Odyssey: A Daily Odyssey through Homer’s The Odyssey
Jun 28, 2026 · 8 min · 7 segments
The unthinkable voyage is given form at last. What was terror without shape becomes a path marked step by step. In *The Odyssey*, Book 10, Circe answers Odysseus’ despair by laying out the precise…
Landon SolanoHost
🎵 🎵 so spake i and the fair goddess answered me anon son of laertes of the seed of zeus odysseus of many devices nay trouble not thyself for want of a guide by thy ship abiding but set up the mast and spread abroad the white sails and sit thee down and the breeze of the north wind will bear thy vessel on her way.
But when thou hast now sailed in thy ship across the stream Osinius, where there is a waste shore and the groves of Persephone, even tall poplar trees and willows that shed their fruit before the season, there beach thy ship by deep eddying Oceanus.
Thereby into Acheron flows Pyrophlegion and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx, and there is a rock in the meeting of two roaring waters.
So hero, draw nigh thereto, as I command thee, and dig a trench as it were a cubit in length and breadth, and about it pour a drink offering to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with sweet wine.
and for the third time with water, and sprinkle white meal thereon, and entreat with many prayers the strengthless heads of the dead, and promise that on thy return to Ithaca thou wilt offer in thy halls a barren heifer, the best thou hast, and wilt fill the pyre with treasure, and wilt sacrifice a part to Tiresias alone, a black ram without spot, the fairest of your flock.
But when thou hast with prayers made supplication to the lordly races of the dead, Then offer up a ram and a black ewe, bending their heads towards Erebus, and thyself turn thy back, with thy face set for the shore of the river.
Thereafter thou shalt call to thy company and command them to flay the sheep, which even now lie slain.
by thy pitiless sword, and to consume them with fire, and to make prayer to the gods, to mighty Hades, and to dread Persephone, and thyself draw the sharp sword from thy thigh, and sit there, suffering not the strengthless heads of the dead, to draw nigh to the blood, ere thou hast word of Tiresias.
He will surely declare to thee the way and the measure of thy path, and as touching thy return, how thou mayest go over the teeming deep.
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🎵 🎵 so spake i and the fair goddess answered me anon son of laertes of the seed of zeus odysseus of many devices nay trouble not thyself for want of a guide by thy ship abiding but set up the mast and spread abroad the white sails and sit thee down and the breeze of the north wind will bear thy vessel on her way.
But when thou hast now sailed in thy ship across the stream Osinius, where there is a waste shore and the groves of Persephone, even tall poplar trees and willows that shed their fruit before the season, there beach thy ship by deep eddying Oceanus.
Thereby into Acheron flows Pyrophlegion and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx, and there is a rock in the meeting of two roaring waters.
So hero, draw nigh thereto, as I command thee, and dig a trench as it were a cubit in length and breadth, and about it pour a drink offering to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with sweet wine.
and for the third time with water, and sprinkle white meal thereon, and entreat with many prayers the strengthless heads of the dead, and promise that on thy return to Ithaca thou wilt offer in thy halls a barren heifer, the best thou hast, and wilt fill the pyre with treasure, and wilt sacrifice a part to Tiresias alone, a black ram without spot, the fairest of your flock.
But when thou hast with prayers made supplication to the lordly races of the dead, Then offer up a ram and a black ewe, bending their heads towards Erebus, and thyself turn thy back, with thy face set for the shore of the river.
Thereafter thou shalt call to thy company and command them to flay the sheep, which even now lie slain.
by thy pitiless sword, and to consume them with fire, and to make prayer to the gods, to mighty Hades, and to dread Persephone, and thyself draw the sharp sword from thy thigh, and sit there, suffering not the strengthless heads of the dead, to draw nigh to the blood, ere thou hast word of Tiresias.
He will surely declare to thee the way and the measure of thy path, and as touching thy return, how thou mayest go over the teeming deep.
