Fate via Hades for Ulysses

Alcinious asks Ulysses to recount the other spirits he encounters from Hades. Ulysses retells of the spirit of Agamemnon the Greek hero who does not fall in battle but at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra. No Trojan could take him down but his wife did. Achilles then appears and asks about his son and heir Neoptolemus. Ajax the Achaean who killed himself after failing to win the arms and rank of Achilles refuses to speak to him and slips away. He also sees great heroes like He sees Heracles, King Minos, the hunter Orion, and others. These heroes sit on the elision fields or heaven yet their spirits or imprints in Hades appear during the Hades ritual. Ulysses then sees Sisyphus, struggling eternally to push a boulder over a hill only to have it roll back down whenever it reaches the top and calls it a punishment. To illiterate the hidden metaphor used by homer and the God(s) one must interpret Tantalus, punishment. Tantalus, hungers and thirsts, he sits in a pool of water over hung by grapes but when he reaches for them the move away from his reach. Aesop understood what this metaphor of sour grapes meant and every Greek knew the tale that this was drawn from, i.e. the fox and the grapes. The water also sinks away from grasp every time Tantalus, reached for water. So both the above and below receded from grasp. After bit the souls mob Ulysses asking of the fate of his relatives and by extension Greece so Ulysses races back to the ship frightened of this question of Greek fortune.
The greatest heroes were at more danger domestically than by foreign enemies. Greeks were at more danger fighting each other for dominance over each other Achilles heir was who Odysseus or his son? It was Odysseus and not Ajax or the son, Ajax represents the Greeks who killed themselves trying to dominate the Greeks and the son those in natural lineage for that throne. The great heroes that represent the spirit of greatness in the Greeks become present to compare with the heroes domestically in danger by family and other Greeks. Each hero like Hercules bound the Greeks peacefully as Odysseus does and will, but did not cause each to kill the other. Even king Minos of the Minoans had conquered all of Mycenae. These are the ones who did dominate all of Greece. Sisyphus represents the karmic circle the Greeks suffer as they repeat the mistakes of the past unable like the heroes like Hercules and Odysseus to go past them The fate all the spirits want to know about is through Odysseus the paradigm of the new Greeks Cause those who try to dominate Greece not as the old heroes like Hercules reach for something unattainable and even that which they have or think they stand in is beyond their capability and reach. For Ulysses it is simply sailing to wards his goal that sets him apart as the one who can obtain what is out of reach for some because he learned to deal with peoples peacefully and cause marriages without conflict.