Soon as the Hero ceas’d, in answer thus I address’d him: 
Know, O Peleus’ son, Achilles bravest of Grecians,
Seeking Tiresias hither I’ve come, to beg of him counsel
How I may Ithaca reach with its high-ridg’d, cloud-cover’d mountains;
Nor to Achaia I’ve been, nor my foot on the shore of my country
Wretch have I plac’d, whom ever misfortunes pursue; but no mortal
E’er was so blest, as Thou, or ever will be, O Achilles,
For when alive, as a God, we Argives held thee in honor;
Now e’en here, how high above the mighty departed
Thou dost in majesty rise; grieve not though dead, O Achilles.

Soon as these words I’d said, the Shade in answer address’d me: 
Talk not of death to me, in mercy, glorious Odysses,
For on the Earth’s green sod I’d rather toil as the hireling
Of some inglorious wight, and of one as poor as inglorious,
Than over all the dead in Hades reign as a Monarch;
But of my noble boy some tiding give me, I pray thee,
Whether or not he’s fam’d as a gallant leader in battle;
And if aught thou hast heard of good old Peleus, tell me;
Still is he held in dread in Myrmidonian cities,
Or has he lost respect in Hellas-land and in Pthia,
Now old age has robb’d his hands and feet of their vigour? 
Think not an aid so good I’m now in the light of the sun-beam,
As of old time I prov’d on the broad domain of the Trojans,
When, in the Argives aid, I slew the best of their army;
Were I to enter now, as I am, the hall of my father,
Full little dread these hands would wake in the bosoms of any,
Who in that hall do serve, and are kept by fear in obeisance.

Soon as the Hero ceas’d, in answer thus I address’d him: 
Nothing, alas, which regards the good, old Peleus know I;
But the whole tale of thy boy, thy Neoptolemus cherish’d,
I will with truth relate, by thee, great Shade, as commanded: 
I myself had the luck in my own hollow ship to convey him
Forth from Scyros afar with a band of well-greav’d Achaians. 
Ever when round Troy’s town in council grave we assembled
He was the first to rise with a flow of eloquence faultless,
So that Nestor divine and myself confess’d him our master;
But when on Troy’s champain we strove with spear and with buckler
Never amid the crowd you’d have found him or in the phalanx—­
Far in front he advanc’d, in courage shining the foremost,
And full many a man he slew in the rage of the combat;
There’s no need to recount and to name in endless succession
All the renown’d he slew, whilst assisting strongly the Argives;
Let it suffice that with steel he stretch’d Eurypilus lifeless,
Telephos’ hero-son, and around that hero were slaughter’d
All his Ceteian friends, ensnar’d by the smiles of the damsels.