ISBN: 9780217227728

[ED: Softcover], [PU: Cambridge Scholars Publishing], Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This… Meer...

[ED: Softcover], [PU: Cambridge Scholars Publishing], Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. THE TALE CONTINUED?THE VISIT TO THE SHADES. The eleventh book of the poem, in which Ulysses goes down to the Shades to consult the Dead, has been considered by some good authorities as a later interpolation into the tale. The solemn grandeur of the whole episode is remarked as out of character with the light and easy narrative into which it has been woven. Be this as it may, the passage has a strong interest in itself. It is the solitary glimpse which we have of the poet's creed as to the state of disembodied spirits. It is at least not in contradiction to the views which are disclosed?scantily enough?by the author of the Iliad, though here we find them considerably more developed. It is a gloomy picture at the best and we almost cease to wonder at the shrinking from death which is so often displayed by the Homeric heroes, when we find their future state represented as something almost worse, to an active mind, than annihilation. " Never the Sun that giveth light to men Looks down upon them with his golden eye, Or when he climbs the starry arch, or "when Slope toward the earth he wheels adown the sky But sad night weighs upon them wearily." They reached the spot, says Ulysses, described to him at parting by Circe, where the dark rivers Acheron and Cocytus mix at the entrance into Hades. The incantations which she had carefully enjoined were duly made a black ram and ewe were offered to the powers of darkness, and their blood poured into the trench which he had dug?" a cubit every way." " Forthwith from Erebus a phantom crowd Loomed forth, the shadowy people of the dead, ? Old men, with load of earthly anguish bowed, Brides in their bloom cut off, and youths unwed, Virgins whose tender eyelids then first shed True sorrow, men with gory arms renowned, P...Versandfertig in 6-10 Tagen, [SC: 0.00]<

ISBN: 9780217227728

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ISBN: 0217227724