Agamemnon’s Shade and the Price of Homecoming (Homer’s The Odyssey, Book 11 – Part 12)

And Odysseus of many counsels answered him, saying, My lord Alcinous, most notable of all the people, if ye bade me tarry here even for a year, and would speed my convoy and give me splendid gifts, even then I would choose, and better would it be for me to come with a fuller hand to mine own dear country, so I should get more love and worship in the eyes of all men, whoso should see me after I was returned to Ithaca.

And Alcinous answered him, saying, Odysseus, in no wise do we deem thee, that we look on thee, to be a knave or a cheat, even as the dark earth rears many such broadcast, fashioning lies whence none can even see his way therein.

But beauty crowns thy words, and wisdom is within thee, and thy tale, as when a minstrel sings, thou hast told with skill, the weary woes of all the Argives and of thine own self.

But come, declare me this, and plainly tell it all.

Didst thou see any of thy godlike company who went up at the same time with thee to Ilios, and there met their doom? Behold, the night is of great length, unspeakable, and the time for sleep in the hall is not yet.

Tell me, therefore, of those wondrous deeds, and I could abide even till the bright dawn, so long as thou couldst endure to rehearse me these woes of thine in the hall.

And Odysseus of many counsels answered him, saying, My lord Alcinous, most notable of all the people, there is a time for many words, and there is a time for sleep.

But if thou art eager still to listen, I would not for my part grudge to tell thee of other things more pitiful still, even the woes of my comrades, those that perished afterward.

For they had escaped with their lives from the dread war cry of the Trojans, but perished in returning by the will of an evil woman.

Now, when the holy Persephone had scattered this way and that the spirits of the womenfolk, thereafter came the soul of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, sorrowing.

And round him others were gathered, the ghosts of them who had died with him in the house of Aegisthus and met their doom.

And he knew me straightaway when he had drank the dark blood, yea, and he wept aloud, and shed big tears as he stretched forth his hands in his longing to reach me.

But it might not be, for he had now no steadfast strength nor power at all in moving, such as was aforetime in his supple limbs.