The Odyssey
before Noman himself, and will keep Noman for the last. This is the
present that I will make him.’
“As he spoke he reeled, and fell sprawling face upwards on the ground.
His great neck hung heavily backwards and a deep sleep took hold upon
him. Presently he turned sick, and threw up both wine and the gobbets
of human flesh on which he had been gorging, for he was very drunk.
Then I thrust the beam of wood far into the embers to heat it, and
encouraged my men lest any of them should turn faint-hearted. When the
wood, green though it was, was about to blaze, I drew it out of the
fire glowing with heat, and my men gathered round me, for heaven had
filled their hearts with courage. We drove the sharp end of the beam
into the monster’s eye, and bearing upon it with all my weight I kept
turning it round and round as though I were boring a hole in a ship’s
plank with an auger, which two men with a wheel and strap can keep on
turning as long as they choose. Even thus did we bore the red hot beam
into his eye, till the boiling blood bubbled all over it as we worked
it round and round, so that the steam from the burning eyeball scalded
his eyelids and eyebrows, and the roots of the eye sputtered in the
fire. As a blacksmith plunges an axe or hatchet into cold water to
temper it—for it is this that gives strength to the iron—and it makes a
great hiss as he does so, even thus did the Cyclops’ eye hiss round the
beam of olive wood, and his hideous yells made the cave ring again. We
ran away in a fright, but he plucked the beam all besmirched with gore
from his eye, and hurled it from him in a frenzy of rage and pain,
shouting as he did so to the other Cyclopes who lived on the bleak
headlands near him; so they gathered from all quarters round his cave
when they heard him crying, and asked what was the matter with him.
“‘What ails you, Polyphemus,’ said they, ‘that you make such a noise,
breaking the stillness of the night, and preventing us from being able
to sleep? Surely no man is carrying off your sheep? Surely no man is
trying to kill you either by fraud or by force?’
“But Polyphemus shouted to them from inside the cave, ‘Noman is killing
me by fraud; no man is killing me by force.’
“‘Then,’ said they, ‘if no man is attacking you, you must be ill; when
Jove makes people ill, there is no help for it, and you had better pray
to your father Neptune.’
“Then they went away, and I laughed inwardly at the success of my
clever stratagem, but the Cyclops, groaning and in an agony of pain,
felt about with his hands till he found the stone and took it from the
door; then he sat in the doorway and stretched his hands in front of it
to catch anyone going out with the sheep, for he thought I might be
foolish enough to attempt this.
“As for myself I kept on puzzling to think how I could best save my own
life and those of my companions; I schemed and schemed, as one who
knows that his life depends upon it, for the danger was very great. In
the end I deemed that this plan would be the best; the male sheep were
well grown, and carried a heavy black fleece, so I bound them
noiselessly in threes together, with some of the withies on which the
wicked monster used to sleep. There was to be a man under the middle
sheep, and the two on either side were to cover him, so that there were
three sheep to each man. As for myself there was a ram finer than any
of the others, so I caught hold of him by the back, esconced myself in
the thick wool under his belly, and hung on patiently to his fleece,
face upwards, keeping a firm hold on it all the time.
“Thus, then, did we wait in great fear of mind till morning came, but
when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, the male sheep
hurried out to feed, while the ewes remained bleating about the pens
waiting to be milked, for their udders were full to bursting; but their
master in spite of all his pain felt the backs of all the sheep as they
stood upright, without being sharp enough to find out that the men were
underneath their bellies. As the ram was going out, last of all, heavy
with its fleece and with the weight of my crafty self, Polyphemus laid
hold of it and said:
“‘My good ram, what is it that makes you the last to leave my cave this
morning? You are not wont to let the ewes go before you, but lead the
mob with a run whether to flowery mead or bubbling fountain, and are
the first to come home again at night; but now you lag last of all. Is
it because you know your master has lost his eye, and are sorry because
that wicked Noman and his horrid crew has got him down in his drink and
blinded him? But I will have his life yet. If you could understand and
talk, you would tell me where the wretch is hiding, and I would dash
his brains upon the ground till they flew all over the cave. I should
thus have some satisfaction for the harm this no-good Noman has done
me.’
“As he spoke he drove the ram outside, but when we were a little way
out from the cave and yards, I first got from under the ram’s belly,
and then freed my comrades; as for the sheep, which were very fat, by
constantly heading them in the right direction we managed to drive them
down to the ship. The crew rejoiced greatly at seeing those of us who
had escaped death, but wept for the others whom the Cyclops had killed.
However, I made signs to them by nodding and frowning that they were to
hush their crying, and told them to get all the sheep on board at once
and put out to sea; so they went aboard, took their places, and smote
the grey sea with their oars. Then, when I had got as far out as my
voice would reach, I began to jeer at the Cyclops.
“‘Cyclops,’ said I, ‘you should have taken better measure of your man
before eating up his comrades in your cave. You wretch, eat up your
visitors in your own house? You might have known that your sin would
find you out, and now Jove and the other gods have punished you.’
“He got more and more furious as he heard me, so he tore the top from
off a high mountain, and flung it just in front of my ship so that it
was within a little of hitting the end of the rudder.81 The sea quaked
as the rock fell into it, and the wash of the wave it raised carried us
back towards the mainland, and forced us towards the shore. But I
snatched up a long pole and kept the ship off, making signs to my men
by nodding my head, that they must row for their lives, whereon they
laid out with a will. When we had got twice as far as we were before, I
was for jeering at the Cyclops again, but the men begged and prayed of
me to hold my tongue.
“‘Do not,’ they exclaimed, ‘be mad enough to provoke this savage
creature further; he has thrown one rock at us already which drove us
back again to the mainland, and we made sure it had been the death of
us; if he had then heard any further sound of voices he would have
pounded our heads and our ship’s timbers into a jelly with the rugged
rocks he would have heaved at us, for he can throw them a long way.’
“But I would not listen to them, and shouted out to him in my rage,
‘Cyclops, if any one asks you who it was that put your eye out and
spoiled your beauty, say it was the valiant warrior Ulysses, son of
Laertes, who lives in Ithaca.’
“On this he groaned, and cried out, ‘Alas, alas, then the old prophecy
about me is coming true. There was a prophet here, at one time, a man
both brave and of great stature, Telemus son of Eurymus, who was an
excellent seer, and did all the prophesying for the Cyclopes till he
grew old; he told me that all this would happen to me some day, and
said I should lose my sight by the hand of Ulysses. I have been all
along expecting some one of imposing presence and superhuman strength,
whereas he turns out to be a little insignificant weakling, who has
managed to blind my eye by taking advantage of me in my drink; come
here, then, Ulysses, that I may make you presents to show my
hospitality, and urge Neptune to help you forward on your journey—for
Neptune and I are father and son. He, if he so will, shall heal me,
which no one else neither god nor man can do.’
“Then I said, ‘I wish I could be as sure of killing you outright and
sending you down to the house of Hades, as I am that it will take more
than Neptune to cure that eye of yours.’
“On this he lifted up his hands to the firmament of heaven and prayed,
saying, ‘Hear me, great Neptune; if I am indeed your own true begotten
son, grant that Ulysses may never reach his home alive; or if he must
get back to his friends at last, let him do so late and in sore plight
after losing all his men [let him reach his home in another man’s ship
and find trouble in his house.’82
“Thus did he pray, and Neptune heard his prayer. Then he picked up a
rock much larger than the first, swung it aloft and hurled it with
prodigious force. It fell just short of the ship, but was within a
little of hitting the end of the rudder. The sea quaked as the rock
fell into it, and the wash of the wave it raised drove us onwards on
our way towards the shore of the island.
“When at last we got to the island where we had left the rest of our
ships, we found our comrades lamenting us, and anxiously awaiting our
return. We ran our vessel upon the sands and got out of her on to the
sea shore; we also landed the Cyclops’ sheep, and divided them
equitably amongst us so that none might have reason to complain. As for
the ram, my companions agreed that I should have it as an extra share;
so I sacrificed it on the sea shore, and burned its thigh bones to
Jove, who is the lord of all. But he heeded not my sacrifice, and only
thought how he might destroy both my ships and my comrades.
“Thus through the livelong day to the going down of the sun we feasted
our fill on meat and drink, but when the sun went down and it came on
dark, we camped upon the beach. When the child of morning rosy-fingered
Dawn appeared, I bade my men on board and loose the hawsers. Then they
took their places and smote the grey sea with their oars; so we sailed
on with sorrow in our hearts, but glad to have escaped death though we
had lost our comrades.
BOOK X
AEOLUS, THE LAESTRYGONES, CIRCE.
“Thence we went on to the Aeolian island where lives Aeolus son of
Hippotas, dear to the immortal gods. It is an island that floats (as it
were) upon the sea,83 iron bound with a wall that girds it. Now, Aeolus
has six daughters and six lusty sons, so he made the sons marry the
daughters, and they all live with their dear father and mother,
feasting and enjoying every conceivable kind of luxury. All day long
the atmosphere of the house is loaded with the savour of roasting meats
till it groans again, yard and all; but by night they sleep on their
well made bedsteads, each with his own wife between the blankets. These
were the people among whom we had now come.
“Aeolus entertained me for a whole month asking me questions all the
time about Troy, the Argive fleet, and the return of the Achaeans. I
told him exactly how everything had happened, and when I said I must
go, and asked him to further me on my way, he made no sort of
difficulty, but set about doing so at once. Moreover, he flayed me a
prime ox-hide to hold the ways of the roaring winds, which he shut up
in the hide as in a sack—for Jove had made him captain over the winds,
and he could stir or still each one of them according to his own
pleasure. He put the sack in the ship and bound the mouth so tightly
with a silver thread that not even a breath of a side-wind could blow
from any quarter. The West wind which was fair for us did he alone let
blow as it chose; but it all came to nothing, for we were lost through
our own folly.
“Nine days and nine nights did we sail, and on the tenth day our native