"Dear woman…we have still not reached the end
of all our trials. One more labor lies in store –
boundless, laden with danger, great and long,
and I must brave it out from start to finish.
So the ghost of Tiresias prophesied to me,
the day that I went down to the House of Death
to learn our best route home, my comrades’ and my own.
But come, let’s go to bed, dear woman – at long last
delight in sleep, delight in each other, come!"
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 23, lines 282-290. As Odysseus and Penelope retire to their marriage bed, after his twenty-year absence from it, he tells of one more trial to be endured. He is referring to Tiresias’ prophecy of a sacrifice he must make to Poseidon for the hurt Odysseus caused the sea god’s son Polyphemus.