CLAS 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Thrinacia, Odysseus, Eumaeus
Document Summary
Lecture 23 the trojan war and the odyssey. Odysseus goes into hades and talks to achilles, his mother and tiresias. Gave odysseus a warning, when you get to the island of thrinacia, do not eat the cattle you find on the island. On the way back to ithaca odysseus and his men run into the sirens: the sirens are threat to sailors because of their call. Their call lure anyone who hears it towards them draws sailors towards the rocky shores of their islands where their ships get destroyed and the sirens then eat the sailors as they are in the water. Essentially anyone who hears the song of the sirens dies: odysseus wants to encounter the sirens. He tells his men to bind up their ears with wax so that they cannot hear the call. He then wants them to tie him up to the mast of the ship so that he can hear the sirens cry.