added that all who attacked them would perish, and that, even if he
should escape death and return home, he would have to slay his wife's
insolent suitors before he could rest in peace.

After this had been accomplished, Ulysses was to resume his wanderings
until he came to a land where the oar he carried would be mistaken for
a winnowing fan. There he was to offer a propitiatory sacrifice to
Neptune, after which he would live to serene old age and die
peacefully among his own people. His conversation with Tiresias
finished, Ulysses interviewed his mother--of whose demise he had not
been aware--and conversed with the shades of sundry women noted for
having borne sons to gods or to famous heroes.

_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