hile the blood of the sacrificed animals hints the principle of
vitality. When the disembodied spirit tastes these elements, it gets a
kind of body again, sufficient at least to be able to speak. That the
sheep must be black is curiously symbolical, hinting the harmony
expressed in the color of the animal and of Hades.

The souls "came thronging out of Erebus," eager to communicate. This
aspiration must thus be their general condition; they wish to hear from
us as much as we wish to hear from them. Hence there must be a
selection, which involves a new rite, the flaying and the burning of
the carcasses of the animals along with "prayer to Pluto and
Proserpine" king and queen of the Underworld. Yet this choice requires
activity from the hero, who has to draw his sword and keep off the
crowd of spirits, till the right one comes, the Theban seer Tiresias.

Thus is the Past linked into the Present, which to receive the
communications of the departed by means of a ritual, in whose symbolism
we see the effort of the living to know the Beyond. Now occurs a
curious incident: Ulysses beholds his companion Elpenor, dead, yet
unburned, and hears his first message. This soul can still speak, and
be seen; it hovers half way between the two worlds, having still a
material phase of the body which has not yet been burnt. Elpenor tells
the nature of his death: "some deity and too much wine" did the
thing--a combination which is usually effective in Homer. An unhappy
condition, suspended between matter and spirit; he begs that it be
ended. But the poor fellow has another request which shows the longing
of the humblest Greek--the longing for the immortality of fame. "Make a
tomb beside the seashore for me, an unfortunate man, of whom posterity
may hear." Thus he too will live in the mouths of men; wherein we catch
possibly a gleam of Homer himself, who has certainly erected an
imperishable monument to Elpenor, voicing the aspiration of the soul
even in Hades.

It is the hint of a deep maternal instinct that Anticleia, "my mother
deceased" comes at once to the blood and wishes communication. But
Ulysses must first hear Tiresias, the strongest ties of Family are
subordinate to the great purpose. Surely all are now ready to listen to
the Past with its message; here comes its spirit, voiced with a fresh
power.

II. We have just had the Present, and in the case of Elpenor, the
immediate Past, which is not yet wholly gone. Next we take a lea