wed up,
and the earth lay dry as the desert sand at his feet. And nodding
boughs of trees drooped, heavy with delicious fruit, over his head;
but when he put forth his hand to pluck the fruit, a furious gust of
wind swept it away far beyond his reach. And yet another famous
criminal he saw, Sisyphus, the most cunning and most covetous of the
sons of men. He was toiling painfully up a steep mountain's side,
heaving a weighty stone before him, and straining with hands and feet
to push it to the summit. But every time he approached the top, the
stone slipped through his hands, and thundered and smoked down the
mountain's side till it reached the plain.

Other wonders and terrors might still have been revealed, but as that
hardy watcher stood at his post a great tumult and commotion arose in
that populous city of the dead, and the whole multitude of its ghostly
denizens came rushing towards the trench, as if resolved to expel the
daring intruder. Odysseus' heart failed him when he saw the air thick
with hovering spectres, who glared with dreadful eyes, and filled the
air with the sound of their unearthly voices. Turning his back on that
place of horror he made his way slowly towards the shore, where he
found his men anxiously awaiting him.

The Sirens; Scylla and Charybdis; Thrinacia

I

Following the same course as on his outward voyage, Odysseus put in
again at the island of Circe, where his first duty was to bury the
body of the young Elpenor, whose ghost he had seen in an attitude of
mute reproach at the threshold of Hades. They were again received with
all hospitality by Circe.

After the evening meal Circe drew Odysseus apart, and questioned him
on all that he had seen and heard on that strange journey, from which
he had returned, as she said, like one ransomed from death. And when
he had told his story she instructed him as to the course which he had
to steer on leaving the island, and warned him against the manifold
perils of the voyage.

"First," said she, "thou wilt come to the rocks of the Sirens, maidens
of no mortal race, who beguile the ears of all that hear them. Woe to
him who draws near to listen to their song! He shall never see the
faces of his wife and children again, or feel their arms about his
neck, but there he shall perish, and there his bones shall rot.
Therefore take heed, and when thou drawest near the place stop the
ears of thy men with wax, and bid them bind thee fast with cords