BOOK XXIV.[1]
ARGUMENT.
But Cyllenian Mercury called out the souls of the suitors; and he held in his hands a beautiful golden rod, with which he soothes the eyes of men whom he wishes, and upraises them again when sleeping. With this indeed he drove them, moving them on; and they gibbering[2] followed. And as when bats in the recess of a divine cave flit about gibbering, when one falls from the link[3] off the rock, and they cling to one another: so they went together gibbering, and harmless Mercury led them down the murky[4] ways. And they came near the streams of the ocean and the Leucadian rock, and they went near the gates of the Sun, and the people of dreams: and they quickly came to the meadow of Asphodel, where dwell the souls, the images of the dead. And they found the soul of Achilles, son of Peleus, and of Patroclus, and of blameless Antilochus, and of Ajax, who was the most excellent in form and person of the other Greeks, after the blameless son of Peleus. Thus they were assembled round him: but the soul of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, came near sorrowing; and the others were assembled around him, as many as had died with him in the house of Ægisthus, and had drawn on their fate.
- ↑ The objections raised against the authenticity of this portion of the Odyssey, are carefully detailed in the notes of Clarke and Loewe.
- ↑ I am indebted to the Old Translator for this word. Eustathius well observes: ἰστέον δὲ ὅτι μυθικῶς ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἐπελέχθη τρισμός, οἵα λόγου μὲν ἐνάρθρου ἐστερημέναις, ἄλλως δὲ θορυβούσαις. A low, wailing, inarticulate sound must be understood.
- ↑ i. e. the string of bats, which they form by clinging to one another, τοῦ τῶν νυκτεριδῶν ἀθροίσματος. Hesych. s. v. ὁρμαθοῦ.
- ↑ "Situ obsita." See Gataker on Anton. iv. 6. So Hesiod. Op. 152, βῆσαν δ' εὐρώεντα δόμον κρυεροῦ ἀΐδαο. Cf. Alberti on Hesych. t. i. p. 1528.
