So firmly did they believe divination a thing most sacred, that when Ulysses, wearied of wandering, took a phansie to learn the truth as touching his affaires, he went off unto Hell, not “to behold dead men and a land that is joyless,”

Odyssey, XI, 94.

but because he would come to speech with Tiresias. And when he was come to the place whereunto Circe directed him, and had dug his pit and slain his sheep, although many dead that were by, and amongst them his own mother, were fain to drink of the blood, he suffered none of them, not even his very mother, until he had wet the throstle of Tiresias and constrained him to deliver the prophecy, verily enduring to behold his mother’s shadow athirst.