Tiresias
By jazz
- 625 reads
This is my place at the end of the world; I sit here and wait for my
calling.
For this is Hades, the underworld, and my home. It is long ago that
Charron ferried me across here and here I wait.
I have been told that a warrior requests my sight! What sort of sight
is it I wonder? For years before my death I was blind, the blind seer
was what they all called me.
I lived too long among the mortals and grew too accustomed to their
ways. The more sensible of them knew, of course, that they were merely
sports for the gods of Olympus. Still, though, they went about their
ways, fighting, arguing. The saddest spectacle of all was Helen taken
to Troy by Paris.
I recall that day well, the fury of the Greeks knew no bounds and the
gods allowed the largest army in the mortal world to be assembled, led
by king Agamemnon and Helen's wronged husband Menelaus.
For nine long, arduous years the city of Troy was besieged and the
Greeks had to resort to duplicity to gain entry. However, it was what
the gods willed and we must obey them.
The warriors have returned, most of them anyway. Victory, though,
brought grandeur and misery. Agamemnon was brutally murdered by
Clytemnestra. Given a new shirt to wear she had sewn the arms and neck
together and as the mighty king struggled; the very one who had
commanded the army of thousands and been a brave warrior on the shores
of Troy, he was hacked to death with an axe.
He does not sit here now as befits one of such noble birth. He is
fortunate enough to sit at Olympus with his beautiful daughter
Iphigenia, who so fortunately escaped sacrifice at the waveless
Aulis.
I await my warrior who wishes my advice, I have spoken to Circe and she
tells me to expect to be summoned by a warrior but whom? I am patient
and I can wait. Time means nothing here in Hades. What do we do with
time anyway when the gods bid us? The blind furies take mortals' lives
when they please, it is all a chance?for some live and some die.
My ability to see to the future becomes blunted now in the underworld
but now I see someone digging a pit and filling it with the blood of
sacrificed animals as is the old way. I must go for he has summoned
me.
I can now see who it is; the great warrior Odysseus seeks my advice,
what an honour for this ghost of a man.
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