Without proper rites the dead do not get into the underworld. They wait at the edge, unable to cross. Elpenor — youngest of the crew, drunk on Circe’s roof, broke his neck falling — comes to Odysseus in the dark before any other shade. Don’t sail away without burying me, he says. Burn me with my armor. Pile a mound on the western headland of Aeaea. Plant my oar on top. The oar is the man’s profession used as a headstone — here lies a rower. Odysseus does it on the way back. The rite is the line between gone and forgotten. It also explains what’s wrong with Agamemnon and Cassandra and the other unattended dead haunting the rest of the underworld scenes — bodies that didn’t get the right fire have shades that can’t quite let go.
Funeral Rites for the Unburied Dead
Burn the body, raise a mound, plant the oar, call the name. Without these, the shade does not cross. Elpenor begs for them at the edge of the underworld.