[Illustration: _And the dead came to his banquet_.]
This prophecy, ambiguously delivered, was all that Tiresias was empowered
to unfold, or else there was no longer place for him; for now the souls of
the other dead came flocking in such numbers, tumultuously demanding the
blood, that freezing horror seized the limbs of the living Ulysses, to see
so many, and all dead, and he the only one alive in that region. Now his
mother came and lapped the blood, without restraint from her son, and now
she knew him to be her son, and inquired of him why he had come alive to
their comfortless habitations. And she said that affliction for Ulysses's
long absence had preyed upon her spirits, and brought her to the grave.
Ulysses's soul melted at her moving narration, and forgetting the state of
the dead, and that the airy texture of disembodied spirits does not admit
of the embraces of flesh and blood, he threw his arms about her to clasp
her: the poor ghost melted from his embrace, and, looking mournfully upon
him, vanished away.
Then saw he other females: Tyro, who when she lived was the paramour of
Neptune, and by him had Pelias and Neleus. Antiope, who bore two like sons
to Jove, Amphion and Zethus, founders of Thebes. Alcmena, the mother of
Hercules, with her fair daughter, afterwards her daughter-in-law, Megara.
There also Ulysses saw Jocasta, the unfortunate mother and wife of
Oedipus; who, ignorant of kin, wedded with her son, and when she had
discovered the unnatural alliance, for shame and grief hanged herself.
Pages:
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39