age among thy happy people."

[Footnote 1: The sun god.]

[Footnote 2: The very words of Polyphemus, p. 93.]

[Footnote 3: The oar.]

When he had thus spoken Teiresias vanished into the darkness; and one
by one the spirits came up to the trench, as Odysseus suffered them,
and having drunk of the blood obtained strength to speak and answer
his questions. First among them was the spirit of his mother,
Anticleia, daughter of Autolycus, who had been hovering near during
his conference with Teiresias. When she had drunk she said: "Whence
comest thou, my son? Art thou still wandering on thy long voyage from
Troy, or hast thou been in Ithaca, and seen thy wife?"

"Nay, mother," answered Odysseus, "I am wandering still, still
treading the path of woe, since the day when I followed Agamemnon to
Troy. But tell me now, and answer me truly, what was the manner of thy
death? Came it slowly, by long disease, or did Artemis lay thee low in
a moment with a painless arrow from her bow?[1] And tell me of my
father and my son whom I left in Ithaca; do they still hold my
possessions, or hath some other thrust them with violence from my
seat? Tell me also of Penelope, my wedded wife, whether she abides
steadfast and guards my goods, or whether she is gone to cheer some
other man's heart."

[Footnote 1: Sudden death was ascribed to Artemis or Apollo.]

"Steadfast indeed she is," replied Anticleia, "and wondrous patient of
heart; all her thoughts are ever of thee. No one has yet usurped thy
place in Ithaca, but Telemachus still reaps thy fields and sits down
to meat with the noblest in the land. As to thy father, he comes no
more to the town, but dwells continually on his farm. He lives not
delicately, as princes use, but is clad in sorry raiment, and sleeps
in the winter among the ashes of the hearth with his thralls, and in
summer on a bed of dry leaves in his vineyard. There he lies forsaken,
heavy with years and sorrows, mourning for thee. And in such wise also
death came upon me, neither by wasting sickness nor by the gentle
shafts of Artemis, but my sore longing for thee, Odysseus, and for thy
sweet counsels, at last broke my heart."

A flood of tenderness overpowered Odysseus at these sad words, and he
sprang forward with arms outstretched to clasp his mother to his
breast. Thrice he essayed to embrace her, and thrice his arms closed
on emptiness,[1] while that ghostly presence still flitted before him
like a shadow or a drea