Loyalty and keeping promises are two of the highest virtues in Homer's world. Despite the horrors of the Land of the Dead and the relief of escape, Odysseus' first thought is to return to Aeaea to bury Elpenor's corpse. The brief description of the burial rites tells us that the body is burned on a funeral pyre, along with the warrior's armor. The ashes are buried in a mound topped with a monumental stone and the seaman's oar that is "planted . . . to crown his tomb" (12.15). The ceremony is similar to that of the seafaring warriors at the end of the Old English epic Beowulf, composed almost 1,500 years later.
Like that of the Lotus-eaters, the section on the Sirens is surprisingly short (fewer than 40 lines), considering that it is one of the best known episodes in the epic. Once again, Homer has touched on a universal truth, mankind's struggle with deadly but irresistible appeal. Circe's solution is realistic and simple: Odysseus' men stop their ears with beeswax. Knowing Odysseus as well as she does, Circe realizes that his intellectual curiosity must be satisfied; he has to hear the Sirens' song. The solution is to lash him to the mast of the ship and, when he pleads to be set free, to tie him more securely. For any man who goes too close to shore, she warns, "no sailing home for him, no wife rising to meet him, / no happy children beaming up at their father's face" (12.48–49). Thus warned and protected, the crew survives temptation, although Odysseus is nearly driven mad by his desire to submit to the Sirens' call.
