Title: Forever Shut Upon Your Eyes
Summary: An expanded version of Achilles' words to Odysseus in the underworld.
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: I'm just not cool enough to own the Odyssey.
How did you find your way down to the dark
where these dimwitted dead are camped forever,
the after images of used up men?
Let me hear no smooth talk
of death from you, Odysseus, light of councils.
Better, I say, to break sod as a farm hand
for some poor country man, on iron rations,
than lord it all over the exhausted dead.
Achilles, The Odyssey (Book XI, Lines 559-561 and 577-581)
Wise Odysseus, why are you here? Do you truly wish to witness the incessant groans for mercy from this blackness? Cold and miserable Persephone watches you with her dim eyes as yet another unwilling man's thread is cut too short.
Do you see these abysmal hills of eternity stretching beyond your eyes? They are forever, my friend. They are the past, present, and future fates of all those who can no longer bask in the glory of life.
You cannot imagine, my sly comrade, what it means to have the door of hope shut upon the darkness. I once was! Is there any greater power than that?
When the mighty Greeks fade into time, we will remain slaves to our fates. You cannot even weep, for there is no hope of even pain. There is only emptiness here, Odysseus. You may see those around you who you remember from the gloried days that Troy stood tall, but they are only shadows wandering endlessly.
You say I am blessed in this power over shells of greatness? You do not know what it is to see great ones fall beside you, and lack the will or power to rise again. You do not know what it is to see glimmers of the days when you were the living hero of dreams. I would sooner have been a common slave beaten day after day, than an exalted king who can only wearily sigh when he looks over his dark 'kingdom,' as you call it.
Were I given life once more, I would lie upon the ground and kiss my fortune. If adversity sought to destroy me, I'd laugh in all it took from me, only that I could feel something once more! I can only wander like a blind man for the forgotten art of feeling.
I still remember every wondrous thing that my eyes beheld in my life, every taste and touch, every sound and thought. But I've lost it…I've lost the grand happiness that memories give you, for they are only bitter tormenters sneering at what I may never have again.
Do not remain down here, for you too will go mad. But before you go, I must ask one last thing of you. Do not pity your plight, Odysseus. For what better way is there to know that you still have the greatest gift that no God could even give?
Farewell, friend. When you are finally home with your wife and son, remember that you hold the most wondrous power of all.
Poor Achilles. Even though I hate what he did to Hector, I still feel great sympathy for Achilles, and his lines (in his brief cameo) make me tear up. But then, the whole image that the Greeks had of the underworld being this depressing place where even the best people could not be happy is just…sad. But anyway, I hope you liked it. Review please!