"And even if you escape, you’ll come home late
and come a broken man – all shipmates lost,
alone in a stranger’s ship –
and you will find a world of pain at home,
crude, arrogant men devouring all your goods,
courting your noble wife, offering gifts to win her.
No doubt you will pay them back in blood when you come home!"
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 11, 129-135. Tiresias prophesies that if Odysseus escapes the destruction of his ship for killing the sun god’s cattle, he will come home a broken man, his shipmates dead. He will discover a world of pain at home: greedy suitors devouring his estate and courting his wife. He forecasts that Odysseus will exact vengeance on them. The fates of many are foreshadowed in this passage.