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Odysseus
(reappearing with a look of horror.) O Zeus! what can I say after the hideous sights I have seen inside the cave, things past belief, resembling more the tales men tell than aught they do?
375
(reappearing with a look of horror.) O Zeus! what can I say after the hideous sights I have seen inside the cave, things past belief, resembling more the tales men tell than aught they do?
375
Chorus
What news, Odysseus? has the Cyclops, most godless monster, been feasting on thy dear comrades?
What news, Odysseus? has the Cyclops, most godless monster, been feasting on thy dear comrades?
Odysseus
Aye, he singled out a pair, on whom the flesh was
fattest and in best condition, and took them up in his hand to weigh.
380
Aye, he singled out a pair, on whom the flesh was
fattest and in best condition, and took them up in his hand to weigh.
380
Chorus
How went it with you then, poor wretch?
How went it with you then, poor wretch?
Odysseus
When we had entered yonder rocky abode, he lighted first a fire, throwing logs of towering oak upon his spacious hearth,
enough for three waggons to carry as their load; next, close by the blazing flame, he placed his couch of pine-boughs laid upon the floor, and filled a bowl of some ten firkins, pouring white milk thereinto, after he had milked his kine;
385
and by his side he put a can of ivy-wood, whose breadth was three cubits and its depth four maybe;
next he set his brazen pot a-boiling on the fire,
1
spits too he set beside him, fashioned of the branches of thorn, their points hardened in the fire and the rest of them trimmed with the hatchet,
390
and the blood-bowls of Aetna for the axe’s edge.
2
Now when that hell-cook, god-detested, had everything quite ready, he caught up a pair of my companions and proceeded deliberately to cut the throat of one of them over the yawning brazen pot;
395
but the other he clutched by the tendon of his heel, and, striking him against a sharp point of rocky stone, dashed out his brains; then, after hacking the fleshy parts with glutton cleaver, he set to grilling them, but the limbs he threw into his cauldron to seethe.
400
And I, poor wretch, drew near with streaming eyes and waited on the Cyclops; but the others kept cowering like frightened birds in crannies of the rock, and the blood forsook their skin.
405
When we had entered yonder rocky abode, he lighted first a fire, throwing logs of towering oak upon his spacious hearth,
enough for three waggons to carry as their load; next, close by the blazing flame, he placed his couch of pine-boughs laid upon the floor, and filled a bowl of some ten firkins, pouring white milk thereinto, after he had milked his kine;
385
and by his side he put a can of ivy-wood, whose breadth was three cubits and its depth four maybe;
next he set his brazen pot a-boiling on the fire,
1
spits too he set beside him, fashioned of the branches of thorn, their points hardened in the fire and the rest of them trimmed with the hatchet,
390
and the blood-bowls of Aetna for the axe’s edge.
2
Now when that hell-cook, god-detested, had everything quite ready, he caught up a pair of my companions and proceeded deliberately to cut the throat of one of them over the yawning brazen pot;
395
but the other he clutched by the tendon of his heel, and, striking him against a sharp point of rocky stone, dashed out his brains; then, after hacking the fleshy parts with glutton cleaver, he set to grilling them, but the limbs he threw into his cauldron to seethe.
400
And I, poor wretch, drew near with streaming eyes and waited on the Cyclops; but the others kept cowering like frightened birds in crannies of the rock, and the blood forsook their skin.
405
Cyclops. Euripides. London. 1891.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
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