This is what Anticlea reveals to her son: The hero who conquers death, like a resurrection god, experiences the afterlife, and returns to this world, knowing with certainty the ultimate truth about life and death, unlike us poor, ordinary mortals who can never do the same. Odysseus’ meeting with his mother, ANTICLEA, or ANTIKLEIA, is of the greatest importance from her he learns about the mystery of existence. Then Odysseus conversed with Tiresias, who explained that only the souls whom Odysseus allowed to drink of the blood could converse with him. Odysseus promised to fulfill Elpenor’s directions for a proper burial. Elpenor had dies after a fall from the roof of Circe’s palace, but he did not receive burial. But the soul of Odysseus’ comrade ELPENOR came up first. Next, Odysseus drew his sword and took his post at the pit of blood and did not allow the spirits to drink the blood before he had spoken to TIRESIAS. Odysseus ordered his men to flay and burn the slaughtered animals and pray to HADES (PLUTO) and PERSEPHONE, the king and queen of the Underworld.
Here ODYSSEUS (ULYSSES) dug a pit and around it poured libations to the dead then, after many supplications, he cut the throats of sacrificed animals so that their blood would run into the pit, whereupon a multitude of the souls of the dead swarmed up.
To reach the entrance to the Underworld, Odysseus and his men had to go to the farthest, sunless realm of the deep-flowing Ocean. Plato, Republic, the myth of Er, which concludes Book 10.Homer, Odyssey, Book 11, the Nekuia (“The Book of the Dead”).Three major ancient authors taken together provide a composite and virtually complete summary of the philosophical and religious beliefs about the afterlife evolved by the Greeks and Romans.
Views of the Afterlife: The Realm of Hades