Book XI. This account had been heard with breathless interest by the Phaeacians, whose king now implored Ulysses to go on.  The hero then described his interview with the ghost of Agamemnon,—­slain by his wife and her paramour on his return from Troy,—­who predicted his safe return home, and begged for tidings of his son Orestes, of whom Ulysses knew nought.  Ulysses next beheld Achilles, who, although ruler of the dead, bitterly declared he would rather be the meanest laborer on earth than monarch among shades!

  “Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom,
  Nor think vain words (he cried) can ease my doom. 
  Rather I’d choose laboriously to bear
  A weight of woes and breathe the vital air,
  A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread,
  Than reign the sceptered monarch of the dead.”

To comfort him, Ulysses described how bravely his son had fought at the taking of Troy, where he had been one of the men in the wooden horse.  The only shade which refused to approach Ulysses was that of Ajax, who still resented his having won the armor of Achilles.  Besides these shades, Ulysses beheld the judges of Hades and the famous culprits of Tartarus.  But, terrified by the “innumerable nation of the dead” crowding around him, he finally fled in haste to his vessel, and was soon wafted back to Circe’s shore.

Book XII. There Ulysses buried his dead companion and, after describing his visit to Hades, begged his hostess’ permission to depart.  Circe consented, warning him to beware of the Sirens, of the threatening rocks, of the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis on either side of the Messenian Strait, and of the cattle of Trinacria, giving him minute directions how to escape unharmed from all these perils.

Morning having come, Ulysses took leave of Circe, and, on nearing the reef of the Sirens, directed his men to bind him fast to the mast, paying no heed to his gestures, after he had stopped their ears with soft wax.  In this way he heard, without perishing, the Sirens’ wonderful song, and it was only when it had died away in the distance and the spell ceased that his men unbound him from the mast.

  “Thus the sweet charmers warbled o’er the main;
  My soul takes wing to meet the heavenly strain;
  I give the sign, and struggle to be free: 
  Swift row my mates, and shoot along the sea;
  New chains they add, and rapid urge the way,
  Till, dying off, the distant sounds decay: 
  Then scudding swiftly from the dangerous ground,
  The deafen’d ears unlock’d, the chains unbound.”