Sent by Circe to Oceanus and the house of Hades, Odysseus dug the pit of blood and summoned the shades — Elpenor unburied, Tiresias prophesying, Anticleia dying of longing, Agamemnon warning against treacherous wives, Achilles preferring the life of a slave on earth, and Ajax still wrathful for the arms of Achilles.1
Elpenor's shade
Elpenor had fallen drunk from Circe's roof and was left unburied when the company sailed. His shade came first among the dead, begging Odysseus to return to Aeaea, burn his body with his armour, and heap the mound with a pillar and oar — so he might not be nameless among the shades.2
Tiresias
The seer Tiresias alone kept understanding among the dead. He told Odysseus that Poseidon's wrath would not end until he reached a land so far from the sea that men would take the oar on his shoulder for a winnowing-fan — and he warned sternly against the cattle of the Sun on Thrinacia, foretelling shipwreck and a lonely homecoming if the herds were touched.3
Anticleia
Odysseus held back his own mother Anticleia until Tiresias had spoken. When he let her drink of the blood, she told him she had died not of sickness nor of gentle Artemis' shafts, but of longing for him and of grief for his name — and that Penelope still waited in the halls, though the suitors consumed his substance.4
The heroines
Persephone sent up the shades of famous women — Tyro, Antiope, Alcmene, Megara, Epicaste mother of Oedipus, Chloris, Leda, Iphimedeia, and others — and Odysseus questioned each in turn until Anticleia withdrew and he saw yet more heroes approaching the pit.5
Agamemnon's warning
Agamemnon's shade came with those who died at Troy. He told how Clytemnestra and Aegisthus had slain him in the bath, how Cassandra died with him — then warned Odysseus that no death is so cruel as when a wife plots against the husband who trusted her. Yet he asked after Penelope and praised her faithfulness, unlike his own wife.6
Achilles and Ajax
Achilles came with Patroclus, Antilochus, and Ajax — and Odysseus told the greatest of the Achaeans how his son Neoptolemus had borne himself at Troy. Achilles answered that he would rather be a slave on earth than king of all the dead. Alone of all the shades, Ajax son of Telamon stood apart, still wrathful for the victory of Odysseus in the contest for Achilles' arms, and would not speak though Odysseus pleaded.7
Minos and Heracles
Odysseus saw Minos son of Zeus holding a golden sceptre, judging the dead; and the phantom of Heracles — his own self in the underworld, for the god on Olympus is another — with the bow and sword belt, driving the dead before him as though they were cattle. Then the host of shades clamoured, and Odysseus fled in terror back to the ship.8
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How the centuries saw it
Odysseus and the shade of Tiresias (Attic red-figure pelike, detail)
Apulian Painter, c. 330 BC
Odyssey Book 11 on a South Italian vase — the pit of blood, the seer who alone kept understanding among the dead, and the prophecy of Poseidon's wrath and the cattle of the Sun.
Tiresias Appears to Ulysses During the Sacrifice
Henry Fuseli, c. 1780–1785
Over the blood-trench the blind seer rises like smoke given shape, and the hero shrinks back sword in hand — the moment the living must ask the dead the way home.