. Next, Heracles is said to have engaged in a wrestling match with Menoetes, a minor god of Hades. The hero won and met Pluto. The king of Hades allowed Heracles to take Cerberus with him but only under the condition that he would use not use any weapons to capture him and would return him upon completing the labor.

Heracles found Cerberus at the gates near Acheron. With his bare hands, he mastered the hound, even though its dragon tail bit the hero’s leg. Then Heracles presented Cerberus to Eurustheus and returned him to the Underworld, honoring the agreement with Pluto. As we already saw previously, Heracles was also said to have visited the Underworld to save Alcestis.

3. Sisyphus

antonio zanchi sisyphus painting

Sisyphus , the legendary king of Corinth, was the only mortal in Greek myth to have visited Hades, not once, not twice, but thrice!

After Zeus abducted Aegina, Sisyphus betrayed the location where she was secretly held to her father, the river-god Asopus. To punish him, Zeus ordered the god of death, Thanatos, to chain Sisyphus in the deep and dark dungeon of Tartarus. Sisyphus, however, cheated Thanatos and chained him in his stead. With death in shackles, no one could die. Zeus was furious as that meant no sacrifices to the gods. So, the father of the gods forced Sisyphus to release Thanatos and accept his death.

Sisyphus, though, was not going down without a fight. Before leaving for the Underworld, he instructed his wife to leave his dead body unattended and naked in a public space. Once in Hades, Sisyphus asked Persephone to let him return to the surface and ensure his body’s proper and decent treatment. The Queen agreed, but Sisyphus used the opportunity to escape. Before succeeding, he was dragged back down and punished to eternally drag a boulder on a hill.

2. Odysseus

odysseus summoning shades hades pottery

The truly mesmerizing episode of Odysseus’ journey into Hades, the so-called Nekuia, is described in the Odyssey’s Book XI.

To access the realm of the dead and meet Teiresias — the blind seer who will help Odysseus safely leave the island of the sorceress Circe  — Odysseus offered libations of milk, honey, wine, and water with white barley to invoke the souls of the dead. Right after that, he sacrificed sheep, and “ the ghosts of the dead swarmed out of Erebus ”.

nekyia polygnotus reconstruction

At this point, it is worth clarifying that whether Odysseus physically went to the Underworld (i.e., a katabasis) or simply summoned the spirits of the dead (i.e., a nekuia) near an entrance to the Underworld is highly debatable.

The first soul to appear was Elpenor’s, a companion of Odysseus who died on Circe’s Island without a proper burial since his companions ignored his whereabouts. The second person to appear was Odysseus’ mother, Anticleia. Tragically, this was how Odysseus learned of her death, as she had passed while he was still away from home.

fussli shade teiresias painting

Of course, Odysseus also meets Teiresias, who foretells how his adventure will unfold and prophesizes that “ you may yet reach Ithaca, though you will suffer ”.

During the rest of the journey, Odysseus encounters a series of noble women and heroes, including Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax. Odysseus even catches sight of Sisyphus and encounters the ghost of Heracles, who talks of his own trip to the Underworld. Even though Odysseus longs to see more famed spirits, he suddenly becomes scared that Persephone, Hades’ wife, might send the head of the Gorgon Medusa toward him and decides to leave immediately. It seems that a mortal could not stay in Hades for a long period without facing grave consequences.

jean-raoux-orpheus-eurydice-painting

Orpheus was a legendary poet and musician whose name was firmly connected with ancient Greek mystical rites and culture. In the famous tale, Orpheus fell in love with the beautiful nymph Euridice . As soon as they got married, Aristaeus, a minor divinity, attempted to snatch Euridice, who ran into the forest, was bitten by a venomous snake, and died.

Orpheus did not give up on her. He took his lyre and ventured into the Underworld. The first obstacle he encountered was Cerberus. The three-headed hound was easily tamed by Orpheus’ music. Reaching the thrones of Pluto and Persephone, Orpheus sang. His music was the music of someone who just lost everything. He sang about his love for Euridice, how he lost her, and how he wished to get her back. The song was so powerful that everything in the Underworld froze.

fris pieter orpheus euridice painting

“…the bloodless ghosts themselves were weeping, and the anxious Tantalus stopped clutching at return-flow of the wave, Ixion’s twisting wheel stood wonder-bound, and Tityus’ liver for a while escaped the vultures, and the listening Belides forgot their sieve-like bowls and even you, O Sisyphus! sat idly on your rock! Then Fame declared that conquered by the song of Orpheus, for the first and only time the hard cheeks of the fierce Eumenides were wet with tears: nor could the royal Queen, nor he who rules the lower world deny the prayer of Orpheus…” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10:1)

Euridice would grant Orpheus his wish. Music had triumphed. Then Orpheus would lead Euridice back to the surface, but only under the term that he would not look back until they reached the light.

carl-goos-orpheus-eurydice-story-painting

Orpheus agreed and began walking. However, he could not hear Eurydice’s steps or any other sound coming from behind him. When he had almost reached the light, he became afraid that the gods had deceived him and that Eurydice was not following him as promised. He then looked back only to see the soul of his loved one being drawn back into the darkness.

Orpheus had completed a task like no other. He had traveled to the Underworld and had come back. However, he failed to bring back Eurydice.

Double Quotes

Death and Destruction: 5 Evil Gods of the Underworld

Author Image

By Antonis Chaliakopoulos MSc Museum Studies, BA History & Archaeology Antonis is an archaeologist with a passion for museums and heritage and a keen interest in aesthetics and the reception of classical art. He holds an MSc in Museum Studies from the University of Glasgow and a BA in History and Archaeology from the University of Athens (NKUA) where he is currently working on his PhD.

7-wonders-ancient-world

Frequently Read Together

punishments of damned byzantine mosaic

Why Is The God Hades Always The Bad Guy? 5 Reasons Why He Isn’t!

persephone

Persephone: Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld

chthonic gods aeneas sibyl underworld orestes pursued

Who Were The Chthonic Greek Gods? 5 Gods & Their Myths

  • Greek Texts
  • Latin Texts
  • Reference Works
  • Core Vocabulary
  • What's New
  • How to contribute
  • Editorial Board
  • Contributing Teachers
  • Contributing Students
  • Content Editors
  • Other Contributors
  • Peer Review
  • Site Design
  • Terms of Use
  • Commentaries In Development

essays by Thomas Van Nortwick, notes by Rob Hardy

Book 11 Essays

By Thomas Van Nortwick

Odysseus and his crew arrive at the entrance to the Underworld and perform animal sacrifices to the dead.

The long narrative arc that began with the Calypso episode ends as the Greek sailors sit dutifully in their ship, guided by the gods, heading for the land of the dead. Major themes have surfaced in various forms: the existential choice of Odysseus to forego timeless bliss with Calypso and plunge back into the world of death and change, the evolving threat of suffocating oblivion embodied by Calypso, Nausicaa, Polyphemus, and Circe, the repeated journey of Odysseus from anonymous stranger to glorious hero.

Though probably already known from earlier myths and folktales, the hero who inhabits this poem has been created afresh from his encounters along the way, specific to this story and its rhetorical imperatives. He is a complex figure, articulated through various polarities: sometimes secretive and detached from others, sometimes glorying in heroic renown; masculine in his relentless self-control, feminine (as the Greeks saw it) in his wily, subversive behavior; fiercely determined to survive and reclaim his rightful place in Ithaka, determined to experience the unknown, sometimes at the expense of his mission and crew. Now the poet will put him next to other illustrious heroes, comparing his character and achievements with theirs.

True to her word, Circe sends a helping wind to fill the sails. She is, once again, δεινὴ θεὸς αὐδήεσσα (11.8), as she was when the Greeks arrived on Aiaia ( 10.136 ). The rare epithet is used elsewhere only of Calypso ( 12.449 ), and Ino, “the White Goddess,” (5.334). All these figures seem to preside over the boundary between mortals and immortals in the poem, with αὐδήεσσα meaning in this context, “speaking to mortals.” In the background is Siduri, the barkeep who sends Gilgamesh on his way to the Land of Dilmun ( The Epic of Gilgamesh X.iii; see the essay on 10.133–177 ). Circe will reappear when the Greeks return from the underworld in Book Twelve, telling Odysseus more about how he can reach Ithaka alive and thus framing the entire adventure from the land of the dead. The resulting structure, usually called “ring form,” is often used by early Greek poets to mark off significant sections of a narrative. Book Eleven becomes in this perspective an “epyllion,” a miniature epic, framed by encounters with Circe. And the adventures in Books Nine through Twelve are themselves framed in the same way by Odysseus’s encounter with the Phaeacians.

When we look at it from this larger perspective, the disarming of Circe and her transition from dangerous seductress to friendly helpmeet in Book Ten becomes part of the poet’s narrative strategy for a major part of the poem. The concentric forms of the story reinforce parallels between characters and situations, building meaning by repetition, a central feature of Homer’s poetic technique. Scholars have suggested that the use of repeated forms on various levels, words, phrases, and larger narrative structures, reflects the composition of Homeric epic without the aid of writing. That seems likely, but our grasp of the poems now, as fixed, written works of art, depends on being able to understand how the artist who created the versions we now have used that repetition to build meaning.

Sailing on through the day and into darkness, the Greeks reach the land of the Cimmerians,

ἠέρι καὶ νεφέλῃ κεκαλυμμένοι: οὐδέ ποτ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἠέλιος φαέθων καταδέρκεται ἀκτίνεσσιν, οὔθ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ ἂν στείχῃσι πρὸς οὐρανὸν ἀστερόεντα, οὔθ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἂν ἂψ ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἀπ᾽ οὐρανόθεν προτράπηται, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ νὺξ ὀλοὴ τέταται δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσι.

smothered by clouds and fog; not ever on them does the shining sun look down with its rays, not when it makes its way across the starry heavens, nor when it travels back again to earth from the sky, but always grim night stretches over wretched mortals.

Odyssey 11.15-19

The participle κεκαλυμμένοι sets the tone: Odysseus is sailing straight into the oblivion he has been struggling to avoid. Calypso’s cloak, dragging him down into the dark sea (5.321–322), now reappears as a mantle of darkness that smothers him completely, no escape. The “Cimmerians” inhabit no place we can identify. The historical people with that name apparently settled in what is now Ukraine, while Homer’s Cimmerians live in the far West on the edge of the ocean that they imagined encircling the earth. As usual, the geography is mythical and largely symbolic. The entrance to the land of the dead is important as a physical manifestation of the nothingness that threatens Odysseus all the way home. It’s hardly surprising that the home of dead people should play this role. What is striking is how the poet links this darkness to those still in the world of the living.

The prayers and sacrifice in lines 22-33 reflect rituals found in Greek culture when mortals found themselves near the world of the dead. It’s often been noted that Odysseus does not, in fact, ever enter the underworld, but summons the ghosts to the blood-filled ditch on the edge. This detail should not keep us from thinking about the episode as an example of the katabasis motif with all its associations. The permanent, cloaking darkness in the land of the Cimmerians has already invoked the symbolism of the underworld and connected it to the oblivion that threatens Odysseus elsewhere. The energy in the episode comes from the encounters that Odysseus has with various figures. That these meetings happen on the boundary makes the episode a particularly momentous liminal experience, on the edge of the known and unknown, the living and the dead.

The ghosts crowd around the bloody ditch, a cross-section, in the language of early Greek poetry, of humanity: young and old, men and women, soldiers full of stab wounds. They rush back and forth, filling the air with θεσπεσίῃ ἰαχῇ , “a bewildering noise” (43). Still in control even in the underworld, Odysseus keeps them at a distance with his sword, waiting for Teiresias.

Further Reading

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey , 133–140. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Edwards, M.W. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad , 61–77. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. ed. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI , 75-79. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morrison, J. 2003. A Companion to Homer’s Odyssey , 103–104. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Nagler, M. 1996. “Dread Goddess Revisited.” In Schein, S. 1996. Reading the Odyssey . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 141–162.

Reinhardt, K. 1942. “The Adventures in the Odyssey .” In Schein, S. 1996. Reading the Odyssey . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 104–110.

Thalman, W. 1992. The Odyssey: an epic of return , 88–93. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Odysseus meets the ghosts of Elpenor, Antikleia, and Teiresias.

As usual, Homer makes us wait for the big encounter with Teiresias. First, we meet the ghost ( ψυχή ) of Elpenor, his unburied body moldering on Circe’s island. He begs Odysseus for burial and we hear the story of his death again (cf. 10.352–360 ). With these verses, the poet forges a link between Books Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, giving a reason for the Greeks to return to Circe’s island. Elpenor is in a special category of ψυχή . He cannot yet cross over into the underworld because his body remains unburied, so he retains his memory, which will disappear when he enters. The other ψύχαι must drink the blood from the ditch to regain their memories and then only temporarily. (The exception here is Teiresias, who retains his prophetic powers even in the underworld.) Odysseus, true to his heroic status, can grant temporary human consciousness to the dead. The results will not always be happy for them.

The language of Elpenor’s request recalls another famous supplication:

‘λίσσομ᾽ ὑπὲρ ψυχῆς καὶ γούνων σῶν τε τοκήων μή με ἔα παρὰ νηυσὶ κύνας καταδάψαι Ἀχαιῶν, ἀλλὰ σὺ μὲν χαλκόν τε ἅλις χρυσόν τε δέδεξο δῶρα τά τοι δώσουσι πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ, σῶμα δὲ οἴκαδ᾽ ἐμὸν δόμεναι πάλιν, ὄφρα πυρός με Τρῶες καὶ Τρώων ἄλοχοι λελάχωσι θανόντα.

I beg you by your life, your knees, and your parents, do not leave me by the ships for the dogs of the Achaeans to eat, but you take the abundant bronze and gold there, gifts that my father and mother will give you, and let my body go back home again, so the Trojans and their wives can give me my portion of the fire.

Iliad 22.338–343

Mortally wounded and seconds from death, Hector hopes for a hero’s burial at Troy. Achilles brushes this plea for civility aside with a withering reply, then proceeds to kill Hector and drag his corpse around the walls of Troy as a trophy. The emotion raised in us by this brutality is reflected in the reactions of Hector’s parents and especially his wife, who loses consciousness at the sight, a symbolic death of her own ( Il. 22.466–474 ). So begins a long meditation in the poem on the meaning of human life and death, focused on the treatment of Hector’s corpse, which will only end in the last scene of the Iliad , when his body is finally returned to Troy. In spite of the similar language in these two passages (cf. Od. 11.66–68, 73 ; Il. 22.355, 358 ), Elpenor’s delayed burial has a different impact than Hector’s. The Greeks will bury him properly when they return from the underworld, an occasion prompting relatively little emotion in the characters and in us. Achilles’ abuse of Hector’s corpse is painful because we feel that such a noble hero deserves better; Elpenor, by contrast, receives a hero’s burial in spite of his feckless lack of self-control.

Next comes the ghost of Odysseus’s mother Antikleia, prompting a flood of tears from the hero and a potentially fraught encounter seems imminent, but Odysseus once again shows his self-control, denying his mother access to the blood until he can interview Teiresias. The prophet finally approaches, puzzled: Why has Odysseus come to see this cheerless place full of dead people? He advances to drink blood from the ditch so he can tell the hero “unerring truths” (96). This is the first appearance of Teiresias in extant Greek literature and we cannot know if earlier versions, now lost, of any of the stories about him that appear after the Odyssey lie in the background of this portrait. His blindness, which is noted without comment in Book Ten ( 492 ), is explained in two later stories. In the Hellenistic author Callimachus (c. 250 BCE), we hear of the young Teiresias being blinded as punishment for accidently seeing Athena bathing (Callimachus, Hymn 5 ). In a story first appearing in a fragment of Hesiod (fr. 275 ), perhaps from the Seventh Century BCE and in its complete form in the Library of Apollodorus 3.6.7 , which probably dates from the Second Century BCE (see also Ovid’s Metamorphoses 3.316–388 ), Teiresias comes upon a snake while walking through the woods and hits it with a stick. He is instantly changed from a man to a woman. Some years later, she walks through the woods again, hits the same snake, and is changed back into a man. His unique dual perspective makes Teiresias the ideal judge for settling a quarrel between Jupiter and Juno over which gender has more pleasure during sex. He votes for women and Juno strikes him blind. As compensation, Jupiter gives him the gift of prophecy.

If Sophocles knew Hesiod’s version of the snake story, the gender ambiguity resulting from the encounters in the woods would play an important role in Oedipus Tyrannus (427 BCE). There the prophet is summoned from Delphi by Oedipus to help the Thebans escape the plague that has descended on the city in the wake of the former king Laius’s death. Much of the dramatic power of the scene between Oedipus and the prophet comes from the contrast of the king’s hyper-masculine bullying and Teiresias’ inward, mysterious knowledge, which the Greeks would have associated with the feminine gender. We will return to this aspect of Teiresias’ character when thinking about the overall impact of Odysseus’ trip to the underworld. Finally, we note one more antecedent for Teiresias’s role in the story, the sage Utnapishtim, whom Gilgamesh travels across the Waters of Death to consult about how to avoid the definitive trait of all humans, mortality ( Epic of Gilgamesh  XI).

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey , 140–144. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. ed. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI , 73-74. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morrison, J. 2003. A Companion to Homer’s Odyssey , 104–106. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Reinhardt, K. 1942. “The Adventures in the Odyssey .” In Schein, S. 1996. Reading the Odyssey . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 110–116.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey , 58–60. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press

Teiresias tells Odysseus about his future.

Teiresias drinks the blood and gets right down to business. Poseidon hates Odysseus for blinding his son Polyphemus, so reaching home will be challenging no matter what. But he and his remaining crew have a chance to get safely back to Ithaka, if and only if they “control [their] desires” (105) and refrain from slaughtering the cattle sacred to Helios, who “sees all and hears all” (119), on the island of Thrinakia. If they do not, they and their ship will all be destroyed. If somehow Odysseus escapes alone, he will make it back much later in a stranger’s ship and will find there the arrogant suitors eating up his food and wooing his wife. He will, however, succeed in killing them all by force or trickery. Poseidon’s animus and the cattle of the sun are not news to us. Both appear in the first seventy lines of the poem (1.6–9, 68–79). The suitors’ fatal lack of self-control on Thrinakia is the only part of the adventures included in the poem’s introductory proem (1–11). Though Zeus declares in Book Five that Athena has already arranged Odysseus’s triumph over the suitors (5.22–27), Teiresias now confirms it. We arrive next at the heart of the encounter, as the prophet reveals to Odysseus how and when he will die.

The hero’s trip to the underworld ( katabasis ) appears in various forms from stories all over the world. The particulars of each version may vary, but some elements persist. Because the hero is able to look death in the face and return to the world of the living, he is marked as extraordinary by any measure. The knowledge he gains is rare and precious, both universal and often deeply personal to him. After his friend Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh travels across the Waters of Death to the Land of Dilmun to consult Utnapishtim about how he can escape death. The sage, himself the only mortal to have escaped death, tells him bluntly that there is no escape for anyone else: All mortals must die. After failing several tests set by Utnapishtim to illustrate this fundamental truth, Gilgamesh returns to his kingdom, resigned to accept that he is defined as human by the inevitability of death ( Epic of Gilgamesh X–XI). Achilles too must learn to accept that he is mortal, despite his divine mother Thetis’s fervent desire to exempt him from his fate. His katabasis is entirely internal, into a private hell created by his own arrogance. He can only reemerge and achieve some measure of peace when he accepts the death of his friend Patroclus and by implication his own mortality by releasing the corpse of Hector to Priam at the end of the poem ( Iliad , Books 19–24). Virgil’s Aeneas travels to the underworld to consult his father Anchises about how to complete his mission and found a new home for himself and the Trojans exiled from their home by the Greeks. Anchises shows him the future, the part he will play in the eventual founding of Rome. The deep truth Aeneas learns about himself is that he will be one of the countless number of people whose lives and personal happiness will be sacrificed to make way for the founding of the Roman Empire ( Aen . 6.679–892 ).

What Odysseus learns from Teiresias seems to fit the traditional pattern. Knowing when and how you will die is knowledge denied to ordinary mortals. The journey that will precede his death maps other aspects of his character. Traveling inland until he meets people who have no knowledge of the sea, then planting his oar and sacrificing to Poseidon signals a final settling up with the sea god and his domain. Like the one that Odysseus will plant on the funeral mound of Elpenor ( 12.8–15 ), this oar marks a burial, in this case of the part of him that needs to wander. When he can let go of the sea, the external site for his restless wanderings, he can quiet the centrifugal part of himself and finally find peace at home among those who love him.

The symbolism of the sea in this prophecy offers us a rare glimpse inside the character of Odysseus. His heroic reputation, with all the imperatives that accompany it, is defined in the poem by his assuming various predetermined roles, king, husband, father, son. The rhetoric of the return story, which Athena seems to have arranged beforehand (5.21–27; 24.478–480, see Introduction, para. 2 ), demands that Odysseus do whatever is necessary to reassume these roles, which he relinquished when he left for Troy. By doing so, he will return the kingdom in Ithaka to its proper order and, by implication, become the person he once was and is destined to be. The internal workings of his psyche, our modern gauge for measuring character, are hidden behind the requirements of these roles. Because he must always be on guard against threats to his return, he maintains a distance from others, closed off.

But the Odyssey , like all the works that have endured in our imagination, finds a way to expand our understanding of its dominant perspective. The wider world beyond Athena’s closed vision of the heroic kingdom in Ithaka finds expression in the people and places that Odysseus encounters while an anonymous stranger. These two perspectives exist side-by-side during Odysseus’s stay with his faithful swineherd Eumeaus in Books Fourteen through Sixteen, before entering the palace to deal with the suitors (see Introduction, para. 23–25 ). Athena has transformed Odysseus into a wrinkled old beggar, so Eumaeus does not recognize his master. We see the encounter that follows with a kind of double vision. As the two men share their experiences, we learn that Eumaeus reveres Odysseus, but is pessimistic about him being able to return alive to Ithaka. When that happy event occurs, we can be sure that the relationship between Eumaeus and Odysseus will be one of servant and master, with all the distance those roles imply. At the same time, as the beggar and the swineherd exchange stories—in the former case fictional, but often very close to what we know of Odysseus—a warm bond forms, unencumbered by considerations of class, just two old guys who live on the periphery of power sharing their lives. Though the nature of the Odyssey as a comic narrative requires a hero who is closed off from others, the structure of the story offers us a peek into parts of Odysseus that the role of hero demands be kept hidden in order to ensure his survival.

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey , 144–148. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. ed. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI , 84-86. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey , 68–70. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic , 28–32. New York: Oxford University Press.

Odysseus asks Teiresias how he should approach his mother. Antikleia and Odysseus begin to talk.

Odysseus’s mother Antikleia has been hovering nearby. After some prompting from Teiresias, the hero allows her to drink blood from the ditch and their encounter begins. The masculine hero’s mother in ancient hero stories has a consistent function, to support and protect her child no matter what he does, no matter the consequences for him or others.

Ninsun, Gilgamesh’s mother, clears the way for him to pursue Humbaba, monster of the Cedar Forest, an adventure that will eventually bring the hero much pain ( Epic of Gilgamesh III.i–v). Achilles’s mother Thetis supports him in his thirst for vengeance against Hector, though it is clear to us at least that this rampage will be self-destructive. Only after Zeus commands her does she go to Achilles and urge him to release Hector’s corpse to Priam, thus signaling his (and her) acceptance of his mortal nature ( Il. 24.77–119 ). The rare counter examples draw power from this established pattern. Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, must be spirited out of Argos as an infant, for fear that his frightening mother and her lover Aegisthus might kill him to protect themselves. Medea murders her children to spite her faithless husband Jason.

Though the hero’s mother usually offers comfort, her son, in order to reach maturity as a man, must eventually separate from her nurture and come to terms with his father’s world, process that often requires the acceptance of some hard truths about himself and his place in that world. Both Gilgamesh and Achilles struggle to accept the fact that they, like all mortals, must eventually die. Utnapishtim, a surrogate father, delivers this hard news to Gilgamesh ( Epic of Gilgamesh X.vi). To win release of his son’s body, Priam convinces Achilles to see in him a reflection of Peleus, the hero’s father, pining for his son back in Thessaly ( Il. 24.486–506 ). The disastrous life of Oedipus plays out in the wake of his conspicuous failure to launch, as he kills his father and marries his mother (Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 771–833 ). Virgil plays against the expectations generated by previous hero stories to create a brilliantly perverse portrait of Aeneas’ relationship to his mother Venus. The goddess appears in the woods outside Carthage disguised as a sexy virgin huntress—thus firing up the Oedipal potential in the encounter—and then arranges for Aeneas to become entangled with Dido, with horrific consequences for both ( Aen . 1. 305–417 ).

Odysseus’s mother is less prominent in her son’s story, appearing only here in the Odyssey . She is certainly devoted to him, having died from the pain of missing him (202–203). In response to his questioning, she reassures him that his father, son, and wife are all alive and protecting his estates, though Laertes is living a debased, hardscrabble existence (180–196). The hero’s mother, in her desire to protect him, often works against his need to assert himself in the world and win renown ( kleos ). Antikleia’s transparently allegorical name (“against kleos ”) seems to put her in that role. Her interest is in getting him back home to his wife and family, not encouraging more adventuring. On the other hand, doing so will eventually require him to kill the suitors, a spectacularly heroic feat.

The crosscurrents here reflect the influence of Odyssey ’s comic narrative form (see Introduction, para. 5 ). In tragic stories like The Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad , there is a tension between a mother’s desire to protect and nurture her son and his journey toward becoming the man he is supposed to be. The Odyssey , by contrast, requires not that Odysseus evolve into full manhood, but rather that he survive, at whatever cost, to restore order in Ithaka. He has finished whatever growing up he must do and so Antikleia has a different function in the story than she would in a tragic narrative. There is in fact a story in the poem about a male protagonist evolving toward maturity, the adventures of Telemachus, who is sent on a journey orchestrated by Athena to find out about his father and become a worthy helper for Odysseus if he comes home. He does not tell his mother his plans, for fear she will try to keep him from fulfilling his mission, which will bring into contact with his father’s world. The movement of Telemachus toward maturity could in fact create a problem for Odysseus’s mission. If Telemachus reaches maturity at the end of his journey, there would be two contenders for the role of king in Ithaka. That conflict is resolved when Odysseus successfully warns off his son as the latter is about to string the bow and win both the kingship and the queen ( Od. 21.101–135 ).

Odysseus’s encounter with his mother ends with a striking vignette, as he tries unsuccessfully three times to embrace Antikleia’s ghost, which flies off each time “like a shadow or a dream” (207-208). The scene recalls a famous encounter between Achilles and the ghost of Patroclus:

ἀλλά μοι ἆσσον στῆθι: μίνυνθά περ ἀμφιβαλόντε ἀλλήλους ὀλοοῖο τεταρπώμεσθα γόοιο. ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας ὠρέξατο χερσὶ φίλῃσιν οὐδ᾽ ἔλαβε: ψυχὴ δὲ κατὰ χθονὸς ἠΰτε καπνὸς ᾤχετο τετριγυῖα: ταφὼν δ᾽ ἀνόρουσεν Ἀχιλλεὺς χερσί τε συμπλατάγησεν, ἔπος δ᾽ ὀλοφυδνὸν ἔειπεν: ‘ὢ πόποι ἦ ῥά τίς ἐστι καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισι ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον, ἀτὰρ φρένες οὐκ ἔνι πάμπαν: παννυχίη γάρ μοι Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο ψυχὴ ἐφεστήκει γοόωσά τε μυρομένη τε, καί μοι ἕκαστ᾽ ἐπέτελλεν, ἔϊκτο δὲ θέσκελον αὐτῷ.

“But come closer; embracing, if only for a moment, let us take pleasure in baneful grieving.” Having spoken thus he reached out with his arms but could not grasp the image; like a puff of smoke the spirit went under the earth with a shrill cry. Achilles rose up astonished, drove his hands together and spoke a sorrowful word: “Ah wonder! Even in the house of Hades there is left something, a soul and an image, but no wits are in it. For all night long the spirit of wretched Patroclus stood over me wailing and grieving, and told me each thing to do, and the likeness to him was wonderful.”

Iliad 23.97–107

The absence of any verbal parallels between the two passages suggests that these are probably not two versions of a traditional type scene. The “three times” motif here does appear elsewhere in Homeric epic, but not in the same kind of context (cf. Il 5.436–437; 16.703–703, 784–785). Both encounters are intensely intimate and personal, full of frustrated affection. In both cases, we learn something about the nature of the psyche after death, both consistent with Homeric beliefs about the afterlife and the soul. Achilles’s outburst fits with the ongoing exploration in Iliad 22–24 of the boundaries of human experience, while Antikleia’s explanation, because it occurs during the katabasis , corresponds to the kind of deep wisdom that the hero characteristically encounters in the underworld. That the hero’s mother delivers it puts her in a role usually reserved for male authority figures in heroic epic, another sign of that this katabasis will not fit comfortably in the paradigm as we see it elsewhere in tragic stories. Women are central to the meaning of Odysseus’s adventure in Hades, but their function in the episode is particular to the Odyssey .

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey , 149–151. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. ed. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI , 86-88, 90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reinhardt, K. 1942. “The Adventures in the Odyssey .” In Schein, S. 1996. Reading the Odyssey . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 116.

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic , 46–47, 67–68, 95–100. New York: Oxford University Press.

Odysseus sees the ghosts of famous women.

The so-called Catalogue of Heroines, when Odysseus meets the ψύχαι of famous women from mythology (225–332), has long been considered suspect by some classical scholars, who have complained that the content does not seem directly relevant to the main themes of the underworld episode. Some have suggested that the verses were a later addition to the original Eighth Century BCE poem based on a Sixth Century BCE work attributed to Hesiod in antiquity, but now thought to be later, called the Ehoiai . This poem exists only in fragments found on papyrus and in some quotations from ancient authors, about 1300 whole or partial verses, maybe about one-fourth of the original. Given what we now understand about the oral tradition out of which all early Greek hexameter poetry seems to have come, it’s much more likely that both the Odyssey passage and the Ehoiai are descended from a third, earlier source. Though the pre-history of the Odyssey is not our concern here, the objections raised by scholars to lines 225–334 do challenge us to think about how the catalog fits into the poem as we have it now.

The catalogue is probably one of the earliest forms of Greek hexameter poetry and some scholars have suggested that Homeric epic owes its origins to this kind of narrative. The “Catalogue of Ships” in Book Two of the Iliad (484–877) seems, for instance, to represent a much older geography for Greece than what existed in the Eighth Century BCE, when we think the Homeric epics came into the form we now have. Hesiod’s Theogony , probably composed about the same time or slightly later than the Odyssey , is an extended catalogue describing the origins of the gods and the rule of Zeus, with significant parallels to earlier Near Eastern myths. The form has persisted, from Virgil’s catalogue of the armies in the Aeneid (7.641–817) to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass . The examples from early Greek hexameter poetry suggest one reason why the form might have attracted poets. The frequency of place names and proper names, often lengthy and filled with more long syllables than usually appear in Greek, must have made composing these verses, in a relatively strict meter with few substitutions, very challenging. A catalog would be a virtuoso performance for an improvising poet. Perhaps the chance to show off this kind of mastery would be enough justification for including catalogues. At the same time, indulging too freely in lengthy show pieces would run afoul of the imperative to hold the audience’s attention at all costs. However absorbing the “Catalogue of Women” might be as a triumph of poetic skill, we still need to think about how it contributes to the overall plan of the Odyssey .

The first three women, Tyro, Antiope, and Alcmene, all bore illustrious children after sleeping with gods. In the patriarchal world of the Homeric epics, to be singled out by a god to bear his children is presented as a great honor. Today, these liaisons look too much like rapes for us to be comfortable rejoicing with the mothers. The children resulting from these sexual encounters are familiar to us from other stories: Neleus, son of Tyro by the river god Salmoneus, is the father of Nestor, king of Pylos, who entertains Telemachus in Book Four with stories of Odysseus; Antiope’s children by Zeus, Amphion and Zethus, were the founders of Thebes, the site of a cycle of myths that includes the sufferings of Oedipus and his children; Alcmene, another of Zeus’s chosen women, is the mother of Herakles. These women, then, are important because they give birth to male heroes. Their appearance here links them to Antikleia and like her, they fade away as soon as their contributions to the glories of male heroism are noted.

Beye, C.R. 1964. “Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 68, 345-373.

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey , 151-154. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. ed. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX-XVI , 90-91. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morrison, J. 2003. A Companion to Homer’s Odyssey , 106. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Ormand, K. 2014. The Hesiodic Catalog of Women and Ancient Greece . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Page, D. 1955. The Homeric Odyssey , 21-51. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The parade of famous women continues.

A darker mood descends with the appearance of Epikaste, mother of Oedipus, wife of Laius, known in later versions as Jocasta. Her story continues the Theban cycle that began with Antiope and is full of troubling details. She is an unwittingly dangerous wife, whose husband has unwittingly killed his father. Her suicide left him to rule while “suffering pains…through the destructive counsels of the gods” (275–276).

Pero, daughter of Chloris and Neleus, was a woman besieged by suitors, whose father sets up a contest for her hand, one featuring cattle rustling and more constraints from divine will. Leda gave birth to Castor and Pollux, two young men whose death at Troy the poet commemorates with passages paralleled in the Iliad (cf. Il. 3.237, 243 ), whose days alternate between the living and the dead. What the poet’s audience does not hear but probably knows is that Leda is also the mother of Helen and Clytemnestra, two more faithless wives. The series concludes with Iphimedeia, whose sons planned to storm Olympus and presumably overthrow the rightful rulers.

The last section of the catalogue mentions two groups of three women, Phaedra, Procris, and Ariadne, then Maera, Clymene, and Eriphyle. Picking up speed as he heads for the interlude on Scheria, Homer tells us only the stories of Ariadne and Eriphyle, though some of the other heroines in this series are well known in other sources. The overriding message is that women can be dangerous, when pursuing their own goals (Helen, Clytemnestra, Phaedra, Procris, Eriphyle) or when caught up in the power struggles of others (Epikaste, Pero, Ariadne). They may wittingly or unwittingly threaten their husbands (Jocasta, Pero, Clytemnestra, Helen), or produce offspring who threaten their parents (Jocasta, Clytemnestra).

Despite the qualms of some scholars about the authenticity of the Catalogue of Heroines, the stories behind it are directly relevant to the mission of Odysseus in the poem. Women, as we have seen, are always potentially threatening to the heroic mission of a masculine hero, but the particular stories the poet touches on are especially resonant. Like Oedipus, Odysseus’s kingship brings him suffering and the unwelcome attentions of the gods. Otis and Ephialtes model the arrogant suitors, whose selfish excesses in Ithaka threaten to overthrow the established order. Pero, like Penelope, prompts a violent and eventually deadly struggle to win her hand. Both Clytemnestra and Jocasta give birth to children who will supplant their parents as rulers, reflecting the potential threat that Telemachus represents to Odysseus’s kingship. And most prominently, Phaedra, Helen, and Clytemnestra, as faithless and treacherous wives, set a dark precedent for Penelope, one that informs the entire story of Odysseus’s return and will surface again in his encounter with Agamemnon’s ghost. In the poem’s very first scene, Zeus points to the paradigm set by Clytemnestra’s complicity in the murder of her husband and Orestes’s revenge against her and Aegisthus ( 1.32–44 ). From then on, the story prompts urgent questions: Will Penelope remain faithful to Odysseus? Can Odysseus prevail over the interloping suitors for her hand? Will Telemachus be a worthy son who avenges wrongs against his father?

Interlude in the Phaeacian palace. Night falls and Odysseus breaks off his narrative, saying he needs to sleep. Arete and Alcinous urge him to continue.

At verse 333, we are suddenly back in the royal palace on Scheria. Jumps in the narrative are not unknown in the poem (cf. 4.620–621 ), but the phrase ὣς ἔφαθ᾽ (333) startles nonetheless, reminding us that the adventures in Books Nine through Twelve come to us mediated by the perspective of Odysseus. Questions about his reliability as a narrator may surface again.

We have said above that we will consider the narrative voice in Books Nine through Twelve to be the same as the poet’s for our purposes, and there is no hint in the poem that the events in the cave of Polyphemus or Circe’s house are entirely fiction. And yet Odysseus is famous for his clever tongue. Are his stories part of a skillful campaign to win over the Phaeacians so they will give him a ride home, making him look good at the expense of his crew? Are the adventures the most prominent example of Odysseus’s skillful self-presentation, akin to the “false tales” that he later tells Athena, Eumaeus, Telemachus, and Penelope? In a poem so self-conscious about the making of its own art, we should be cautious about dismissing such questions too quickly. Perhaps we should consider all of Odysseus’s stories about himself as part of continuum, with the more verifiable events on one end, the “false tales” that the poet identifies on the other, and the adventures in Books Nine through Twelve somewhere in the middle? Definitive answers are not possible, given what the poem itself tells us, but one thing seems clear enough: The Odyssey is a poem focused on the role of storytelling in self-presentation, and that the line between “fact” and “fiction” is not always the best guide to the truth (see Introduction, para. 45 ).

The transition at verse 333 is eased slightly by the appearance of Arete, another heroine, who speaks for the royal family first, urging the Phaeacians to keep her impressive guest around and shower him with gifts. The order recalls Book Seven, when Odysseus bypasses Alkinous to supplicate Arete ( 7.139-166 ). Here, as there, a third party prompts the king to carry out his duties as host. In the earlier passage, Odysseus is following Nausicaa’s suggestion in approaching the queen first. But the earlier scene also seems to cast some doubt on Alkinous’s grasp of the duties of a host and also, perhaps, his command of the royal household. That the king of the Phaeacians might be lacking in masculine force is consistent with the tenor of the kingdom on Scheria, where warm baths and dancing are preferred to more manly and competitive activities ( 6.236–249 ). Odysseus’s time with the Phaeacians, whose miraculous kingdom might seem almost overly civilized by the audience for the poem, serves as a halfway point between Calypso’s island, a blissful existence outside of time and change, and the grittier realities awaiting Odysseus in Ithaka.

Focusing on questions of masculinity and kingliness provides a preview of the next section of the katabasis , Odysseus’s encounters with the ghosts of his former comrades at Troy. The transition back into Odysseus’s account of his journey is again abrupt, but not without some connective material. His last words, as he yields to the king’s request to continue, look back toward the Catalogue of Heroines while pointing toward his next theme:

οἳ Τρώων μὲν ὑπεξέφυγον στονόεσσαν ἀυτήν, ἐν νόστῳ δ᾽ ἀπόλοντο κακῆς ἰότητι γυναικός.

[His companions] who fled the painful battle cry at Troy, but perished on the return home for the sake of an evil woman.

Odyssey 11. 383–384

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey , 154–156. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. ed. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI , 92–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morrison, J. 2003. A Companion to Homer’s Odyssey , 106–107. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Pedrick, V. 1988. “The Hospitality of Noble Women in the Odyssey . Helios 15.2: 85–104.

Thalman, W. 1992. The Odyssey: an epic of return , 69–70. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Alcinous asks Odysseus about the Greek warriors who died at Troy. Odysseus resumes his story and tells about his meeting with Agamemnon.

Persephone scatters the ψύχαι of famous women, making way for the ghost of Agamemnon. (We will use proper names or personal pronouns for the Greek ψυχή in this section, to avoid the tedious “ghost of” formulation, though as we will see, the difference between their insubstantial existence and life in the world of mortals is an important theme in the underworld episode.) After he drinks the blood, Agamemnon tries to embrace Odysseus:

κλαῖε δ᾽ ὅ γε λιγέως, θαλερὸν κατὰ δάκρυον εἴβων, πιτνὰς εἰς ἐμὲ χεῖρας, ὀρέξασθαι μενεαίνων: ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γάρ οἱ ἔτ᾽ ἦν ἲς ἔμπεδος οὐδέ τι κῖκυς, οἵη περ πάρος ἔσκεν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι μέλεσσι.

He fell into shrill weeping, pouring down tears, and stretched out his hands, longing to embrace me, but there was no strength in them, nor any juice left like there was before in his flexible limbs.

Odyssey 11.391–394

The great commander has been reduced to feeble inconsequence, another of the twittering horde of dead souls. Odysseus now arrives at the crucial set of encounters at the heart of his katabasis , as he confronts what remains of his former comrades at Troy. We have seen that this trip to the underworld departs in some ways from the tragic model for such an adventure. As Odysseus learns the fates of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax, we see his character measured against those of his fellow warriors, an occasion to reflect on the unusual nature of his heroism.

Agamemnon is surrounded by the ghosts of his henchmen, all of whom died with him. Overcome by sadness, Odysseus asks his friend how he died. Was it on the sea, braving a storm, or during a raid on another’s property, cattle, sheep, or women? No, he was slaughtered at the dinner table, undone by the treachery of a woman and her illicit lover—an ignominious end for a hero, especially in a poem that celebrates the virtues of proper hospitality. The poet forges a link to the catalogue of heroines, and beyond that, the adventures in Books Nine and Ten: In the moment of their death, Agamemnon’s men become “pigs with white tusks” (413) like the captives in Circe’s house; the banquet drenched in blood recalls the gruesome meals of Polyphemus. Given the prominence of stories about dangerous wives in particular, the import for Odysseus is clear enough: Beware the wife you’ve left alone at home. She may betray you.

Agamemnon’s description of his last moments offers fleeting echoes of the Iliad , with bodies strewn all over the ground and warriors facing imminent death. We hear the last pitiful cry of Cassandra, whose laments herald the return of Priam with Hector’s corpse in the earlier poem:

κώκυσέν τ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔπειτα γέγωνέ τε πᾶν κατὰ ἄστυ: ὄψεσθε Τρῶες καὶ Τρῳάδες Ἕκτορ᾽ ἰόντες, εἴ ποτε καὶ ζώοντι μάχης ἐκνοστήσαντι χαίρετ᾽, ἐπεὶ μέγα χάρμα πόλει τ᾽ ἦν παντί τε δήμῳ.

She shrieked in sorrow then and cried out to the whole city: “Come and see Hector, you Trojan men and women, if ever you rejoiced at his return alive from battle, since he was a great delight to the city and all the people.”

Iliad 24.702–705

In the Iliad , Cassandra’s voice summons the Trojans to the city walls, to honor communally the last journey of their great defender. Here her last cries echo through the halls of Agamemnon’s palace as she falls on his body, a grim, private moment, marking the king’s helplessness before his treacherous wife. From this pitiful tableau, Clytemnestra turns coldly away, denying her husband what heroes crave most, to be seen by others. In our last image of him alive, Agamemnon pounds the ground in frustration (perhaps a plea to the gods of the Underworld for vengeance: cf. Il. 9.568 ). After he dies, Clytemnestra withholds one last service to the dead, leaving the corpse with a gaping mouth and open, staring eyes.

The Iliadic tone of Agamemnon’s last moments increases the pathetic nature of his final moments. In a battle narrative, this might be a poignant conclusion to a heroic life. The Odyssey ’s perspective marks his death not as noble but as a sign of failure, to control the potentially insidious power of a woman. Odysseus’s response to Agamemnon brings the king’s bitter memories into line with the overarching themes of the poem:

‘ὢ πόποι, ἦ μάλα δὴ γόνον Ἀτρέος εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς ἐκπάγλως ἤχθηρε γυναικείας διὰ βουλὰς ἐξ ἀρχῆς: Ἑλένης μὲν ἀπωλόμεθ᾽ εἵνεκα πολλοί, σοὶ δὲ Κλυταιμνήστρη δόλον ἤρτυε τηλόθ᾽ ἐόντι.’

“Oh for shame, that from the beginning Zeus of the wide gaze has been terribly hateful to the family of Atreus through women’s schemes; many of us have been destroyed because of Helen, and Clytemnestra wove treachery for you when you were far away.”

Odyssey 11.436–439

We return to the origin of all the pain and death at Troy and afterward, the treachery of Helen. Zeus must hate the family of Atreus, whose generations he chooses to punish through womanly scheming. The two sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra, fall into place beside Calypso, Nausicaa, Circe, Scylla, Charybdis, the Sirens. The implications of these parallels are clear enough. The return of right order in Ithaka (itself a microcosm of the larger patriarchal order of the universe) depends on Odysseus regaining his status as king, husband, father, and son. To do so, he must survive all the challenges thrown in his way, many of which feature feminine trickery in one form or another. We have said that the katabasis brings a hero face to face with fundamental truths about himself and the larger universe. Odysseus has arrived.

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey , 156-161. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Morrison, J. 2003. A Companion to Homer’s Odyssey , 107-109. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Reinhardt, K. 1942. “The Adventures in the Odyssey .” In Schein, S. 1996. Reading the Odyssey . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 118-121.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture , 32. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Agamemnon warns Odysseus not to trust Penelope completely, then asks about his son, Orestes.

In case Odysseus has missed the import of his story, Agamemnon offers some advice: don’t be ἤπιος , (“sweet,” “kind,”) to your wife. According to Athena, one good reason for Odysseus to be released from captivity on Calypso’s island is that he was ἤπιος as a father (5.8), but according to Agamemnon standards for treating wives are different. Odysseus must not reveal everything he knows to his wife: Tell her some of it, hide the rest. In short, use the traits that have gotten him this far. Tragic heroes are not known for their skill at or affection for this kind of dissembling. In a famous reply to Odysseus from Book Nine of the Iliad , Achilles states the matter plainly:

ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κεῖνος ὁμῶς Ἀΐδαο πύλῃσιν ὅς χ᾽ ἕτερον μὲν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ.

I hate like the gates of Hades the man who hides one thing in his mind and says another.

Iliad 9.312–313

Achilles is the epitome of the tragic hero, passionate, expressive, holding nothing back. The entire plot of the Iliad is launched by a furious argument between him and Agamemnon, neither of whom seems to hide anything. In this, both men embody the kind of hero that a tragic story needs, always pushing against constraints, regardless of the consequences for them or others, as the story urges them and us toward the goal of its narrative, the recognition that for mortals, death is inevitable. As we have seen, the Odyssey is not such a story. Its hero must serve the narrative goal of restoring right order. He cannot be reckless in pursuit of what his passion points him toward because he must survive at all costs. Each encounter in the underworld reinforces the need for Odysseus to be a different kind of hero.

Wives, then, cannot be trusted. But Agamemnon makes an exception in Penelope’s case: She, unlike other women, is too prudent and level-headed to murder Odysseus. Conjuring up a nostalgic memory, the commander paints a rosy tableau from twenty years before, Penelope as a new bride with Telemachus at her breast. And in Agamemnon’s imagination, that little child has grown up to take his place amidst the men of Ithaka, happy and blessed, ready to defer, rightly ( ἣ θέμις ἐστίν , 451), to his father. No mention of the suitors here, or the chaos we have seen at the royal palace. As far as Agamemnon knows, right order persists in Ithaka, despite Odysseus’s absence. Now the tone shifts again, as thinking about Telemachus reminds Agamemnon that thanks to Clytemnestra’s betrayal, he will never see Orestes again, which in turn leads to more advice: return home in secret, not openly; there is no trusting women. Turning away from these thoughts leads him to safer ground, the prospect of his glory living on through his son: Has Odysseus heard anything about Orestes? Is he still living, and if so, where? Surely, he can’t be dead. But Odysseus cannot reassure him. He has heard nothing of Orestes.

Agamemnon’s words show a soul in torment, veering between anger at his own betrayal and wistful admiration for Odysseus’s apparent good fortune. Overcome by bitterness—and, we suspect, shame—he denounces all women as sneaky and treacherous, then seems to catch himself and exempt Penelope. But his obsessions crowd back in and he circles back to his sweeping condemnation of all women: οὐκέτι πιστὰ γυναιξίν (456). Finally, thinking of Orestes seems to pull him back from his rage. In this short passage, we see a vivid example of precisely the temperament that Odysseus must combat in himself if he is to survive: poorly-controlled, corrosive emotions that pull Agamemnon apart. This brief portrait shows the same subtle understanding of human behavior and its underlying causes that characterizes the portrait of Agamemnon in the Iliad . There, his pride and arrogance, fueled by insecurity about his status in relation to Achilles, lead him to disastrous choices. He was not a bad man, just not sufficiently self-aware, unable to distance himself enough from his emotions to exert steady leadership. The same traits emerge in his brief cameo here.

The Iliad ’s shadow continues to fall over the scene as Odysseus next meets the enfeebled residue of four more fallen warriors, Achilles, Patroclus, Antilochus, and Ajax. Characteristically, only the first will speak. Achilles, like Teiresias, wonders why Odysseus would want to visit the underworld:

διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη, πολυμήχαν᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ, σχέτλιε, τίπτ᾽ ἔτι μεῖζον ἐνὶ φρεσὶ μήσεαι ἔργον; πῶς ἔτλης Ἄϊδόσδε κατελθέμεν, ἔνθα τε νεκροὶ ἀφραδέες ναίουσι, βροτῶν εἴδωλα καμόντων;

Zeus-born son of Laertes, clever Odysseus, never weary, why do you plan a still greater deed? How can you stand to come down to Hades’ house, where the witless dead live, shadows of struggling men?

Odyssey 11.473–476

To the prophet, Hades is a dark and cheerless place, full of dead people. For Achilles, the issue is, not surprisingly, weakness. The remnants of great warriors lack minds to think with and bodies to hurl into the world. The treachery of women fades from view now, as Achilles laments his powerlessness. Odysseus explains that he has come for help from Teiresias so he can finally return home. But why is Achilles grieving? He is the “most blessed” (483) of all men, before or since, honored like a god, and now rules over the dead. Achilles’ answer will take us back to the central differences between tragic and comic heroes and the poems they inhabit.

Greenberg, N. 1990. “The Attitude of Agamemnon.” Classical 86, 193–205.

Odysseus meets the ghost of Achilles, who asks about his father Peleus and his son Neoptolemus. Odysseus says he knows nothing of the former, then praises the latter for his bravery.

Achilles’s reply is characteristically blunt:

‘μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα, φαίδιμ᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ. βουλοίμην κ᾽ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ, ἀνδρὶ παρ᾽ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη, ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.’

Don’t console me for being dead, shining Odysseus. I would rather follow a plow, a serf for another man, who is allotted no land and has little to live on, than to rule as king over all the wasted dead.

Odyssey 11.488–491

This is another man entirely than the one in the Iliad who chooses glory over a long life, who strives always to have the highest status, willing to let his fellow Greek warriors die in his absence rather than back down to Agamemnon. Now, he yearns for life at any cost. The Achilles of the Iliad values his τιμή , the honor given him by others that certifies his status among his peers, above all else. Now, he would gladly sink to the lowest rung on the social ladder, that of a day laborer working for a tenant farmer who owns no land. (A slave, though owned by another, is at least a part of a household.)

That Achilles would rather not be dead is hardly surprising—wouldn’t we all?—but the pointed rhetoric of his speech prompts further thought about the fit between a hero and the story he inhabits. Like the bitter reflections of Agamemnon, Achilles’s words here signal the dominant message of this katabasis , the superiority of Odysseus’s particular kind of heroism. He, not his former comrades, not even the great Achilles, is the hero this story needs. We are accustomed to describing famous characters in the Homeric epics as if their attitudes and behavior were consistent across both works: Achilles is always passionate in pursuit of what he thinks he deserves, regardless of the effects of his actions on himself and others; Odysseus exemplifies intelligent caution and self-restraint, in the service of manipulating others. But in fact, the portraits of both heroes in their respective poems reflect the interplay of those traits with the dominant rhetoric of each epic. The form of the story influences how characters, even the most famous ones, behave in it.

Achilles in the underworld reflects this interplay, valorizing with his speech the dominant values of the poem. Likewise, the version of Odysseus we find in the Iliad is not the man we’ve been prompted to admire in the Odyssey as he plots his homecoming. He is noted for his speech-making ( Il. 3.204-224 ) and takes part in a secret night raid in Book Ten, but elsewhere he is honored for the same martial qualities as his fellow warriors. Faced with the prospect of imminent death at the hands of the Trojans, he ponders:

ὤ μοι ἐγὼ τί πάθω; μέγα μὲν κακὸν αἴ κε φέβωμαι πληθὺν ταρβήσας: τὸ δὲ ῥίγιον αἴ κεν ἁλώω μοῦνος: τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους Δαναοὺς ἐφόβησε Κρονίων. ἀλλὰ τί ἤ μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός; οἶδα γὰρ ὅττι κακοὶ μὲν ἀποίχονται πολέμοιο, ὃς δέ κ᾽ ἀριστεύῃσι μάχῃ ἔνι τὸν δὲ μάλα χρεὼ. ἑστάμεναι κρατερῶς, ἤ τ᾽ ἔβλητ᾽ ἤ τ᾽ ἔβαλ᾽ ἄλλον.

Alas, what will happen to me? A great evil if I should flee in fear of the enemy throng; but worse still if I am taken alone. The son of Kronos has routed the rest of the Danaans. But why does my heart within me debate these things? For I know that cowards run from the fighting, but he who would win honor in battle must stand his ground strongly, whether he be struck or strike down another.

Iliad 11.404–411

This monologue is one of four in the Iliad that follow the same basic pattern (see also Il. 17.91–105 ; 21.553–570 ; 22.99–130 ). A soldier faces the prospect of imminent death on the battlefield at the hands of the Trojans. He pauses to weigh his options: Should he run and live to fight another day, or stand and fight, preferring an honorable death to the shame of being branded a coward? The common language in all four speeches is the opening exclamation, ὤ μοι ἐγὼ(ν) , and the phrase ἀλλὰ τί ἤ μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός , when the speaker breaks off his rumination and resolves to either run or stand firm. The most famous by far of the four is the last, Hector’s monologue before the walls of Troy, as Achilles bears down on him relentlessly across the plain. Those anguished reflections could be taken as a supreme example of the warrior’s code in the Iliad , as far from the cautious calculations of Odysseus in the Odyssey as can be imagined.

Like Agamemnon, Achilles turns away from painful reflection about his powerlessness by asking about his son and father, both emblems of his masculine power. Their survival guarantees the continuation of his kleos . Thinking about Peleus leads him, however, to dark thoughts about his father’s own possible powerlessness before the attacks of his enemies. Is the old man still honored in Thessaly, or is he suffering because his son is not there to protect him? These gloomy thoughts recall verses from Achilles’s great speech to Priam in Iliad 24:

ὣς μὲν καὶ Πηλῆϊ θεοὶ δόσαν ἀγλαὰ δῶρα ἐκ γενετῆς: πάντας γὰρ ἐπ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ἐκέκαστο ὄλβῳ τε πλούτῳ τε, ἄνασσε δὲ Μυρμιδόνεσσι, καί οἱ θνητῷ ἐόντι θεὰν ποίησαν ἄκοιτιν. ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ καὶ τῷ θῆκε θεὸς κακόν, ὅττί οἱ οὔ τι παίδων ἐν μεγάροισι γονὴ γένετο κρειόντων, ἀλλ᾽ ἕνα παῖδα τέκεν παναώριον: οὐδέ νυ τόν γε γηράσκοντα κομίζω, ἐπεὶ μάλα τηλόθι πάτρης ἧμαι ἐνὶ Τροίῃ, σέ τε κήδων ἠδὲ σὰ τέκνα.

So the gods gave splendid gifts also to Peleus from his birth, for he stood out among all men in wealth and good fortune, and ruled over the Myrmidons, and the gods gave him a divine wife, though was mortal. But they also put evil upon him, because no generation of strong children was born to him in his halls, only one child, doomed to an untimely death. And I do not care for him as he grows old, since far away from my fatherland I sit in Troy, troubling you and your children.

Iliad 24.534–542

In the Iliad , Achilles’s concern for Peleus is evidence of his movement toward accepting his own mortality, the goal he must reach to be made whole on the poem’s terms. He has been led to thinking about his father by Priam, who urges him to see the parallels between himself and Peleus, two old men who have lost the protection of their sons, and thus show compassion toward him. The context in the Odyssey is different. Achilles’s worry is part of his sorrow over losing his own power, and compassion for others carries little weight in his lament.

Odysseus has no news of Peleus but delivers a lengthy encomium to Achilles’s son Neoptolemus. Handsome, brave, and a ruthlessly effective killer of Trojans, he was the best speaker among the Greeks after Nestor and Odysseus himself. The praise ends with an anecdote about the Trojan horse, as Odysseus recalls how Neoptolemus agitated to be released from the horse’s belly, so he could kill more Trojans. What goes unsaid is that the success of that gambit depended on Odysseus restraining Neoptolemus’s impetuous urges. There, as everywhere in the Odyssey , self-control is the key to victory, not unrestrained emotion. Odysseus, not Achilles.

Clay, J. 1983. The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey , 96–112. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Edwards, A.T. 1985. Achilles in the Odyssey . Beitrage zur klassischen Philologie 171.

Pache, C.O. 2000. “War Games: Odysseus at Troy.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100, 15–23.

Odysseus sees the ghost of Ajax and tries to speak with him. Ajax refuses.

Achilles recedes into the distance, taking “big strides” (539) and rejoicing in the good news about his son. It is hard not to hear a poignant undertone in these verses. The great warrior marches across the asphodel, a denatured ghost of his former self but clinging to the reflected glory of his son. His ψυχή and Agamemnon’s will reappear briefly in Book Twenty-Four, conversing in the underworld. Their exchange adds nothing to what we learn about their characters here, though Agamemnon does give an elaborate description of Achilles’s funeral at Troy ( Od. 24.24–97 ).

Ajax is the last of the major Homeric heroes whose ghost Odysseus meets. He is always a vivid presence in Homeric epic, physically imposing, brutally effective on the battlefield. When he, Odysseus, and Phoenix are sent to persuade Achilles to return to the battle in Book Nine of the Iliad , he dismisses Achilles’ attempts at self-justification:

‘διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη πολυμήχαν᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ ἴομεν: οὐ γάρ μοι δοκέει μύθοιο τελευτὴ τῇδέ γ᾽ ὁδῷ κρανέεσθαι: ἀπαγγεῖλαι δὲ τάχιστα χρὴ μῦθον Δαναοῖσι καὶ οὐκ ἀγαθόν περ ἐόντα οἵ που νῦν ἕαται ποτιδέγμενοι. αὐτάρ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἄγριον ἐν στήθεσσι θέτο μεγαλήτορα θυμὸν σχέτλιος, οὐδὲ μετατρέπεται φιλότητος ἑταίρων τῆς ᾗ μιν παρὰ νηυσὶν ἐτίομεν ἔξοχον ἄλλων νηλής:

Zeus-born son of Laertes, resourceful Odysseus, let us go. For I think nothing will be accomplished with words on this mission. We should go back quickly and tell the Greeks this story, though it is not good. They sit there now, waiting. But Achilles has made savage the great-hearted spirit in his chest, unyielding. Nor does he care for the love of his companions wherein we honored him above all others by the ships, pitiless.

Iliad 9.624–632

Coming after Odysseus’s and Phoenix’s carefully calculated appeals to Achilles’ need for personal honor, Ajax is characteristically blunt. What finally matters to him is not whether Achilles is right in holding out for a suitable apology from Agamemnon, but whether he cares enough about his friends, who are dying in his absence. Ajax is unique among all the heroes in the Iliad for his unlikely combination of stubborn independence and self-sacrificing devotion to his companions. Patroclus also epitomizes the need for human connection amid the rampant self-regard of the Iliad ’s warriors, but exists for the most part in the shadow of Achilles. Ajax defers to no one.

The origins of Ajax’s implacable hatred of Odysseus lie in a story that seems to have circulated before the composition of the Odyssey , about the contest arranged by Achilles’s mother Thetis to decide which hero will inherit the arms of Achilles after his death. No details of the contest survive, except that it was not a trial of physical strength but perhaps one involving some of Odysseus’s famous eloquence. We only know that Odysseus was chosen over Ajax, who committed suicide in shame over his failure. His proud isolation continues even death:

οἴη δ᾽ Αἴαντος ψυχὴ Τελαμωνιάδαο νόσφιν ἀφεστήκει,

The ghost of Ajax, son of Telamon stood apart, alone.

Odyssey 11.543–544

The adjective οἶος , οἴη , “alone,” carries significance beyond its denotative meaning in Homeric epic, especially in the first position in the verse. For all their proud independence, characters in Homer are not often alone. For male heroes, one sign that they are in their customary status is the phrase οὐκ οῖος, as when Achilles finally acts to end his isolation from his fellow warriors and return the body of Hector to Priam:

οὐκ οἶος, ἅμα τῷ γε δύω θεράποντες ἕποντο ἥρως Αὐτομέδων ἠδ᾽ Ἄλκιμος;

Not alone, but his two henchmen followed him, the hero Automedon and Alkimos;

Iliad 24.573-574

For a woman, the corresponding phrase, οὐκ οἴη , appears when she is accompanied in public by her maids, signifying an appropriate modesty, as when Penelope descends the stairs to face the suitors ( Od. 18.207 ). When the adjective appears without οὐκ , its meaning can be emphatic, Nausicaa is οἴη —and thus potentially vulnerable—when she faces Odysseus after he emerges nearly naked from behind the bushes ( Od. 6.139 ); Poseidon is the only god who is angry at Odysseus ( Od. 1.79 ).

Ajax, unlike Achilles, does not change in the underworld, but remains just as he is in the Iliad , unbendingly alone. Odysseus is ready to put aside their quarrel, eager to talk, but Ajax cannot let go of his anger. Like Agamemnon and Achilles, Ajax models for Odysseus traits that he must avoid. He continues to be isolated because he cannot control his emotions, in particular, his anger. As we have seen, self-control at all costs is the key to success for Odysseus, if he is to make it home. We might add one other aspect of Ajax’s character, which is prominent in the Book Nine of the Iliad : considering the welfare of his comrades a prominent part of his calculations when making crucial choices. The ever-thinning ranks of Odysseus’ crew suggest a different calculation for him. As Ajax strides away, Odysseus makes his choice:

ἔνθα χ᾽ ὅμως προσέφη κεχολωμένος, ἤ κεν ἐγὼ τόν: ἀλλά μοι ἤθελε θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι φίλοισι τῶν ἄλλων ψυχὰς ἰδέειν κατατεθνηώτων.

All the same, he might then have spoken to me in his anger, and I to him; but the heart in my chest wished to see the souls of other dead men.

Odyssey 11.565–567

If, Odysseus seems to be saying, I cared a little bit more about Ajax, we might have overcome the anger. But curiosity, the desire to seek out knowledge, trumps the need to preserve his connection to a former companion.

Nagler, M. 1974. Spontaneity and Tradition: The Oral Art of Homer , 97–111. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture , 77–79. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Odysseus sees but does not speak to the ghosts of Minos, Orion, Tityos, Tantalus, and Sisyphus.

Aristarchus of Samothrace (217–145 BCE), a Hellenistic scholar whose marginal comments on the Homeric epics have come down to us, thought that verses 568–627 were added to the main composition of the Odyssey by a later poet and some modern scholars have agreed with him. Though our purpose here is to understand the version of the poem that we have now, rather than entering into scholarly controversies about the history of the poem’s composition, looking briefly at some of the objections to these verses can help to us to clarify their function in the overall structure of Book Eleven.

At first glance, the passage describing six figures who follow Ajax recalls the earlier catalogue of heroines: the language, with variations on the verb εἴδω (568, 576, 582, 593; cf., 235, 261, 266, 281, 298, 306); the parade of mythical figures with identifying details. But this latter group stands apart from the heroines, in that none of them has any meaningful connection to Odysseus outside the poem. As a group, they represent no threat to him, unlike the women, who always embody danger for the hero. With the exception of Herakles, they appear only at a distance from Odysseus, inside Hades itself. None of the six drinks blood from the trench. Though Herakles does speak to Odysseus, he receives no answer. The immediacy of the encounters with Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax is missing here, as the poet seems to be lowering the dramatic intensity at the end of the katabasis . The ongoing implied comparison between the lives of the dead heroes and Odysseus’s different kind of heroism fades away.

Despite the differences between this last section and the earlier encounters, we can see a larger structural symmetry in Book Eleven: three figures who have significant exchanges with Odysseus, Elpenor, Tiresias, and Antikleia, are echoed by Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax; then comes the catalogue of heroines, mirrored by the catalogue of male figures from myth. This kind of structural interpretation can also be applied to the last scenes of the poem, after the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope, which also show a marked fall-off in dramatic intensity and were also found unsatisfactory by Aristarchus. We might account for the second underworld scene ( 24.1-240 ) by noting that, though quite dreary, it corresponds to the katabasis and rounds off the story of the suitors, while the remainder of the book tidies up loose ends with Laertes and the families of the suitors.

In both Book Eleven and Book Twenty-Four, the falling-off of dramatic tension has been a let-down for many, with the structural patterns seeming inadequate compensation for the lowered energy. But this kind of arc is not in fact unusual in Greek literature, where often a story will reach a dramatic climax some distance from the end of the work, with the remaining scenes devoted to realizing the implications of that climax. The death of Hector is followed in the Iliad by the funeral games for Patroclus and the ransoming of Hector; Oedipus’ shattering realization in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus comes well before the play’s end, leaving the survivors to cope with the wreckage. All that being said, it is hard to see how this last part of the katabasis addresses the implications of encounters with the Iliadic warriors, the dramatic high point of the Book.

Herakles, the last of the parade of heroes, makes an impressive entrance at the end of Book Eleven:

ἀμφὶ δέ μιν κλαγγὴ νεκύων ἦν οἰωνῶν ὥς, πάντοσ᾽ ἀτυζομένων: ὁ δ᾽ ἐρεμνῇ νυκτὶ ἐοικώς, γυμνὸν τόξον ἔχων καὶ ἐπὶ νευρῆφιν ὀιστόν, δεινὸν παπταίνων, αἰεὶ βαλέοντι ἐοικώς. σμερδαλέος δέ οἱ ἀμφὶ περὶ στήθεσσιν ἀορτὴρ χρύσεος ἦν τελαμών, ἵνα θέσκελα ἔργα τέτυκτο, ἄρκτοι τ᾽ ἀγρότεροί τε σύες χαροποί τε λέοντες, ὑσμῖναί τε μάχαι τε φόνοι τ᾽ ἀνδροκτασίαι τε.

Around him was a clamor of the dead, like birds, scattering, frightened, and he came on like black night, holding a bare bow, an arrow notched in the string, glaring dreadfully, always ready to strike. A terrible belt crossed his chest, a golden baldric, where marvelous works of art were figured, bears and fierce boars and lions with eyes that glared, and battles and quarrels, murders and slaughter.

Odyssey 11.605–612

Here is a compelling spirit Odysseus would surely want to follow and question. But he is not interested:

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν αὐτοῦ μένον ἔμπεδον, εἴ τις ἔτ᾽ ἔλθοι ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων, οἳ δὴ τὸ πρόσθεν ὄλοντο.

But I remained there, in case any other of the heroes would come, who were killed before.

Odysse y 11.628–629

The inertia that kept him from following Ajax seems to have grown. There he at least questioned the great warrior. The repeated rhythm of the two encounters, each ending with Odysseus turning away from a famous hero, brings the katabasis to an end in a fitting way. Typically for him, restless curiosity pushes him onward. Perhaps this conclusion also reflects the poet’s own restlessness?

Clay, J. 1983. The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey , 94–96 . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. ed. 1989. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. II, Books IX–XVI , 110-114. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morrison, J. 2003. A Companion to Homer’s Odyssey , 109–110. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Thalman, W. 1992. The Odyssey: an epic of return , 73–75. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey , 72–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Odysseus sees the ghost of Heracles, who complains about his labors. Odysseus breaks off his search for other dead heroes and returns to his ship.

Conclusion: A Different Kind of Katabasis

Given the unusual nature of Odysseus’s heroism and the story it animates, sending his hero to the underworld creates unusual challenges for the poet, who cannot aim his narrative toward the same goal as he would if telling a tragic story (see Introduction, para. 4 ). Confronting death and the implications of that experience, the central event in a tragic katabasis , will not carry the same weight in a comic narrative. How then, was the episode to be shaped?

Homer sets the scene at the edge of the underworld, with the hero and his crew “smothered,” κεκαλυμμένοι (15) in darkness, already a sign that the episode will feature feminine forces threatening to Odysseus and his crew. The requisite rituals performed, the poet brings forth the ghost of Elpenor, who begs his captain to give his corpse a proper burial back on Circe’s island. With this opening, Homer creates the narrative ring that will mark the boundaries of his episode, with Circe at the beginning and end. Putting off Antikleia until he can interview Teiresias, Odysseus reaffirms that he has already made the break with his mother’s nurture that marks a mature male in Greek hero stories. He is not in the midst of an evolving journey of self-discovery, as are many tragic heroes. His mission aims at restoration, not the acceptance of limits.

Next comes Teiresias, whom Circe has named as the keeper of information crucial to a successful homecoming. The prophet does deliver one piece of advice about the return trip—stay away from the cattle belonging to Helios—but the most important news is about how Odysseus can die a peaceful death. This kind of discovery is entirely in keeping with the goals of a traditional katabasis : knowledge, and often self-knowledge, that the hero could only gain in the underworld. By settling up with the sea, the medium for his wanderings, Odysseus can quiet the restless curiosity that has driven him. This window—for the hero and for us—into Odysseus’ fundamental nature is important part of his exchange with Teiresias. The rest of the strategizing about his return voyage can wait until he meets Circe again.

The catalogue of heroines sounds celebratory at first, but on closer inspection is more cautionary. After the first group of “fortunate” women who have been abducted by the gods, many of the other heroines portend danger for Odysseus, appearing elsewhere in stories that highlight the kind of threat that feminine forces have posed to the hero all along the way. Their potentially dangerous power in turn makes a natural segue to the interlude in Scheria, where Arete takes the lead in speaking to Odysseus, upstaging Alkinous once again, as she did when Odysseus first arrived on the island of the Phaeacians.

The end of the interlude takes us to the heart of the katabasis , where Homer’s innovative use of the traditional episode becomes clear. In the encounters with Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax, with their focus on the powerlessness of the once mighty heroes of the Iliad , the poet drives home his point: To save the royal family and kingdom in Ithaka, Odysseus must forsake the tragic obsession with kleos at any cost. He must instead survive, no matter what it costs him and those around him (in the latter case, their lives). Both Agamemnon and Achilles put it succinctly: Do not be like me. Control, of oneself and others, especially women, must be the primary goal. Ajax and the famously excessive Herakles show the dire consequences of failing to control one’s appetites, for revenge, for glory. The underworld is always a useful laboratory for a storyteller, where the true consequences of a hero’s acts in the world of the living, however that world is portrayed in the story, are tested against the ultimate reality that awaits all mortals. In the world of the Odyssey , only heroes like Odysseus can ultimately triumph. It is fitting that Odysseus can reanimate the twittering ghosts in Hades, so they can talk to him. He is all about living on, however that can happen.

The smothering darkness, Antikleia’s prominent appearance, the catalogue of women, the enfeebled heroes from the Iliad (and perhaps the sexual ambiguity of Teiresias), all signal that the underworld, as the Greeks would have seen it, is a feminized milieu, a land of women. This is not a place where heroes can win kleos , claiming a place in the stories that live on after death. Like the island of Calypso, Hades exists in a kind of stasis, out of time. For Odysseus in particular, Hades is his mother’s home, whereas his mission is to restore his father’s home in Ithaka, something Achilles cannot do for Peleus. In this sense, the underworld episode repeats a dominant theme in the return story of Odysseus, as a masculine hero penetrates a feminized milieu and effects the release of Odysseus: Hermes invades Calypso’s island and gets Odysseus released; Odysseus then arrives on Scheria as an anonymous stranger, works his way into the good graces of the effete—and in the view of the Greeks, femininized—Phaeacians with his athletic prowess and beguiling storytelling, and wins a ride home to Ithaka; he visits the island of Polyphemus, enters the womblike cave as “Nobody,” wields the phallic stake and emerges as Odysseus; with the help of Hermes, he avoids becoming another of Circe’s pet animals, then enters Hades, a feminized realm, and emerges unscathed; finally, Odysseus, in disguise, will penetrate the royal palace in Ithaka, a chaotic place lacking in masculine authority, and release the true version of himself by killing the suitors.

Bassi, K. 1999. “ Nostos, Domos, and the Architecture of the Ancient Stage.” South Atlantic Quarterly 98, 415-449.

Thomas Van Nortwick and Rob Hardy, Homer: Odyssey 5–12 . Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Dickinson College Commentaries, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-947822-17-7.

  • Introduction: The Power of Stories
  • Homeric Language Notes
  • Videos on Homeric Dialect and Scansion
  • Homeric Paradigms
  • Monro's Homeric Grammar (1891)

Based on Allen's Oxford Classical Text

Close readings of each section by distinguished Homeric scholar Thomas Van Nortwick

Explanations of grammar and the Homeric dialect by Rob Hardy, with hyperlinks to reference resources

Vocabulary Lists

Including full dictionary form and English definitions for all words not included in the DCC Core Ancient Greek Vocabulary

The Underworld Adventure of Aeneas in The Aeneid

Book VI Aeneid

Getty Images / jgaunion

  • Mythology & Religion
  • Figures & Events
  • Ancient Languages
  • American History
  • African American History
  • African History
  • Asian History
  • European History
  • Latin American History
  • Medieval & Renaissance History
  • Military History
  • The 20th Century
  • Women's History
  • M.A., Linguistics, University of Minnesota
  • B.A., Latin, University of Minnesota
" Virgil imbues his Hades, as well as his Elysium, with a substantiated and understandable raison d'etre , and in the process corrects the notions of his predecessor [Homer in the Odyssey ]. For Virgil, the Underworld must be categorized and organized as well as justified: thus the grouping of the souls of his Hades by reason or nature of punishment. " Interaction and Reaction in Virgil and Homer

Underworld Issues

Here are some of the unanswered questions about the mythology of the Underworld that are left at the end of the nekuia (Underworld scene) of Book XI of the Odyssey , by Homer:

  • Why was Elpenor upset that he hadn't been buried?
  • Why was it said that Tiresias, of all mortals, was permitted to keep a clear head about mortal matters?
  • Why were the shades of the eternally tortured, Sisyphus , Tityos, and Tantalus, near each other?

The view of the Underworld presented in the nekuia is alien from modern views of death. It's hard to understand what went on when one adheres strictly to Judaeo-Christian visions of Hell.

On this page and the next are some insights into the Homeric Underworld, based on references to Vergil. The Aeneid , by Vergil (or Virgil), was written many centuries after Homer's Odyssey. Despite a few centuries, Vergil is chronologically closer to Homer than we are. Vergil is a good model also because he deliberately patterned his work on Homer and elaborated on it, and he lived in a milieu where Homer's writing was still very much a part of the common culture since Homer was at the heart of the routine education of children. Therefore, Vergil tells us something about the Greco-Roman (pagan) Underworld that we should know to understand Homer's nekuia.

" The striking similarities and close contrasts between the Underworlds of the two poets make it painfully obvious that Virgil was strongly affected by the ideas instilled in Homer's text. How exactly he reacted to this "burden," however, and how he attempted to justify his own work and separate it from that of Homer: these are the difficult yet ever-important questions. In re-creating Homer's Hades, and in the process facing up to his predecessor, Virgil exhibits clearly his desire to re-work Homer, to complete and perfect the vision of the earlier poet. " Interaction and Reaction in Virgil and Homer

Reasons for Going to the Underworld

Homer Odysseus goes to the Underworld for help getting home. Vergil Aeneas goes to pay a duty call on his dead father Anchises.

Underworld Guidance

Homer The help Odysseus seeks comes from the prophet, Tiresias, in the Underworld and the sorceress, Circe, among the living. Vergil Among the living, Aeneas seeks the guidance of the Sibyl at Cumae, a priestess of Apollo who speaks inspired prophetic utterances. Among the dead, he seeks the counsel of his father.
Homer Circe calms his fears and instructs Odysseus on how to travel. Vergil The Sibyl tells Aeneas how to proceed but warns him that while the trip to Hades is easy, the return voyage is limited to the select favorites of Jupiter. Aeneas must be divinely chosen if he is to return. This isn't all that terrifying a caveat, however, since he will know in advance whether he will be able to make the trip. In order to start the journey, the Sibyl says he must find a golden bough sacred to Proserpine. Should the gods not want him to proceed, he will fail to find it, but he does find it. In the guise of two doves, Venus, Aeneas' mother, guides him.

Unburied Dead

Like Odysseus, Aeneas has a dead companion to bury, but unlike his predecessor, Aeneas must bury him before proceeding to the Underworld because the death has contaminated Aeneas' fleet ( totamque incestat funere classem ). Aeneas does not initially know which of his companions has died. When he finds Misenus dead, he performs the necessary ceremonies.

Misenus lay extended on the shore; Son of the God of Winds: none so renown'd The warrior trumpet in the field to sound; With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms, And rouse to dare their fate in honorable arms. He serv'd great Hector, and was ever near, Not with his trumpet only, but his spear. But by Pelides' arms when Hector fell, He chose Æneas; and he chose as well. Swoln with applause, and aiming still at more, He now provokes the sea gods from the shore; With envy Triton heard the martial sound, And the bold champion, for his challenge, drown'd; Then cast his mangled carcass on the strand: The gazing crowd around the body stand. 162-175

Slightly different from Odysseus, Aeneas has 2 men for whom he must provide funeral rites, but he doesn't find the second until the Sibyl has taken him to the shores of the River Styx, past the companions of Death: Famine, Pestilence, Old Age, Poverty, Fear, Sleep, and Disease ( Curae, Morbi, Senectus, Metus, Fames, Egestas, Letum, Labos, and Sopor ). There, on the shore, Aeneas finds his recently deceased helmsman, Palinurus, who cannot cross over until he is given a proper funeral rites . Proper burial is impossible since he was lost at sea.

  • The Odyssey Book IX - Nekuia, in Which Odysseus Speaks to Ghosts
  • 4 Major Greek Underworld Myths
  • List of Characters in 'The Iliad'
  • The Murderous Cult of Roman Diana and Her Sword-Wielding Priests
  • Polyphemus the Cyclops
  • The Ancient Greek Underworld and Hades
  • The 10 Greatest Heroes of Greek Mythology
  • Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love and Beauty
  • What Were the Elysian Fields in Greek Mythology?
  • A Biography of the Greek God Hades
  • Ulysses (Odysseus)
  • About the Trojan Prince Deiphobus
  • Cannibals in Greek Mythology
  • The Greek God Hades, Lord of the Underworld
  • Heracles Fights Triton
  • Summary of the Iliad Book I

Home — Q&A — Literature — Odyssey — Why Does Odysseus Go To The Underworld?

Why Does Odysseus Go To The Underworld?

In Canto Eleven of the Odyssey, Circe advised Odysseus to go to the underworld before starting his journey to Ithaca to meet Tiresias to consult him and to speak with the spirits. Tiresias is a blind soothsayer from Thebes. Tiresias is in the realm of the dead (Hades) and can predict the future. Odysseus went to the kingdom of Hades to find out Tiresias' prediction about his future. When Odysseus reached the underworld, he met Tiresias who told him that his journey to Ithaca will be very difficult. She told him to slaughter an animal and make the spirits drink from it to make them speak. In this underworld, he met several characters. He met Elpenor, one of his men that died in Circe’s house falling from the roof while he was drunk, he asked him to bury his body. He also met his mother who told him that she died of sorrow on him. When Odysseus encounters Achilles in the underworld, Achilles states, “By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man - some poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive - than rule down here over all the breathless dead”. Achilles statement about the meaningless, grappling reality of the Underworld makes Odysseus realize Achilles contradiction to when he was alive. Achilles always wanted to die young with glory rather than old without any recognition or prestige. Without a doubt, Achilles learns an insight in death that his wrath blinded him to throughout everyday life: nothing matters except forever, not the unimportant contrasts of envious men, not the careless fierceness of a wronged companion. In conclusion, having the guidance and assurance from the spirits of the Underworld gave Odysseus discernment in his decision making.

close

  • A Discussion Of Whether Odysseus Is A Hero
  • A Study of the Characters Odysseus and Poseidon as Depicted in Homer's Odyssey
  • A Study of the Different Influences in the Character of Odysseus
  • "Homegoing" and "The Odyssey": Hope Towards Coming Back
  • A Hero's Journey in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "The Odyssey"
  • A Lesson to Never Give Up in "The Odyssey", a Poem by Homer

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

  • Instructions Followed To The Letter
  • Deadlines Met At Every Stage
  • Unique And Plagiarism Free

why did odysseus visit the underworld

Odysseus’s Descent into the Underworld

By: Alexander Schmid July 11, 2023

Related links:

  • Hobbes's translation of the Odyssey at the OLL
  • More from Alexander Schmid on the Odyssey

Current Posts

Odysseus touches down on the moon

The historic achievement marks the first time a commercial spacecraft has reached the lunar surface. abc news’ andrew dymburt reports., february 23, 2024, what’s next for russia, what comes next after texas school shooting, what's next for abortion rights in america, the new battle for voting rights, how we can build a clean and renewable future, the fight for kyiv, examining extremism in the military, gun violence: an american epidemic, border crisis: what’s happening at the us-mexico border, remembering george floyd: a year of protest, the source of covid-19: what we know, how did the gamestop stock spike on wall street happen, why are people hesitant to trust a covid-19 vaccine, how climate change and forest management make wildfires harder to contain, disparity in police response: black lives matter protests and capitol riot, 2020 in review: a year unlike any other, examined: how putin keeps power, why don’t the electoral college and popular vote always match up, us crosses 250,000 coronavirus deaths, 2nd impeachment trial: what this could mean for trump, presidential transition of power: examined, how donald trump spent his last days as president, how joe biden's inauguration will be different from previous years, belarus’ ongoing protests: examined, trump challenges the vote and takes legal action, 2020’s dnc and rnc are different than any before, what is happening with the usps, voting in 2020 during covid-19, disinformation in 2020, abc news specials on, impact x nightline: on the brink, impact x nightline: unboxing shein, the lady bird diaries, impact x nightline: it's britney, impact x nightline: natalee holloway -- a killer confesses, impact x nightline: who shot tupac, impact x nightline, power trip: those who seek power and those who chase them, the murders before the marathon, the ivana trump story: the first wife, mormon no more, leave no trace: a hidden history of the boy scouts, keeper of the ashes: the oklahoma girl scout murders, the orphans of covid: america's hidden toll, superstar: patrick swayze, the kardashians -- an abc news special, 24 months that changed the world, have you seen this man.

  • Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Why It’s So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon

Two spacecraft have ended up askew on the lunar surface this year. It is easier to tip over in the weaker gravity on the moon than you may imagine.

The Odysseus lander on the moon’s surface, shown at a tilt.

By Kenneth Chang

When the robotic lander Odysseus last month became the first American-built spacecraft to touch down on the moon in more than 50 years, it toppled over at an angle. That limited the amount of science it could do at the lunar surface, because its antennas and solar panels were not pointed in the correct directions.

Just a month earlier, another spacecraft, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, sent by the Japanese space agency, had also tipped during landing, ending up on its head .

Why is there a sudden epidemic of spacecraft rolling on the moon like Olympic gymnasts performing floor routines? Is it really that difficult to land upright there?

On the internet and elsewhere, people pointed to the height of the Odysseus lander — 14 feet from the bottom of the landing feet to the solar arrays at the top — as a contributing factor for its off-kilter touchdown.

Had Intuitive Machines, the maker of Odysseus, made an obvious error in building the spacecraft that way?

The company’s officials provide an engineering rationale for the tall, skinny design, but those internet commenters do have a point.

Something tall falls over more easily than an object that is short and squat. And on the moon, where the pull of gravity is just one-sixth as strong as on Earth, the propensity to tip over is even greater.

This is not a new realization. A half-century ago, Apollo astronauts had firsthand experience as they hopped around on the moon, and sometimes tumbled to the ground.

On the social media site X last week, Philip Metzger, a former NASA engineer who is now a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida, explained the math and the physics of why it is more difficult to remain standing on the moon.

“I’ve actually gone through calculations, and it’s really scary,” Dr. Metzger said. “The side motion that can tip a lander of that size is only a few meters per second in lunar gravity.” (One meter per second is, in everyday American units, a bit more than two miles per hour.)

There are two parts to this question of stability.

The first is static stability. If something is standing at much of an angle, it will fall over if the center of gravity is to the outside of the landing legs.

Here, it turns out the maximum angle of leaning is the same on Earth as it is on the moon. It would be the same on any world, large or small, because gravity cancels out of the equation.

However, the answer changes if the spacecraft is still moving. Odysseus was supposed to land vertically with zero horizontal velocity, but because of problems with the navigation system, it was still moving sideways when it hit the ground.

“Intuition that’s based on Earth is now a liability,” Dr. Metzger said.

He gave the example of trying to push over the refrigerator in your kitchen. “It’s so heavy that a slight push is not going to push it over,” Dr. Metzger said.

But you replace it with a piece of Styrofoam in the shape of a refrigerator, mimicking the weight of a real refrigerator in lunar gravity, “then a very light push will push it over,” Dr. Metzger said.

Assuming the spacecraft remains in one piece, it would rotate at the point of contact where the landing foot touches the ground.

Dr. Metzger’s calculations suggested that for a spacecraft like Odysseus, the landing legs need to be splayed about two and a half times as wide on the moon as on the Earth to counteract the same amount of sideways motion.

If, for example, six feet wide were enough for landing on Earth at the maximum horizontal speed, then the legs would have to be 15 feet apart in order not to tip on the moon at the same sideways speed.

For simplicity of design, the landing legs of Odysseus did not fold up, and the diameter of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that lifted it to space limited how wide the landing legs could spread out.

“So, on the moon, you have to design to keep the sideways velocities very low at touchdown, much lower than you would if landing the vehicle in Earth’s gravity,” Dr. Metzger wrote on X.

I too wondered about the shape of the lander when I visited the Intuitive Machines headquarters and factory in Houston in February last year.

“Why so tall?” I asked.

Steve Altemus, the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, replied that it had to do with the tanks that hold the spacecraft’s liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants.

The oxygen weighs twice as much as the methane, so if the oxygen tank were placed next to the methane tank, the lander would have been unbalanced. Instead, the two tanks were stacked on top of each other.

“That created the height,” Mr. Altemus said.

Scott Manley, who provides commentary about rockets on X and YouTube , noted that Mr. Altemus had led the development of a shorter, squatter lander when he was at NASA a decade ago.

That test lander, named Morpheus, also used methane and oxygen propellants, but the tanks were configured in pairs to keep the weight in balance. It was never meant to fly to space.

In an interview, Mr. Manley said that design would have worked for the Intuitive Machines lander as well but would have made the spacecraft heavier and more complex.

If the spacecraft needed two methane tanks and two oxygen tanks, the spacecraft structure would have needed to be bigger and heavier. The tanks would have been heavier too.

“You’ve got more surface area, so that’s more surface to insulate,” Mr. Manley said. He added that it would also have needed “more plumbing and more valves, more things to go wrong.”

For the landing site in the south pole region, the height of Odysseus offered another advantage. At the bottom of the moon, sunlight shines at low angles, producing long shadows. If Odysseus had remained upright, the solar arrays at the top of the spacecraft would have remained out of shadows longer, generating more power for the mission.

During the visit to Intuitive Machines, Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less.

Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on a 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side.

If the laser instruments had been operating, “We would have nailed the landing,” Mr. Altemus said during a news conference last week

The same concerns will apply for SpaceX’s humongous Starship, which will take two NASA astronauts to the moon’s surface as soon as 2026.

Starship, as tall as a 16-story building, will have to come down perfectly vertically and avoid significant slopes. But those should be solvable engineering challenges, Dr. Metzger said.

“It removes some of the margin of error in your dynamic stability, but it doesn’t remove all the margin of error,” Dr. Metzger said of a tall lander. “The amount of margin that you have left is manageable as long as your other systems on the spacecraft are functioning.”

An earlier version of this article misstated the relative weights of oxygen and methane. Oxygen is twice as heavy as methane, not the reverse.

How we handle corrections

Kenneth Chang has been at The Times since 2000, writing about physics, geology, chemistry, and the planets. Before becoming a science writer, he was a graduate student whose research involved the control of chaos. More about Kenneth Chang

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show  in the coming months.

Voyager 1, the 46-year-old first craft in interstellar space which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth, may have gone dark .

Two spacecraft have ended up askew on the moon this year, illustrating that it’s not so easy to land upright on the lunar surface. Here is why .

What do you call a galaxy without stars? In addition to dark matter and dark energy, we now have dark galaxies  — collections of stars so sparse and faint that they are all but invisible.

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .

'Goodnight, Odie:' Historic Odysseus lunar lander powers down after a week on the moon

"goodnight, odie," intuitive machines said in a thursday post on social media site x. "we hope to hear from you again.".

why did odysseus visit the underworld

The lunar lander Odysseus finally powered down Thursday one week after it became the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since NASA 's Apollo era came to an end five decades ago.

Ground controllers didn't expect the 14-foot-tall cylindrical lander to last nearly as long as it did when telemetry data beamed back to Earth indicated Odysseus had toppled onto its side Feb. 22 after skidding onto the moon's surface. But even from its sideways position, the uncrewed robot – built and operated by the space company Intuitive Machines in Houston – was able to transmit photos and data to Earth during its weeklong stay on the moon.

NASA, which helped finance the mission as its primary customer, has indicated that the data collected by its instruments aboard Odysseus will help as the space agency prepares to send astronauts back to the moon in the years ahead.

The lander, nicknamed "Odie" by its creators, sent its last photo Thursday afternoon before its solar power was depleted and lunar nighttime set in. The team hopes to wake Odysseus back up in about three weeks when the sun returns for solar noon, its highest point in the sky, and provides power-generating rays.

"Goodnight, Odie," Intuitive Machines said in a post Thursday on the social media site X. "We hope to hear from you again."

Odysseus lunar mission: See the best pictures from the lander's historic moon landing

Odysseus is first privately built lander to make it to moon

Odysseus' landing not only returned America to the moon for the first time since 1972, but it also marked the first time a commercial company built a spacecraft that made it to the lunar surface.

The landing, which came a week after Odysseus  launched Feb. 15 aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket , saw Intuitive Machines accomplish a feat that another private company could not. Pittsburgh-based aerospace company Astrobotic Technology had called off its own moon landing attempt about a month earlier when its Peregrine lander began leaking a critical amount of fuel .

After separating from the SpaceX rocket, it took the six-legged Nova-C lander 48 minutes to reach its orbit before it established communication with ground control. The next day, it aced a crucial engine firing test and succeeded in orienting itself in the direction of the moon as it  powered ahead .

Disaster struck, though, when telemetry data seemed to indicate the spacecraft failed to land on its six legs and  instead came down on its side  near  Malapert A , a small crater about 190 miles from the moon's south pole region, where water ice is thought to be abundant.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later confirmed Odysseus' precise position, the southernmost location where any craft has ever landed on the moon, Intuitive Machines said.

Odysseus hit the lunar surface hard upon landing, sending it into a skid as the engines continued to fire. When the engines were throttled down, Odysseus slowly tipped over at a 30-degree angle on what flight controllers believe is a gentle slope.

Before the craft was powered down Thursday, flight controllers in Houston received and shared Odysseus' farewell image captured Feb. 22 that "showcases the crescent Earth in the backdrop, a subtle reminder of humanity’s presence in the universe," Intuitive Machines said.

Future NASA-sponsored moon missions ahead

For NASA, the IM-1 mission has laid the groundwork for the space agency to work with more commercial entities on future space endeavors – including Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission planned for the end of the year.

Intuitive Machines'  IM-1  mission was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. The space agency paid the company $118 million to take its scientific payloads to the moon, which they said yielded valuable insights about the unexplored south polar region.

Water ice in the region would not only help sustain astronauts on the surface, but it also would be a source of hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.

NASA has a budget of  $2.6 billion in contracts  available through 2028 to pay private companies like Intuitive Machines to carry scientific payloads on private robotic landers bound for the moon. The excursions will pave the way for NASA's own  Artemis moon missions,  which will ultimately see the U.S. send astronauts back to the moon to establish a base of operations ahead of trips to Mars .

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

COMMENTS

  1. Underworld in The Odyssey: How It Affects Our Hero

    The Underworld in The Odyssey plays a crucial role in Odysseus' return home to Ithaca as the land of the dead makes our Greek hero realize his responsibilities as a hero, father, and husband. Odysseus visits the Underworld as per Circe's advice to seek the blind prophet Tiresias to acquire the knowledge of safely returning to Ithaca.

  2. What occurs in the Underworld in The Odyssey?

    In Homer 's epic poem The Odyssey, the protagonist Odysseus and his crew visit the Underworld. Their journey is guided by directions from Circe, the sea witch, who instructs them to make a ...

  3. Katabasis

    Odysseus consults the soul of the prophet Tiresias in his katabasis during Book 11 of The Odyssey.. A katabasis or catabasis (Ancient Greek: κατάβασις, romanized: katábasis, lit. 'descent'; from κατὰ (katà) 'down', and βαίνω (baínō) 'go') is a journey to the underworld.Its original sense is usually associated with Greek mythology and Classical mythology more broadly ...

  4. Hades & the Underworld in the Odyssey

    In the ancient Greek epic, the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus is tasked with going to the gates of Hades. The name Hades refers both to the physical underworld, or Hell, and also to God of the ...

  5. The Odyssey Books 10 & 11 Summary & Analysis

    Summary: Book 10. The Achaeans sail from the land of the Cyclops to the home of Aeolus, ruler of the winds. Aeolus presents Odysseus with a bag containing all of the winds, and he stirs up a westerly wind to guide Odysseus and his crew home. Within ten days, they are in sight of Ithaca, but Odysseus's shipmates, who think that Aeolus has ...

  6. The Odyssey Book IX

    XI.628. So Odysseus finally returned to his men and his ship, and sailed away from the Underworld through Oceanus, back to Circe for more refreshment, comfort, a burial, and help to get home to Ithaca. His adventures were far from over. In Book IX of Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus (Ulysses) travels to the Underworld and speaks to ghosts to learn of ...

  7. The Odyssey Book 11 Summary & Analysis

    Analysis. Odysseus continues telling his tale to Alcinous and the Phaeacians. When he and his men reached the entrance to the world of the dead, they did exactly as Circe said: they dug a trench, offered libations, and sacrificed a ewe and a ram. Thousands of ghosts appeared when the blood started flowing. The first ghost that approached them ...

  8. Master of Stories: Odysseus in the Kingdom of the Dead

    In the underworld, Odysseus is first confronted with a great crowd of wives and daughters of princes, whom he interviews one by one, reflecting his anxiety for the purity and success of the household. These women represent the theme of womanhood—some are faithful, some treacherous (unfaithfulness to the marriage bed receives much attention). ...

  9. Book 11

    Summary and Analysis Book 11. The Land of the Dead is near the homes of the Cimmerians, who live "shrouded in mist and cloud" (11.17), never seeing the sun. Odysseus follows Circe's instructions, digging a trench at the site prescribed and pouring libations of milk, honey, mellow wine, and pure water. He ceremoniously sprinkles barley and then ...

  10. The Odyssey Books 12-14 Summary & Analysis

    Analysis: Books 12-13. Like much of The Odyssey, Book 12 generates excitement through the tension between goals and obstacles. Some of these obstacles are simply unpleasant: Odysseus would rather avoid Scylla and Charybdis altogether, but he cannot—they stand in his way, leaving him no choice but to navigate a path through them.

  11. Why did Odysseus go to the Underworld?

    Odysseus went to the underworld to seek advice from the ghost of Theban Teiresias about his return home. Teiresias warned Odysseus that he would face much suffering on his journey home and that he must restrain himself and his companions when they reach the Thrinacian island. He also warned Odysseus that if he harms the flocks of the sun, he ...

  12. Odysseus

    Odysseus, hero of Homer 's epic poem the Odyssey and one of the most frequently portrayed figures in Western literature. According to Homer, Odysseus was king of Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticleia (the daughter of Autolycus of Parnassus), and father, by his wife, Penelope, of Telemachus. (In later tradition, Odysseus was instead the son of ...

  13. 14 Journeys to the Underworld in Greek and Roman Mythology

    6. Persephone. The Return of Persephone, by Frederic Lord Leighton, 1890-91, via The Met Museum. Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess of agriculture, Demeter. According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Zeus allowed Pluto to take Persephone with him into the Underworld ad his bride.

  14. Book 11 Essays

    11.225-270. Odysseus sees the ghosts of famous women. The so-called Catalogue of Heroines, when Odysseus meets the ψύχαι of famous women from mythology (225-332), has long been considered suspect by some classical scholars, who have complained that the content does not seem directly relevant to the main themes of the underworld episode.

  15. How does Odysseus's suffering in the underworld relate to Hercules's

    Expert Answers. When Odysseus goes to the Underworld, one of the last shades he speaks to is that of Hercules. To him, Hercules says, "so you, poor man, work out a cruel task such as I once ...

  16. The Underworld Adventure of Aeneas in The Aeneid

    There, on the shore, Aeneas finds his recently deceased helmsman, Palinurus, who cannot cross over until he is given a proper funeral rites. Proper burial is impossible since he was lost at sea. In Book VI of The Aeneid by Vergil (or Virgil), Aeneas has an underworld adventure like Odysseus in The Odyssey of Homer.

  17. Why Does Odysseus Go To The Underworld?

    In Canto Eleven of the Odyssey, Circe advised Odysseus to go to the underworld before starting his journey to Ithaca to meet Tiresias to consult him and to speak with the spirits. Tiresias is a blind soothsayer from Thebes. Tiresias is in the realm of the dead (Hades) and can predict the future. Odysseus went to the kingdom of Hades to find out ...

  18. Why must Odysseus speak to the blind prophet Teiresias in The Odyssey

    The journey to the underworld of Hades to speak to the dead Theban prophet Teiresias is a command given to Odysseus by the enchantress Circe. Circe, who was initally hostile to Odysseus and his ...

  19. Odysseus's Descent into the Underworld

    Allessandro Allori, Odysseus questions TelemachusApproximately halfway through his journey home from Troy, Odysseus is told that he must descend into the Underworld. Curiously, when Odysseus is told this, his first reaction is to cry (Ody.10.496-500). One might interpret this as indicating Odysseus's simple fear of death because truly

  20. In book 11 of The Odyssey, how does Odysseus access the underworld

    This is how they will get there, then. His ship will take him to the proper place, and, there, Odysseus must secure it and go, on foot, into the Underworld. He must cross the rivers that border it ...

  21. Video Odysseus touches down on the moon

    Odysseus touches down on the moon ... Why don't the Electoral College and popular vote always match up? Oct 29, 2020. 7:08. US crosses 250,000 coronavirus deaths. Nov 18, 2020. 8:14.

  22. Why It's So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon

    When the robotic lander Odysseus last month became the first American-built spacecraft to touch down on the moon in more than 50 years, it toppled over at an angle. That limited the amount of ...

  23. Odysseus lunar lander powers down week after historic moon landing

    The lunar lander Odysseus finally powered down Thursday one week after it became the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since NASA's Apollo era came to an end five decades ago. Ground ...

  24. Who does Odysseus encounter in the Land Of The Dead in The Odyssey

    Quick answer: In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus encounters many people in the Land Of The Dead. They include Elpenor, Epicaste, Theban Tiresias, Agamemnon, Achilles, Minos, Heracles, Tantalus, and ...

  25. In the Odyssey, what does Odysseus sacrifice when he enters the

    When Odysseus enters the underworld he sacrifices a number of sheep. He also promises that upon his safe return to Ithaca, he will sacrifice his best cow and black sheep for Tiresias. As Odysseus ...

  26. Why does Odysseus return to Circe's island after visiting the

    Expert Answers. The shade (ghost or spirit) of Elpenor, one of Odysseus' men whom he spoke to in Hades, begged Odysseus to give him the proper funeral rites. The Greeks believed that a soul ...