What does the shade of Teiresias require in order to provide Odysseus with a prophecy?

Question

a. light
b. payment
c. a taste of blood
d. permission

Answer 1

b. payment (sacrifice of a goat)

Answer 2

According to Homer, Odysseus was one of many powerful and influential suitors for Tyndareus' daughter Helen, considered the most beautiful woman in the world. Tyndareus feared the wrath of whomever he did not choose as Helen's husband, so Odysseus promised to solve the dilemma in return for Tyndareus' support for Odysseus suit for Penelope, daughter of Icarius and second cousin to Helen. Odysseus proposed that Tyndareus require all the suitors to swear an oath to defend whomever Helen chose as husband from among the oath-takers. The suitors, including Odysseus, swore, and Helen chose Menelaus.

When Helen was abducted by Paris of Troy, Menelaus called upon the other suitors to honour their oaths and help him retrieve her, thus bringing about the Trojan War. Odysseus, however, tried to avoid the war by feigning madness, as an oracle had prophesied a long-delayed return home for him were he to go. He did this by hooking a donkey and an ox to his plow (as they have different stride lengths, hindering the efficiency of the plow) and sowing his fields with salt. Palamedes, at the behest of Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, sought to disprove Odysseus' madness, and placed Telemachus, Odysseus' infant son, in front of the plough. Odysseus veered the plough away from his son, thus destroying his ruse. Odysseus held a grudge against Palamedes during the war for dragging him away from his home.

Odysseus and other envoys of Agamemnon travelled to Scyros to recruit Achilles because of a prophecy that Troy could not be taken without him. In most accounts, Thetis, Achilles' mother, disguised the youth as a woman to hide him from the recruiters because an oracle had predicted that Achilles would either live a long, uneventful life or achieve everlasting glory while dying young. Odysseus cleverly discovered which of the women before him was Achilles when the youth stepped forward to examine an array of weapons (some accounts say that Odysseus arranged for the sounding of a battle horn, which prompted Achilles to clutch a weapon).

In Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis, Odysseus convinces Agamemnon to consent to the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Artemis. Odysseus then facilitates the sacrifice by telling her mother, Clytemnestra, that the girl is to be wed to Achilles.

Just before the war began, Odysseus accompanied Menelaus and Palamedes in an attempt to negotiate Helen's peaceful return. Menelaus made unpersuasive emotional arguments, but Odysseus' arguments very nearly persuaded the Trojan court to hand Helen over.