The Odyssey
By: Homer
Translated By: S.H. BUTCHER & A. LANG
The Harvard Classics
Book 9, Odysseus in the Cave of Cyclops
Paragraphs 28-35
This passage is taken from book nine of The Odyssey, where Odysseus and his men are trying to get back home 7 years after the conclusion of the Trojan War. Odysseus and his men have been stuck on the island of Ogygia, where Kalypso had been keeping them after she fell in love with Odysseus. In a desperate search for food, the crew lands on an island inhabited only by a horde of Cyclops. They reach a cave that is filled with a seemingly endless supply of food, but they are discovered and held hostage by a man-eating Cyclops. Odysseus comes up with a genius plan to escape the evil clutches of the monster. First, Odysseus gets the Cyclops drunk, then when the Cyclops asks Odysseus what his name is he replies that it is “Noman.” Then he continues to give the Cyclops alcohol. He consumes so much that he passes out. After the Cyclops falls asleep Odysseus sticks a hot olive branch through his single eye, making it possible for the hero to escape on the bellies of sheep. When they hear the screams, the other Cyclopes on the island come to the cave of Polyphemus, the now blind Cyclops, and ask what is wrong. He tells them that “Noman” is trying to kill him, making the others think that he is not in any danger. Odysseus and his men escape the island, but Odysseus feels the need to gloat about his victory over the Cyclops who then prays to his father, Poseidon, God of the Sea, who in turn makes Odysseus’ return nearly impossible.
28‘So he spake, and again I handed him the dark wine. Thrice I bare and gave it him, and thrice in his folly he drank it to the lees. Now when the wine had got about the wits of the Cyclops, then did I speak to him with soft words:
29‘“Cyclops, thou askest me my renowned name, and I will declare it unto thee, and do thou grant me a stranger’s gift, as thou didst promise. Noman is my name, and Noman they call me, my father and my mother and all my fellows.”
30‘So I spake, and straightway he answered me out of his pitiless heart:
31‘“Noman will I eat last in the number of his fellows, and the others before him: that shall be thy gift.”
32‘Therewith he sank backwards and fell with face upturned, and there he lay with his great neck bent round, and sleep, that conquers all men, overcame him. And the wine and the fragments of men’s flesh issued forth from his mouth, and he vomited, being heavy with wine. Then I thrust in that stake under the deep ashes, until it should grow hot, and I spake to my companions comfortable words, lest any should hang back from me in fear. But when that bar of olive wood was just about to catch fire in the flame, green though it was, and began to glow terribly, even then I came nigh, and drew it from the coals, and my fellows gathered about me, and some god breathed great courage into us. For their part they seized the bar of olive wood, that was sharpened at the point, and thrust it into his eye, while I from my place aloft turned it about, as when a man bores a ship’s beam with a drill while his fellows below spin it with a strap, which they hold at either end, and the auger runs round continually. Even so did we seize the fiery-pointed brand and whirled it round in his eye, and the blood flowed about the heated bar. And the breath of the flame singed his eyelids and brows all about, as the ball of the eye burnt away, and the roots thereof crackled in the flame. And as when a smith dips an axe or adze in chill water with a great hissing, when he would temper it-for hereby anon comes the strength of iron-even so did his eye hiss round the stake of olive. And he raised a great and terrible cry, that the rock rang around, and we fled away in fear, while he plucked forth from his eye the brand bedabbled in much blood. Then maddened with pain he cast it from him with his hands, and called with a loud voice on the Cyclôpes, who dwelt about him in the caves along the windy heights. And they heard the cry and flocked together from every side, and gathering round the cave asked him what ailed him:
33‘“What hath so distressed thee, Polyphemus, that thou criest thus aloud through the immortal night, and makest us sleepless? Surely no mortal driveth off thy flocks against thy will: surely none slayeth thyself by force or craft?”
34‘And the strong Polyphemus spake to them again from out the cave: “My friends, Noman is slaying me by guile, nor at all by force.”
35‘And they answered and spake winged words: “If then no man is violently handling thee in thy solitude, it can in no wise be that thou shouldest escape the sickness sent by mighty Zeus. Nay, pray thou to thy father, the lord Poseidon.”
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