“Ay, trust them not,” replied Agamemnon bitterly, “Never give thy heart into a woman’s keeping; she will rifle thy very soul’s flower, and then laugh thee to scorn.  But why do I speak thus to thee?  Thou hast indeed a treasure in thy wife; no wiser head, no truer heart, than hers.  Happy art thou, and sweet the refuge which is prepared for thee after all thy toils, Well I remember the day when we set sail from Greece, and how fondly thou spakest of her, thy young bride, with her babe at her breast.  Now he will be a tall youth, and with what joy will he look into the eyes of his father, whom he was then too young to know!”

After that Odysseus was silent, his mind full of sweet and anxious thoughts.  Meanwhile other familiar forms had drawn near, the spirits of warriors renowned, whose very names were as a battle-cry when they dwelt on earth:  Achilles, Patroclus, and Antilochus, and farther off, looming dimly in the darkness, the gigantic shade of Ajax.  Achilles was the first to speak.  “Son of Laertes,” he said, “thou man of daring, hast thou reached the limit of thy rashness, or wilt thou go yet further?  Are there no perils left for thee in the land of the living that thou must invade the very realm of Hades, the sunless haunts of the dead?”

“I came to inquire of Teiresias,” answered Odysseus, “concerning my return to Ithaca.  All my life I am a bondslave to toil and woe; but thou, Achilles, wast happy in thy life, honoured as a god by all the sons of Hellas; and now thou art happy, even in death, for honour waits on thy footsteps still.”

“Tell me not of comfort in death,” replied Achilles.  “Rather would I breathe the air of heaven, yea, though I were thrall to a man of little substance, than reign as king over all the shades of the dead.  But give me some news of my son, Neoptolemus.  Came he to fight with the Trojans after I was gone, and did he acquit him well?  And knowest thou aught of my father, Peleus?  Lives he still in honour and comfort among my people, or has he been driven into beggary by violent men, now that he is old and I am not near to aid him?  Oh, for an hour of life, with such might as was mine when I fought in the van for Greece?  Then should they pay a bitter reckoning, whosoever they be that wrong him and keep him from his own.”

“Of Peleus,” answered Odysseus, “I have heard nothing, but of thy son, Neoptolemus, I can tell thee much, for I myself brought him from Scyros to fight in Helen’s cause, and thereafter my eye was ever upon him, to mark how he bore himself.  In council none could vie with him, save only Nestor and myself; ne’er saw I so rare a wit in so young a head.  And when the Greeks were arrayed in battle against the Trojans he was never seen to hang back, but fought ever in the van among the foremost champions, like a mighty man of war.  Nor was it only in the clamour and heat of war that he proved his mettle; for in that perilous hour when we lay ambushed in the wooden horse, when the stoutest hearts among us quailed, he never changed colour, but sat fingering his spear and sword, waiting for the signal to go forth to the assault.  And after we had sacked the lofty towers of Troy he received a goodly portion of the spoil, and a special prize of honour, and so departed, untouched by point or blade, to his father’s house.”