Odysseus and his crew return to Aeaea and give Elpenor the burial he asked for, planting his oar on the grave mound. Circe welcomes them back, telling them, "you will have died twice, to other people's once," since they have already been to the land of the dead while alive. Then she warns Odysseus of the dangers ahead. First come the Sirens, who sit in a meadow surrounded by the bones of men and lure sailors to their deaths with their song. Odysseus must plug his men's ears with beeswax, and if he wishes to listen, he must have himself bound to the mast. Beyond them lie two routes. One passes the Wandering Rocks, which only the Argo has ever passed safely. The other runs between two cliffs. On one lives Scylla, a monster with twelve feet and six long necks, each with a head and three rows of teeth, who snatches sailors from passing ships. Opposite her, under a fig tree, Charybdis sucks down the sea three times a day and spews it out again. Circe advises him to sail closer to Scylla: it is better to lose six men than the whole ship. Finally she repeats Teiresias's warning not to touch the cattle of the Sun.
They set sail, and as they near the Sirens' island, the wind dies. Odysseus softens wax and plugs his crew's ears, and they tie him to the mast. The Sirens sing to him, promising knowledge of everything that happened at Troy and on the earth. Odysseus longs to go to them and signals for his men to untie him, but Perimedes and Eurylochus bind him more tightly, as instructed, until they are past. Then they approach the strait. Odysseus sees the spray and hears the roar of Charybdis, and the terrified men drop their oars. He orders the helmsman to steer away from the whirlpool. But he does not tell them about Scylla, fearing they would hide below deck and stop rowing. Forgetting Circe's advice, he puts on armor and takes two spears to fight. As everyone stares in horror at Charybdis, Scylla reaches down and seizes six of the best men, who cry out to Odysseus as she eats them at the mouth of her cave. He calls it the most pitiful sight he has ever seen.
Next they come to Thrinacia, where the Sun's cattle and sheep graze. Odysseus wants to sail past, but Eurylochus accuses him of being made of iron and demands that the exhausted men be allowed to rest and eat on land. Outnumbered, Odysseus makes them swear not to touch the animals. Then the south wind blows for a month. Their food runs out, and they are reduced to fishing and hunting birds. When Odysseus goes inland to pray and falls asleep, Eurylochus persuades the men that starvation is the worst death of all. They will sacrifice the best cattle and build Helios a temple at home; if the gods drown them for it, so be it.
The men kill the cattle and, lacking barley and wine, use oak leaves and water for the rites. Odysseus wakes, smells the roasting meat, and cries out in despair. The nymph Lampetie tells Helios, who threatens Zeus that he will go down and shine among the dead unless he is avenged. Terrible omens follow: the hides crawl, and the meat on the spits lows like living cattle. For six days the men feast, and on the seventh the wind changes and they set sail.
As soon as they are out of sight of land, Zeus sends a black cloud and a storm. The mast falls and kills the helmsman, and a thunderbolt strikes the ship. All the men are thrown into the sea and drown. Only Odysseus survives, lashing the mast and keel together into a makeshift raft. The south wind drives him back to Charybdis just as she swallows the sea. He leaps up and clings to the fig tree like a bat until she spews out the timbers again at evening, then drops onto them and paddles away with his hands. After nine days of drifting, he washes ashore on Ogygia, where Calypso takes him in.
Quoted lines are from Samuel Butler’s 1900 prose translation (Project Gutenberg #1727).
