Odyssey: A Daily Odyssey through Homer’s The Odyssey
Aug 3, 2026 · 13 min · 8 segments
The dead do not come in silence. They speak with memory, regret, and unfinished need. In *The Odyssey*, Book 11 continues as Elpenor answers Odysseus from beyond the grave, recounting the drunken…
Landon SolanoHost
So spake I, and with a moan he answered me, saying, "Son of Laertes, of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, an evil doom of some god was my bane in wine out of measure.
And now I pray thee in the name of those whom we left, who are no more with us, thy wife and thy sire, who cherished thee when as yet thou wert a little one, and Telemachus.
Leave me not unwept and unburied as thou goest hence, nor turn thy back upon me, lest haply I bring on thee the anger of the gods.
Nay, burn me there with mine armor, all that is mine, and pile me a barrow on the shore of the gray sea, the grave of a luckless man, that even men unborn may hear my story.
Fulfill me this, and plant upon the barrow mine oar wherewith I rowed the days of my life, while yet I was among my fellows." Even so he spake, and I answered him, saying, "All this, luckless man, will I perform for thee and do." Even so we twain were sitting holding sad discourse, I on the one side, stretching forth my sword over the blood, while on the other the ghost of my friend told all his tale.
Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus, the great-hearted, whom I left alive when I departed for the sacred Ilios.
At the sight of her I wept, and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Tiresias.
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So spake I, and with a moan he answered me, saying, "Son of Laertes, of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, an evil doom of some god was my bane in wine out of measure.
And now I pray thee in the name of those whom we left, who are no more with us, thy wife and thy sire, who cherished thee when as yet thou wert a little one, and Telemachus.
Leave me not unwept and unburied as thou goest hence, nor turn thy back upon me, lest haply I bring on thee the anger of the gods.
Nay, burn me there with mine armor, all that is mine, and pile me a barrow on the shore of the gray sea, the grave of a luckless man, that even men unborn may hear my story.
Fulfill me this, and plant upon the barrow mine oar wherewith I rowed the days of my life, while yet I was among my fellows." Even so he spake, and I answered him, saying, "All this, luckless man, will I perform for thee and do." Even so we twain were sitting holding sad discourse, I on the one side, stretching forth my sword over the blood, while on the other the ghost of my friend told all his tale.
Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus, the great-hearted, whom I left alive when I departed for the sacred Ilios.
At the sight of her I wept, and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Tiresias.
