# Odyssey — Book 9 *"I am Odysseus": the Cicones, the Lotus-eaters, and the Cyclops.* 1 Then Odysseus of the many designs answered him: 2 "Lord Alcinous, most renowned among all peoples,[^L2] 3 truly it is a fine thing to hear a singer 4 such as this man is, with a voice like the gods'. 5 For I say there is no accomplishment more graceful[^L5] 6 than when joy holds a whole people, 7 and feasters up and down the hall sit listening to a singer, 8 seated in order, and beside them the tables are loaded 9 with bread and meats, and the cupbearer draws wine 10 from the bowl and carries it round and fills the cups: 11 this seems to my mind the fairest thing there is. 12 But your heart has turned to asking after my grievous 13 cares — so that I may mourn and groan the more. 14 What first, then, what last shall I tell through? 15 For the gods of heaven have given me sorrows past counting. 16 Now first I will tell my name, so that you too 17 may know it — and I hereafter, if I escape the pitiless day, 18 may be your guest-friend, though my home is far away. 19 I am Odysseus, son of Laertes — known to all mankind[^L19] 20 for my cunning designs; and my fame has reached heaven. 21 My home is Ithaca, clear-skied under its mountain, 22 Neriton, tall in its shivering leaves; and around it islands 23 lie in a cluster, close to one another — 24 Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus. 25 Ithaca itself lies low, farthest out in the sea 26 toward the dark of sunset — the rest face dawn and the sun — 27 rough ground, but a good nurse of men. I cannot[^L27] 28 see any sweeter sight, for my part, than a man's own country. 29 The queenly goddess Calypso would have kept me there beside her[^L29] 30 in her hollow caves, hungry to make me her husband, 31 and so, in the same way, Circe detained me in her halls, 32 the guileful lady of Aeaea, hungry to make me her husband: 33 but they never once persuaded the heart in my breast. 34 So true it is that nothing is sweeter than a man's own country 35 and his own parents, even if he lives in a rich house 36 far away in a strange land, cut off from his parents. 37 But come — let me tell you also my journey home, and all its cares, 38 which Zeus laid on me on the way from Troy. 39 From Ilium the wind bore me to the Cicones —[^L39] 40 to Ismarus. There I sacked the city and destroyed the men; 41 and out of the city we took their wives and much substance 42 and divided all, so that no man might go cheated of his share by me. 43 Then, you may be sure, I ordered a quick-footed retreat — 44 and they, the great fools, would not obey.[^L44] 45 There and then much wine was being drunk, and many sheep 46 they slaughtered along the shore, and shambling crook-horned cattle; 47 and meanwhile Cicones went crying to Cicones, 48 their neighbors inland — more of them, and better men, 49 skilled at fighting men from chariots 50 and, where need was, on foot. 51 They came, then, thick as leaves and flowers come in their season, 52 in the morning mist. Then an evil doom of Zeus stood by us, 53 luckless men, to load us with pains in plenty. 54 They set their battle-line and fought by the fast ships, 55 and each side pelted each with bronze-tipped spears. 56 As long as it was morning, and the sacred day still growing, 57 so long we stood them off and held our ground, though they were more; 58 but when the sun turned over toward unyoking-time,[^L58] 59 then the Cicones broke the Achaeans, and mastered them. 60 Six from each ship, six strong-greaved companions 61 were killed; the rest of us fled from death and doom. 62 From there we sailed on further, grieved at heart,[^L62] 63 glad to be out of death, having lost our dear companions. 64 But my curved ships would not go forward 65 before we had called three times on each of those poor companions[^L65] 66 who died on the plain, cut down by the Cicones. 67 And Zeus who gathers the clouds roused the North Wind against the ships 68 in a howling squall, and covered land and sea alike 69 with cloud; and night rose up out of heaven. 70 The ships were swept along slantwise, their sails 71 ripped into three and four rags by the strength of the wind. 72 We lowered them into the hulls, in terror of death, 73 and rowed the ships hard in toward the shore. 74 There for two nights and two days without a break 75 we lay, eating our hearts with weariness and pain together. 76 But when Dawn of the lovely braids brought the third day round, 77 we set up the masts and hauled the white sails open 78 and sat, and the wind and the steersmen held them on course. 79 And now I would have come unharmed to my own country, 80 but the wave and the current, as I rounded Malea,[^L80] 81 and the North Wind beat me off course and drove me wide of Cythera. 82 From there for nine days I was carried by ruinous winds 83 across the fish-filled sea; and on the tenth we stepped ashore 84 in the land of the Lotus-eaters, who eat a flower for food.[^L84] 85 There we set foot on the mainland and drew water, 86 and the companions quickly took their meal beside the fast ships. 87 And when we had tasted food and drink, 88 then I sent companions ahead to learn 89 what men they were who ate bread upon this earth: 90 two men I chose, and sent a third with them as herald. 91 They went their way at once, and fell in with the Lotus-eater men; 92 and the Lotus-eaters had no thought of killing 93 our companions — but they gave them lotus to taste. 94 And whoever of them ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus[^L94] 95 no longer wished to bring back word or to return: 96 there they wanted to stay, among the Lotus-eater men, 97 browsing the lotus, and to forget their homecoming. 98 These men I forced back weeping to the ships, 99 dragged them under the benches of the hollow ships and bound them, 100 and I ordered the rest of my trusted companions 101 to hurry and board the fast ships — 102 for fear some other might eat of the lotus and forget his homecoming. 103 And they came aboard at once and took their places at the oarlocks, 104 and sitting in order they struck the gray salt water with their oars. 105 From there we sailed on further, grieved at heart. 106 And we came to the land of the Cyclopes — the overweening,[^L106] 107 the lawless — who, trusting in the deathless gods, 108 plant no crop with their hands, and plow nothing: 109 everything springs up for them unsown, unplowed, 110 wheat and barley, and vines that carry 111 wine in their heavy clusters, and Zeus' rain swells it for them. 112 They have no counsel-bearing assemblies, no established laws, 113 but live on the crests of the high mountains 114 in hollow caves, and each man lays down the law 115 to his own wives and children — and they care nothing for one another. 116 Now a scrubby island stretches outside the harbor there,[^L116] 117 neither close in to the Cyclopes' land nor far out, 118 wooded; and on it goats past counting breed, 119 wild goats: no tread of men scares them away, 120 no hunters push through to it, men who suffer 121 hard days in the timber, working the mountain crests; 122 it is held by no flocks and no plowed fields, 123 but unsown and unplowed all its days 124 the island is widowed of men, and feeds its bleating goats. 125 For the Cyclopes have no red-cheeked ships, 126 and no shipwrights among them who might labor out 127 well-benched vessels to accomplish every need, 128 crossing to the cities of the world, the way men 129 so often traverse the sea in ships to one another: 130 such craftsmen would have made the island a fair settlement too. 131 For it is not a bad island at all: it would bear every crop in season. 132 There are meadows in it along the shores of the gray salt water, 133 soft, well-watered; vines there would never die; 134 there is level plowland, and a deep standing harvest always 135 ready for the scythe in season, for the soil beneath is rich. 136 And there is a harbor with safe anchorage, where there is no need of mooring-line — 137 no anchor-stones to throw, no stern-cables to make fast: 138 you beach her, and wait until the sailors' 139 hearts prompt them, and the breezes blow. 140 And at the harbor's head runs shining water, 141 a spring under a cave, with black poplars growing round it. 142 There we sailed in — and some god was guiding us — 143 through the dead of night, with nothing to be seen ahead: 144 a fog lay thick around the ships, and the moon 145 showed nothing from heaven, shut in by clouds. 146 No one's eyes made out that island then, 147 nor did we see the long combers rolling in against the shore 148 before the well-benched ships ran up the beach. 149 And with the ships beached, we took down all the sails 150 and stepped out ourselves onto the surf-line of the sea, 151 and there we dropped asleep, and waited for shining Dawn. 152 When Dawn appeared, the early-born, with fingers of rose, 153 we walked that island marveling, all through it. 154 And the nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, started 155 the mountain goats, so my companions might have their meal. 156 At once we fetched our curved bows and long-socketed goat-spears 157 out of the ships, and forming in three bands 158 we shot; and quickly the god gave us game to our hearts' content. 159 Twelve ships followed with me, and to each 160 nine goats fell by lot; for me alone they picked out ten. 161 So then all day long till the setting of the sun 162 we sat feasting on meat past counting and sweet wine. 163 For the red wine was not yet spent from out our ships: 164 there was still some left, for each crew had drawn off much 165 in two-handled jars when we took the Cicones' holy citadel. 166 And we looked across at the land of the Cyclopes, who were near: 167 smoke, and voices — theirs, and their sheep's and goats'.[^L166] 168 And when the sun went down and the dusk came on, 169 then we lay down to sleep on the surf-line of the sea. 170 When Dawn appeared, the early-born, with fingers of rose, 171 then I called an assembly, and spoke among them all: 172 'The rest of you stay here now, my trusted companions, 173 while I with my own ship and my own crew 174 go and make trial of those men over there — what they are: 175 whether violent, savage, without justice,[^L175] 176 or kind to strangers, with hearts that fear the gods.' 177 So speaking I went aboard, and ordered my companions 178 to board in their turn and loose the stern-cables. 179 And they came aboard at once and took their places at the oarlocks, 180 and sitting in order they struck the gray salt water with their oars. 181 But when we reached the place — it was not far — 182 there on the land's edge, close by the sea, we saw a cave, 183 high, overhung with laurels. There many 184 flocks — sheep and goats — were penned at night; around it a yard 185 ran high-built, of stones set deep in the earth, 186 and tall pines, and oaks with lofty crowns. 187 And there a man slept, a monster of a man, who shepherded[^L187] 188 his flocks alone and far apart; he kept no company 189 with others, but held aloof, and his heart knew no law. 190 For he was built a monstrous wonder — nothing like 191 a man who eats bread, but like a wooded crag 192 of the high mountains, standing clear of all the rest. 193 Then I ordered the rest of my trusted companions 194 to stay there by the ship and guard the ship, 195 while I picked the twelve best of my companions 196 and went. And I took a goatskin of dark wine, 197 sweet wine, that Maron gave me, Euanthes' son,[^L197] 198 the priest of Apollo, the god who watches over Ismarus — 199 because we had protected him, with his child and his wife, 200 out of reverence: for he lived in the wooded grove 201 of Phoebus Apollo. And he gave me shining gifts: 202 he gave me seven talents of well-wrought gold, 203 and he gave me a mixing-bowl all of silver, and then 204 wine, drawn off in two-handled jars, twelve in all, 205 sweet and unmixed, a drink for gods. Not one 206 of the slaves or handmaids in his house knew of it — 207 only himself and his dear wife, and one housekeeper only. 208 Whenever they drank that honey-sweet red wine, 209 he would fill one cup and pour it into twenty measures 210 of water, and a sweet smell would rise from the bowl, 211 a marvel: no joy then in holding back. 212 Of this I filled a great skin and brought it, and provisions too 213 in a sack: for my proud heart had a foreboding, even then, 214 that a man would come against me clothed in great strength, 215 a savage, knowing nothing of judgments or of laws. 216 Quickly we came to the cave, and did not find him 217 within: he was herding his fat flocks in the pasture. 218 We went into the cave and stared in wonder at everything: 219 crates sagging with cheeses; pens crowded[^L219] 220 with lambs and kids — each sort folded separately, 221 the firstlings apart, apart the middle-born, 222 apart again the newborn; and every vessel swimming with whey, 223 the pails and bowls, all made by hand, that he milked into. 224 There first my companions begged me, pleading: 225 take some cheeses and go back; then quickly, 226 driving the kids and lambs out of their pens 227 down to the fast ship, sail away over the salt water. 228 But I would not listen — it would have been far better —[^L228] 229 not until I saw him, and whether he would give me guest-gifts. 230 And his appearing was to be no joy to my companions. 231 We lit a fire there and made an offering, and helped ourselves 232 to cheeses, and ate, and sat inside waiting for him, 233 until he came back herding. He carried a huge weight 234 of dry wood, to serve him at supper-time, 235 and flung it down inside the cave with a crash; 236 and we in terror shrank away into the cave's far corner. 237 He drove his fat flocks into the wide cavern — 238 all those he milked; the males he left outside, 239 the rams and he-goats, out in the deep yard. 240 Then he lifted high and set in place a huge door-stone, 241 a massive thing: twenty-two carts, good ones,[^L241] 242 four-wheeled, could not have levered it off the ground — 243 such a towering cliff of rock he set in the doorway. 244 Then, sitting, he milked the ewes and bleating goats, 245 all in due order, and set the young under each. 246 And straightway he curdled half the white milk 247 and gathered it and stored it in the plaited baskets, 248 and half he stood in vessels, so it might be there 249 for him to take and drink, and serve him at supper-time. 250 And when at last he had hurried through his work, 251 then he lit the fire — and saw us, and asked: 252 'Strangers, who are you? From where do you sail the watery ways?[^L252] 253 Is it on some business — or do you rove at random, 254 the way sea-raiders do, who wander 255 staking their own lives, bearing evil to strangers?' 256 So he spoke, and our own hearts broke within us 257 in terror of the deep voice and the monster himself. 258 Even so I answered him, and said: 259 'We are Achaeans, blown off course from Troy 260 by every wind there is, across the great gulf of the sea, 261 making for home — but by other routes, other roads 262 we came: so Zeus, I suppose, chose to devise it. 263 We declare ourselves the people of Agamemnon, Atreus' son,[^L263] 264 whose fame is now the greatest thing under heaven, 265 so vast the city he sacked, so many the peoples 266 he destroyed. But we, for our part, have come to your knees 267 in hope you may offer guest-friendship — or give besides 268 some gift, as is the right and custom done for strangers. 269 Respect the gods, mighty one. We are your suppliants, 270 and Zeus is the avenger of suppliants and of strangers — 271 Zeus of Strangers, who walks beside honored guests.' 272 So I spoke, and he answered me at once, with pitiless heart: 273 'You are a fool, stranger — or you have come from far away —[^L273] 274 you who tell me to fear the gods or shun their anger. 275 The Cyclopes pay no heed to Zeus who bears the aegis, 276 nor to the blessed gods: for we are the better men by far. 277 I would not spare you or your companions to dodge 278 the hatred of Zeus — not unless my own heart bade me. 279 But tell me: where did you moor your well-made ship when you came? 280 At the far end of the shore, or near? I want to know.' 281 So he spoke, testing; but I knew too much, and he did not catch me; 282 I answered him back with words of guile: 283 'My ship — Poseidon the earth-shaker smashed her to pieces,[^L283] 284 driving her on the rocks at the border of your country: 285 he brought her against a headland, and the wind carried her in from the sea. 286 But I, with these men here, escaped sheer destruction.' 287 So I spoke; and out of his pitiless heart he answered nothing, 288 but sprang up and reached his hands out at my companions, 289 snatched up two together, and dashed them like puppies[^L289] 290 against the ground: their brains ran out on the earth, and wetted it. 291 He tore them limb from limb and made ready his supper, 292 and he ate like a mountain-bred lion, and left nothing — 293 the entrails, the flesh, the bones with their marrow. 294 And we, weeping, lifted up our hands to Zeus 295 at the horror we watched, helplessness holding our hearts. 296 And when the Cyclops had filled his great belly, 297 feeding on man-flesh and washing it down with unmixed milk, 298 he lay stretched out in the cave among his sheep. 299 And I made a plan in my own great heart[^L299] 300 to steal close, draw the sharp sword from beside my thigh, 301 and stab him in the chest, where the midriff holds the liver, 302 feeling for the place with my hand. But a second thought held me: 303 there we too would have perished in sheer destruction, 304 for we could never have pushed back with our hands 305 the massive stone he had set in the high doorway. 306 So then, groaning, we waited for shining Dawn. 307 When Dawn appeared, the early-born, with fingers of rose, 308 then he lit the fire, and milked his famous flocks, 309 all in due order, and set the young under each. 310 And when at last he had hurried through his work, 311 he snatched up two men together again, and made his meal ready. 312 And having fed, he drove his fat flocks out of the cave, 313 lifting off the great door-stone with ease — and then 314 set it back, the way a man sets the lid on a quiver.[^L314] 315 With a great whistling the Cyclops turned his fat flocks 316 toward the mountain; and I was left brooding evil deep in my heart: 317 if somehow I might pay him back, and Athena grant me the glory. 318 And this, as I turned it over, seemed to me the best plan. 319 There lay beside a pen a great club of the Cyclops', 320 green olive-wood: he had cut it to carry[^L320] 321 once it seasoned. Looking it over we judged it 322 big as the mast of a black twenty-oared ship, 323 a broad-beamed freighter, that crosses the great gulf:[^L322] 324 that was its length, that its thickness to the eye. 325 Standing to it, I cut off about a fathom's measure 326 and handed it to my companions, and told them to dress it down; 327 and they made it smooth, while standing by I brought it to a point 328 at the tip, and then took it and hardened it in the blazing fire. 329 And I laid it carefully by, hiding it under the dung 330 that was strewn in a great deep litter through the cave. 331 And I told the others to shake lots among them 332 for who would dare, together with me, to lift the stake 333 and grind it in his eye, when sweet sleep came on him. 334 The lot fell on the very men I would have chosen — 335 four of them, and I counted myself in with them, the fifth. 336 At evening he came back, herding his fair-fleeced flocks, 337 and drove those fat flocks straight into the wide cavern, 338 all of them: he left not one outside in the deep yard, 339 whether some foreboding moved him, or a god so ordered it.[^L339] 340 Then he lifted high and set in place the great door-stone, 341 and sitting, he milked the ewes and bleating goats, 342 all in due order, and set the young under each. 343 And when at last he had hurried through his work, 344 he snatched up two men together again, and made his supper ready. 345 And then I came up close and spoke to the Cyclops, 346 holding in my hands an ivy-wood bowl of the dark wine: 347 'Cyclops — here, drink wine, now you have fed on man-flesh:[^L347] 348 so you may know what kind of drink our ship 349 carried stored. I was bringing it as an offering for you, in hope 350 you might pity me and send me home. But your madness is past all bearing. 351 Merciless one — how will any other man of all the many 352 ever come near you again? What you have done is past all measure.' 353 So I spoke; and he took it, and drank it down; and it pleased him — terribly — 354 the sweet drink; and he demanded a second helping: 355 'Give me more — be generous. And tell me your name, 356 here, now, so I can give you a guest-gift that will make you glad. 357 The grain-giving plowland bears wine for the Cyclopes too — 358 fine clusters, and Zeus' rain swells them for us; 359 but this — this is a rivulet of ambrosia and nectar!' 360 So he spoke, and I handed him the fire-bright wine again. 361 Three times I brought and gave it; three times, in his folly, he drained it. 362 And when the wine had come circling round the Cyclops' wits, 363 then I spoke to him with honeyed words: 364 'Cyclops, you ask my glorious name? Then I 365 will tell it — and you give me the guest-gift, as you promised. 366 Nobody is my name. Nobody is what they call me —[^L366] 367 my mother and my father and all my companions.' 368 So I spoke, and he answered me at once, with pitiless heart: 369 'Nobody I will eat last of all his company, 370 and the others before him. That shall be your guest-gift.'[^L369] 371 He spoke — and reeling back he fell flat, and lay there 372 with his thick neck lolled over sideways; and sleep 373 the all-subduer took him. And from his gullet gushed wine 374 and gobbets of human flesh, as he belched in his drunkenness. 375 And then I drove the stake under the deep ash-heap 376 to heat; and with my words I put courage in all 377 my companions, so no man might flinch and hang back. 378 But when that olive stake in the fire, green though it was, 379 was on the point of catching, and glowed clean through, terrible — 380 then I brought it close out of the fire, and my companions 381 stood round me; and a great power breathed courage into us. 382 They took up the olive stake, sharpened at its point, 383 and rammed it in his eye; and I, throwing my weight on from above, 384 spun it — the way a man bores a ship-timber[^L384] 385 with a drill, and his mates below keep it running 386 with a strap they hold at either end, and it spins on without stopping: 387 so we took the fire-pointed stake and spun it 388 in his eye, and the blood came boiling up round its heat, 389 and the blast singed all his lids and brows away 390 as the eyeball burned, and the roots of it crackled in the fire. 391 As when a smith dips a great axe-head or an adze[^L391] 392 in cold water, and it hisses loud and high, 393 tempering it — for that is what gives iron its strength — 394 so his eye hissed round the olive stake. 395 And he let out a huge and hideous howl, and the rock rang round it, 396 and we shrank back in terror. He wrenched the stake 397 out of his eye, all fouled with streaming blood, 398 and flung it from him, flailing his arms in agony, 399 and set up a great bellowing to the Cyclopes who lived 400 around him in caves along the windy heights. 401 And they heard his cry and came thronging from every side, 402 and standing round the cave they asked him what was wrong: 403 'What in the world, Polyphemus? What hurt, that you cry out so[^L403] 404 through the ambrosial night and make us sleepless? 405 Surely no mortal is driving off your flocks against your will? 406 Surely no one is killing you — by cunning or by force?' 407 And out of the cave strong Polyphemus answered them: 408 'Friends — Nobody is killing me, by cunning and not by force!' 409 And they answered with winged words, and gave it back: 410 'If nobody is forcing you, then — alone as you are —[^L410] 411 it must be sickness from great Zeus, and there is no escaping that. 412 Pray to our father, the lord Poseidon.' 413 So they spoke as they went; and my own heart laughed, 414 how my name had utterly deceived him — the name, and the flawless cunning. 415 But the Cyclops, groaning and heaving in his agonies, 416 groped with his hands and lifted the stone from the doorway, 417 and sat himself down in the door with both arms spread, 418 in hope of catching anyone who tried to slip out with the sheep: 419 such a fool, I suppose, he hoped to find in me. 420 But I was planning how it might all come out best — 421 if I could find some release from death for my companions 422 and for myself; and I wove every guile and design,[^L422] 423 as a man does for his very life: for the great evil was close. 424 And this, as I turned it over, seemed to me the best plan. 425 There were rams there, well-fed, thick in the fleece, 426 fine big animals, their wool dark as violets. 427 These, working quietly, I lashed together with plaited withies — 428 the ones that monster slept on, the outlaw — in threes: 429 the middle one of each three carried a man, 430 and the other two walked either side, protecting my companions. 431 So three sheep to each man. But for myself — 432 there was one ram, far the finest of all the flock; 433 I caught him along the back and curled under his shaggy belly 434 and lay there; and in that wondrous fleece, with my hands 435 twisted fast, I hung on, with an enduring heart. 436 So then, groaning, we waited for shining Dawn. 437 When Dawn appeared, the early-born, with fingers of rose, 438 then the male flocks poured out toward pasture, 439 and the unmilked females bleated about the pens 440 with their udders bursting. And their lord, worn down 441 by evil agonies, ran his hands along the backs of all his sheep 442 as they stood up straight — and never sensed it, the fool: 443 my men bound under the breasts of his own fleecy sheep. 444 Last of the flock the great ram walked toward the doorway, 445 heavy with his wool — and with me, and my crowding thoughts.[^L445] 446 And strong Polyphemus, running his hands over him, said: 447 'Old sweetheart — my ram — why last of all the flock[^L447] 448 through the cave this time? Before, you were never one to lag behind: 449 first, always first, striding out to graze the soft flowering grass, 450 first to reach the running rivers, 451 first in your longing to turn home to the fold 452 at evening. And now — last of all. Grieving, are you, 453 for your master's eye, that a coward of a man put out, 454 with his miserable companions, when he had crushed my wits with wine — 455 Nobody — who is not yet, I promise, clear of destruction. 456 If only you could think with me, if only you had a voice[^L456] 457 to say where that man is dodging from my fury: 458 then his brains would be dashed against the floor and spattered 459 this way and that through the cave, and my heart would find 460 some ease from the evils this worthless Nobody has brought me.' 461 So speaking he sent the ram away from him, out the door. 462 And when we had gone a little way from the cave and the yard, 463 first I loosed myself from under the ram, and then set my companions free. 464 Swiftly then we drove those long-shanked sheep, deep in fat, 465 turning again and again to look behind, until we came 466 to the ship. And a welcome sight we were to our dear companions — 467 we who had escaped death — but the others they wept and wailed for. 468 I would not have it: I frowned each man's tears back[^L468] 469 and ordered them quickly to fling the fine-fleeced sheep 470 aboard in numbers, and sail out over the salt water. 471 And they came aboard at once and took their places at the oarlocks, 472 and sitting in order they struck the gray salt water with their oars. 473 But when I was as far offshore as a man's shout carries, 474 then I called to the Cyclops with jeering words: 475 'Cyclops! Not so weak a man's companions, after all, 476 were those you meant to eat by main force in your hollow cave. 477 And your own evil deeds were bound to find you out — 478 merciless one — you who did not shrink from eating guests 479 in your own house. For that Zeus has paid you, and the other gods.' 480 So I spoke, and the anger in his heart grew fiercer, 481 and he tore off the peak of a great mountain and hurled it, 482 and brought it down just ahead of the dark-blue prow — 483 barely — it missed the tip of the steering-oar; 484 and the sea heaved up under the falling rock, 485 and the backwash carried the ship straight in toward the land, 486 a flood-surge out of the deep, and drove her toward the shore. 487 But I seized a long pole in my hands 488 and shoved her off and out, and roused my companions, 489 ordering them to fall to their oars and get us clear of the evil, 490 nodding hard with my head; and they bent to it and rowed. 491 But when we were twice as far out over the sea, 492 then I made to call to the Cyclops again; and around me my companions 493 tried to hold me back with honeyed words, this one and that one: 494 'Merciless man — why must you provoke a savage[^L494] 495 who even now, with that shot into the sea, has driven the ship 496 straight back ashore — and we thought we died there! 497 If he had heard a voice, heard any one of us speaking, 498 he would have smashed our heads and the ship's timbers together 499 with one jagged boulder: he throws that far.' 500 So they spoke, but they could not persuade my great heart,[^L500] 501 and I called back to him with fury in my breast: 502 'Cyclops — if any mortal man ever asks you 503 who put the shameful blinding on your eye, 504 tell him: Odysseus, sacker of cities, blinded me —[^L504] 505 the son of Laertes, who has his home in Ithaca.' 506 So I spoke, and he groaned aloud, and answered: 507 'Ah, then it comes home to me — the old prophecy![^L507] 508 There was a seer here once, a great man and a good one, 509 Telemus, Eurymus' son, who excelled in prophecy 510 and grew old prophesying among the Cyclopes. 511 He told me all this would come to pass in time: 512 that I would lose my sight at the hands of an Odysseus. 513 But I always watched for some big man, a handsome one, 514 to come here, clothed in great strength; 515 and now a little man, a worthless thing, a weakling, 516 has put out my eye — after he crushed me with wine. 517 But come here, Odysseus — let me set out a guest-gift for you,[^L517] 518 and press the famous earth-shaker to give you passage home. 519 For I am his son, and he declares himself my father. 520 He himself, if he wills it, will heal me — and no one else, 521 none of the blessed gods, and no mortal man.' 522 So he spoke; and I answered him and said: 523 'Would to god I could strip you of breath and life 524 and send you down to the house of Hades 525 as surely as not even the earth-shaker will ever heal that eye.' 526 So I spoke; and he then prayed to the lord Poseidon, 527 stretching out his hands to the starry heaven: 528 'Hear me, Poseidon who hold the earth, dark-haired one:[^L528] 529 if I am truly yours, and you declare yourself my father, 530 grant that Odysseus, sacker of cities, never come home — 531 the son of Laertes, who has his home in Ithaca. 532 But if it is his portion to see his own people, to reach 533 his well-built house and his own fatherland, 534 late may he come, and in evil case, all companions lost, 535 on another man's ship — and find trouble in his house.' 536 So he spoke in prayer, and the dark-haired god heard him.[^L536] 537 Then once again he lifted a stone — far bigger — 538 whirled it, and let it fly, putting his measureless strength behind it, 539 and brought it down just astern of the dark-blue ship — 540 barely — it missed the tip of the steering-oar; 541 and the sea heaved up under the falling rock, 542 and the wave carried her forward, and drove her toward the far shore. 543 But when we came back to the island where the other 544 well-benched ships waited all together, with the companions 545 sitting round them weeping, watching for us without end, 546 there we ran the ship up on the sands 547 and stepped out ourselves onto the surf-line of the sea. 548 And taking the Cyclops' flocks out of the hollow ship 549 we divided all, so that no man might go cheated of his share by me.[^L549] 550 But the great ram — my strong-greaved companions gave him 551 to me alone, when the flocks were shared, a gift apart; and on the shore 552 I offered him to Zeus of the black cloud, the son of Cronos, 553 lord of all, and burned the thigh-cuts. But he took no heed of my offering:[^L553] 554 he was pondering, even then, how all my well-benched ships 555 might be destroyed, and all my trusted companions. 556 So then all day long till the setting of the sun 557 we sat feasting on meat past counting and sweet wine; 558 and when the sun went down and the dusk came on, 559 then we lay down to sleep on the surf-line of the sea. 560 When Dawn appeared, the early-born, with fingers of rose, 561 then I roused my companions and ordered them 562 to board in their turn and loose the stern-cables. 563 And they came aboard at once and took their places at the oarlocks, 564 and sitting in order they struck the gray salt water with their oars. 565 From there we sailed on further, grieved at heart,[^L565] 566 glad to be out of death, having lost our dear companions. --- ## Notes [^L2]: The vocative planted at 8.382 pays off exactly here: the greatest speech in the poem opens with the same ceremonial line Odysseus used to compliment the dancers. From this line to the end of Book 12 — over 2,200 lines — the "I" of the poem is Odysseus, and Homer's own voice waits outside the tale. [^L5]: The proem-before-the-name: peace, a full hall, a singer, loaded tables — "this seems to my mind the fairest thing there is." Plato was scandalized (a hero ranking dinner-parties as life's *telos*), but the sentence is engineered: he blesses precisely the civilization his hosts embody, from the mouth of the man about to narrate its every opposite — famine, lawlessness, caves, and man-eating. The apologoi are framed as the photographic negative of the Phaeacian feast at which they are told. [^L19]: "I am Odysseus, son of Laertes — known to all mankind for my cunning designs; and my fame has reached heaven." Eight and a half books withheld, the name arrives with a claim attached: he identifies himself not by war or kingship but by δόλοι — cunning — and states his own celebrity as plain fact. The whole scene is the poem's economy of kleos made visible: last night Demodocus sang of him as of a dead legend; now the legend stands up in the audience and takes over the singing. [^L27]: "Rough ground, but a good nurse of men" — the praise of thin-soiled Ithaca that Telemachus offered Menelaus in nearly the same breath (4.605–608: "goat-pasture, and lovelier to me than horse-pasture"). Father and son, who have never spoken, love the island in the same argument. And then the sentence the whole poem rests on: "I cannot see any sweeter sight than a man's own country." [^L29]: Calypso and Circe, dispatched in five lines and made grammatically identical — each "hungry to make me her husband" (the phrase from 1.15). He opens his story's summary with the theme of detention refused — establishing before the adventures begin that the ending was never in doubt where his own will was concerned. [^L39]: The first adventure, told without a flicker of apology: "There I sacked the city and destroyed the men; and out of the city we took their wives and much substance." The tale begins with Odysseus doing to Ismarus exactly what was done to the widow of his own simile (8.523–531) — the poem placing the raid and its grief back to back across a single night of storytelling. His one note of pride is distributive justice among his own: "so that no man might go cheated of his share by me" (repeated verbatim of the Cyclops' sheep at 549 — his bookkeeping survives everything). [^L44]: "The great fools would not obey" — μέγα νήπιοι, the proem's own word for the crew (1.8). The account-ledger of blame the proem opened is now kept by Odysseus himself, entry by entry: ordered retreat, refused; wine drunk, cattle slaughtered (the exact idiom of the suitors' feasting); six men per ship dead. Seventy-two lost to disobedience before anything supernatural has happened at all. [^L58]: "When the sun turned over toward unyoking-time" — βουλυτόνδε, the hour the plowman unyokes his oxen: time told by farm-work even in battle, like the mule-furrow of 8.124. [^L62]: The refrain of the apologoi, fixed here: "From there we sailed on further, grieved at heart, / glad to be out of death, having lost our dear companions." It will toll between episodes through three more books — the wanderings counted out in identical griefs. [^L65]: Calling each dead man's name three times before sailing: the rite owed to the unburied, a voice-cenotaph. The poem's care for death-rites (Elpenor will die of their neglect) begins in its hero's punctiliousness even in flight. [^L80]: Malea and Cythera — the last real place-names. Nine days of storm from rounding the Peloponnese, and the ships pass off the map: everything from the Lotus-eaters to Phaeacia happens in a geography that ancient and modern readers alike have tried and failed to chart. The poem gives the boundary a name and a wind. [^L84]: The Lotus-eaters: the gentlest danger in the poem — no violence, no malice, only a fruit after which "they wanted to stay... and to forget their homecoming." The first adversary of the *nostos* is not death but oblivion — the will itself dissolving. Odysseus' response is proportionate and terrible: the weeping men dragged back and bound under the benches. Homecoming, in this poem, can be a thing done to you by force. [^L94]: What the lotus was — jujube? poppy? — was already guessed at in antiquity and never settled. The poem needs no botany: "honey-sweet," and it eats memory. [^L106]: The Cyclopes ethnography, all negations: no planting, no plowing, no assemblies, no laws (θέμιστες), each a law to his own household, "and they care nothing for one another." Civilization is defined by its absence — and with a barb: everything grows for them anyway, "trusting in the deathless gods." Lawlessness with divine subsidy. Odysseus the raider-king describes them with the fascinated contempt of a man cataloguing everything his own world is not. [^L116]: The goat island (116–141) is surveyed with a colonist's eye: meadows, deep soil, a harbor needing no anchor-stone, a spring — "it would bear every crop in season." The island is "widowed of men" only because the Cyclopes have no ships, "no shipwrights" — seafaring as the exact boundary between having a world and having a cave. This passage, the eighth-century reader's own colonial appraisal form, is the poem's clearest window onto its age of western settlement. [^L166]: "Smoke, and voices — theirs, and their sheep's and goats'": the reconnaissance is aural. Compare Odysseus on Ogygia, aching "to see even the smoke leaping up" from Ithaca (1.58): smoke on a horizon is this poem's sign of inhabited land — hearth-fire, the first legible mark of *any* society, kind or monstrous. [^L175]: The arrival-question, verbatim from 6.120–121 — but there he asked it of Phaeacia, and the answer was the kindest people in the poem. Asked here, the answer is the Cyclops. The formula is a coin the poem keeps flipping; the two faces land in adjacent books. [^L187]: The first sight of him is all isolation-words: alone, far apart, no company, aloof, "his heart knew no law" (ἀθεμίστια ᾔδη — *themis* again). And then scale: not like a bread-eating man but "like a wooded crag... standing clear of all the rest." He is landscape, not society — the ethnography of 112–115 condensed into one body. [^L197]: Maron's wine: the episode's engine, and a parable of xenia's economy. Because Odysseus once *spared* a priest — reverence, not profit — he was given a wine so potent it takes twenty parts of water; because a monster despises guest-law, that wine destroys him. The gift-chain is the theology: what you do at your door comes back at someone else's. Even its secrecy is loving detail — one wife, one housekeeper, no one else in the house knew. [^L219]: The cave interior is a model dairy: cheese-crates, lambs sorted by age in three pens, every vessel brimming. The monster is a meticulous husbandman — the horror ahead is not chaos but *order*, a well-run farm whose livestock now includes men. [^L228]: "But I would not listen — it would have been far better": the narrator convicts his younger self in mid-sentence. The motive is stated with terrible honesty: to see him, "and whether he would give me guest-gifts." Curiosity, and the desire to collect xenia from the uttermost edge of the world — the collector's greed of a connoisseur of hospitality. Six men will pay for it. [^L241]: The door-stone that twenty-two four-wheeled carts could not shift: the number is absurdly exact, an engineer's estimate. It is also the plot: the stone converts the cave into a problem force cannot solve (299–305), which is why this, of all adventures, belongs to Nobody. [^L252]: The Cyclops asks Nestor's question — the piracy formula of 3.71–74, word for word — but before welcome, from above his own supper-fire. In Pylos the question followed the feast and was courtesy; flung at suppliants before any word of greeting, it is the signature of the monster. The poem has waited six books to spring this reuse. [^L263]: Odysseus' plea leans on Agamemnon's fame and sack-count — the credentials of a raider offered to a hermit who has never heard of Troy — and then rises to the full doctrine: "Zeus is the avenger of suppliants and of strangers — Zeus of Strangers." The theology Echeneus and Nausicaa and Alcinous all recited is here spoken to its one perfect unbeliever. [^L273]: "The Cyclopes pay no heed to Zeus... for we are the better men by far." The only speech of genuine atheism in Homer — not doubt but contemptuous superiority. And his follow-up question (where is your ship?) shows cunning inside the savagery: he tests, Odysseus lies (283–286), and the lie — the ship wrecked by Poseidon — saves the crews and is, prophetically, half true. [^L283]: The instant lie — ship wrecked by Poseidon, survivors only — protects the crew at the shore and the fleet at the island in one stroke. It is also, unknowingly, half a prophecy: wreck does await — the fleet under the Laestrygonian rocks, the last ship under Zeus' bolt, and Poseidon saving his wrath for the raft. In this poem even the lies come true; the liar just doesn't know how. [^L289]: "Like puppies" — the most sickening simile in the poem precisely because of its smallness: not battle-death but the casual destruction of something young by something huge. Then the lion formula, and the total consumption — "entrails, flesh, bones with their marrow" — the feast type-scene inverted into a meal without fire, portion, or god. [^L299]: The sword-impulse checked: kill him now and die entombed. The stone forces the plot's grammar — βίη (force) is useless; everything must run through μῆτις (cunning). The episode is built as a demonstration-proof of the hero's defining quality, with the door-stone as the theorem's given. [^L314]: "The way a man sets the lid on a quiver": the boulder no twenty-two carts could shift, handled like an archer's kit — scale comedy, and a reminder between the horrors that to him this is housekeeping. [^L320]: The stake is *olive* — green olive-wood, Athena's tree, the wood of the bed at 23. The instrument of vengeance and the symbol of the marriage are cut from the same timber; the poem's materials are never neutral. [^L322]: Measured against "the mast of a black twenty-oared ship, a broad-beamed freighter" — the second time Odysseus sizes timber by merchant shipping (the raft-hull at 5.249–251). Euryalus' sneer (8.161–164) keeps being half-right: the hero's imagination is genuinely nautical-commercial. The poem lets the insult be observation. [^L339]: This once, the Cyclops drives *all* the flock inside, rams included — "whether some foreboding moved him, or a god so ordered it." Without that unexplained variance there is no escape under the rams. The narrator leaves the door open between chance and providence, and it is the tale's only such shrug: even Odysseus cannot say who arranged his instrument. [^L347]: The wine-offer is staged as a grievance-gift: "I was bringing it as an offering... but your madness is past all bearing." He serves the destroying draught in the language of the very hospitality being violated — and the Cyclops, delighted, promises a guest-gift in return, completing the parody: the exchange-of-gifts scene performed by a poisoner and a cannibal. [^L366]: Οὖτις — "Nobody." The man who spent eight books refusing to be named (and heard last night that "no one among mankind is altogether nameless," 8.552) weaponizes namelessness itself. The alias is also a self-annihilation with a truth in it: stripped of ships, companions, and fame, what is he in this cave but nobody? The name he gives falsely is the condition he is actually in. [^L369]: "Nobody I will eat last... that shall be your guest-gift." The Cyclops' single joke — and it is a real one, the ghastly wit of parodied xenia. The poem gives its monster exactly one flash of humor, and it is about eating-order. [^L384]: The blinding runs on two craftsman similes back to back: the shipwright's bow-drill (spun with a strap by mates below — precise, collaborative, professional) and the smith quenching an axe-head, "for that is what gives iron its strength." The atrocity is narrated as skilled labor — Odysseus the carpenter of the raft and the bed at his trade — and the second simile is knowingly anachronistic: iron-tempering is the poet's own technology, imported into the bronze-age tale for the sound of the hiss. [^L391]: The quench-simile carries a workshop aside — "for that is what gives iron its strength" — a craftsman's parenthesis on metallurgy in the middle of an atrocity. The poet knows his trade-lore and cannot resist sharing it, even here. [^L403]: Polyphemus is named at last — by his worried neighbors, 403 lines into his episode. The name means "much-famed" (or "much-speaking"): Fame-himself, blinded by Nobody. The pun-architecture of the episode is total. [^L410]: The trap sprung: "if nobody is forcing you" — Greek μή τίς, one breath away from μῆτις, *cunning*. The neighbors' diagnosis ("sickness from Zeus — pray to our father Poseidon") is wrong in the first clause and disastrous in the second: their prescribed prayer is exactly what will curse the escaping trickster. And at 414 the narrator lands the pun openly: the name deceived him — "the name, and the flawless *mētis*." Nobody and cunning are, in Greek, nearly the same word: the alias was the trait, spelled aloud. [^L422]: "I wove every guile and design, as a man does for his very life" — plotting as weaving yet again (Penelope's loom, Hephaestus' snare-webs, Nestor's "stitched evils"). The poem has one master-metaphor for intelligence, and every member of this family uses it. [^L445]: "Heavy with his wool — and with me, and my crowding thoughts": the great ram carries a double freight, fleece and mind. The zeugma is the escape itself in miniature — the monster's own best possession loaded with the *mētis* that ruined him. [^L447]: The address to the ram — the episode's astonishing mercy. The cannibal, in agony, speaks to his lead animal with the tenderness the poem has shown nowhere else in the cave: *first always first, to the grass, to the rivers, home at evening — now last. Grieving, are you, for your master's eye?* For ten lines the monster is a shepherd who loves his beast and is loved in his imagination by it, and the listening hall — and we — are forced to pity him with the escaping hero literally hanging beneath the words. [^L456]: "If only you could think with me" — ὁμοφρονέοις: the *homophrosynē* word, the like-mindedness Odysseus blessed Nausicaa with as the best thing two people can have (6.181–184). The Cyclops wishes it of a sheep. It is the loneliest line in the poem: the creature with no society, no law, and now no sight, reaching for the poem's word for marriage — toward the animal carrying his enemy out the door. [^L468]: "I frowned each man's tears back": grief for the six left in the cave is suppressed by a movement of the brows — mourning deferred by command, as at the Cicones it was rationed to three calls of the name. The captain's arithmetic: weep later, row now. [^L494]: The companions' plea is the sanest speech in the episode — and it fails. "They could not persuade my great heart" (500): the identical formula for heroic obstinacy the poem elsewhere uses admiringly. This is the hero's great flaw scene: the need to *sign the deed* overrides survival itself. [^L500]: "They could not persuade my great heart" — the formula of heroic resolve, used here for the one decision in the poem that everyone, crew and listener alike, can see is wrong. The epic language of steadfastness deployed against sane advice: obstinacy and heroism share a vocabulary, and the poem knows it. [^L504]: The boast: "tell him: Odysseus, sacker of cities, blinded me — the son of Laertes, who has his home in Ithaca." Name, title, patronymic, address — a herald's full formula, delivered to the one auditor who can turn it into a curse. Kleos demands attribution; Nobody saves your life, but Nobody gets no credit. The claiming of the deed is at once his signature virtue (fame) and the single costliest sentence he speaks in ten years. [^L507]: The Cyclops had a prophecy too — Telemus foretold blinding "at the hands of an Odysseus" — and he had mis-imagined his enemy: "I always watched for some big man, a handsome one." Expectation as blindness before the stake: he was watching for the wrong shape. File this beside every person in Ithaca who will look at a beggar and watch for a king. [^L517]: The monster's second hospitality-parody: *come back, let me give you a guest-gift, my father will escort you home.* The vocabulary of xenia (ξείνια, πομπή — gifts, sending) in the mouth that ate six guests. Odysseus' refusal wishes him to Hades; the exchange of courtesies is complete. [^L528]: The curse — and it is the plot of the Odyssey dictated by its villain: *never come home; or if it is his portion* (the fate-formula from Proteus, 4.475–477, respected even by a praying monster) *— late, in evil case, all companions lost, on another man's ship, and find trouble in his house.* Every clause will be executed: ten years late; the borrowed Phaeacian ship; the hundred and eight suitors. Poseidon's grudge, announced at 1.20–21 and unexplained for eight books, is here given its cause and its exact text. [^L536]: "And the dark-haired god heard him." Four words, and the poem's engine is installed. Compare 6.328: Athena heard Odysseus' prayer in the grove. Both prayers of this pair of enemies are heard; the whole poem is the interference-pattern. [^L549]: The distributive-justice line repeated verbatim from the Cicones (42): loot or livestock, the shares are always even, "so that no man might go cheated by me." And the crew's answering grace — the great ram voted to him "a gift apart" — is the campaign's one moment of pure solidarity, promptly spent on a rejected sacrifice. [^L553]: "He took no heed of my offering: he was pondering, even then, how all my ships might be destroyed." This is Odysseus' theology of his own catastrophe — Zeus as premeditating destroyer — and it stands in unresolved friction with Zeus' own opening speech (1.32–43: mortals blame the gods for what their recklessness earns). The poem lets its hero's bitter reading and its god's self-defense coexist; between them sits every ship and man lost to Thrinacia's cattle, where both explanations will be tested at once. [^L565]: The refrain closes the book as it closed the Cicones — same grief, same relief, same dead. One adventure per moral: the raid cost six per ship by disobedience; the cave cost six by the captain's curiosity and six more words at the rail. The ledger sails on.