Homer, The Odyssey (Eighth Century B.C.E.)

Economic and political turmoil engulfed Greece during what scholars have dubbed the “Dark Age,” but this period also set the stage for the remaking of Greek civilization. Greece’s geography encouraged continued contact with other peoples, thereby allowing for economic, cultural, and political recovery and innovation. In the process, Greeks fashioned a new sense of identity centered on the value of individual excellence (arête in Greek). Drawing on long-standing oral tradition, the Greek poet Homer celebrated this value in his epic poem The Odyssey. Composed in the eighth century B.C.E., the poem recounts the adventures of Odysseus, who sets sail for his home off the west coast of Greece after having fought in the Trojan War. (Homer told the tale of this war in The Iliad, his other epic poem.) Odysseus’s homecoming proves to be no easy feat; he faces one peril after another during his ten-year journey back to Ithaca. The excerpt below from Book 9 describes his visit to the “land of the Cyclops.” What begins as a reconnaissance mission turns into a battle for his and his men’s lives. Odysseus rises to the challenge, all the while displaying characteristics highly prized by Homer’s audience as they reshaped Greek society.

From The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Stanley Lombardo, introduction by Sheila Murnaghan. Copyright © 2000 by Hackett Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission of Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

From there we sailed on, our spirits now at a low ebb,

and reached the land of the high and mighty Cyclops,

lawless brutes, who trust so to the everlasting gods

they never plant with their own hands or plow the soil.

Unsown, unplowed, the earth teems with all they need,

wheat, barley and vines, swelled by the rains of Zeus¹

to yield a big full-bodied wine from clustered grapes.

They have no meeting place for council, no laws either,

no, up on the mountain peaks they live in arching caverns—

each a law to himself, ruling his wives and children,

not a care in the world for any neighbor.

Now,

a level island stretches flat across the harbor,

not close inshore to the Cyclops’ coast, not too far out,

thick with woods where the wild goats breed by hundreds.

No trampling of men to start them from their lairs,

no hunters roughing it out on the woody ridges,

stalking quarry, ever raid their haven.

No flocks browse, no plowlands roll with wheat;

unplowed, unsown forever—empty of humankind—

the island just feeds droves of bleating goats.

For the Cyclops have no ships with crimson prows,

no shipwrights there to build them good trim craft

that could sail them out to foreign ports of call

as most men risk the seas to trade with other men.

Such artisans would have made this island too

a decent place to live in . . . No mean spot,

it could bear you any crop you like in season.

The water-meadows along the low foaming shore

run soft and moist, and your vines would never flag.

The land’s clear for plowing. Harvest on harvest,

a man could reap a healthy stand of grain—

the subsoil’s dark and rich.

There’s a snug deep-water harbor there, what’s more,

no need for mooring-gear, no anchor-stones to heave,

no cables to make fast. Just beach your keels, ride out

the days till your shipmates’ spirit stirs for open sea

and a fair wind blows. And last, at the harbor’s head

there’s a spring that rushes fresh from beneath a cave

and black poplars flourish round its mouth.

When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more

I called a muster briskly, commanding all the hands,

“The rest of you stay here, my friends-in-arms.

I’ll go across with my own ship and crew

and probe the natives living over there.

What are they—violent, savage, lawless?

or friendly strangers, god-fearing men?”

With that I boarded ship and told the crew

to embark at once and cast off cables quickly.

They swung aboard, they sat to the oars in ranks

and in rhythm churned the water white with stroke on stroke.

But as soon as we reached the coast I mentioned—no long trip—

we spied a cavern just at the shore, gaping above the surf,

towering, overgrown with laurel. And here big flocks,

sheep and goats, were stalled to spend the nights,

and around its mouth a yard was walled up

with quarried boulders sunk deep in the earth

and enormous pines and oak-trees looming darkly . . .

Here was a giant’s lair, in fact, who always pastured

his sheepflocks far afield and never mixed with others.

A grim loner, dead set in his own lawless ways.

Here was a piece of work, by god, a monster

built like no mortal who ever supped on bread,

no, like a shaggy peak, I’d say—a man-mountain

rearing head and shoulders over the world.

Our party quickly made its way to his cave

but we failed to find our host himself inside;

he was off in his pasture, ranging his sleek flocks.

So we explored his den, gazing wide-eyed at it all,

the large flat racks loaded with drying cheeses,

the folds crowded with young lambs and kids,

split into three groups—here the spring-born,

here mid-yearlings, here the fresh sucklings

off to the side—each sort was penned apart.

And all his vessels, pails and hammered buckets

he used for milking, were brimming full with whey.

From the start my comrades pressed me, pleading hard,

“Let’s make away with the cheeses, then come back—

hurry, drive the lambs and kids from the pens

to our swift ship, put out to sea at once!”

But I would not give way—

and how much better it would have been—

not till I saw him, saw what gifts he’d give.

But he proved no lovely sight to my companions.

There we built a fire, set our hands on the cheeses,

offered some to the gods and ate the bulk ourselves

and settled down inside, awaiting his return . . .

And back he came from pasture, late in the day,

herding his flocks home, and lugging a huge load

of good dry logs to fuel his fire at supper.

He flung them down in the cave—a jolting crash—

we scuttled in panic into the deepest dark recess.

As soon as he’d briskly finished all his chores

he lit his fire and spied us in the blaze and

“Strangers!” he thundered out, “now who are you?

Where did you sail from, over the running sea-lanes?

Out on a trading spree or roving the waves like pirates,

sea-wolves raiding at will, who risk their lives

to plunder other men?”

The hearts inside us shook,

terrified by his rumbling voice and monstrous hulk.

Nevertheless I found the nerve to answer, firmly,

“Men of Achaea we are and bound now from Troy!

Driven far off course by the warring winds,

over the vast gulf of the sea—battling home

on a strange tack, a route that’s off the map,

and so we’ve come to you . . .

so it must please King Zeus’s plotting heart.

We’re glad to say we’re men of Atrides Agamemnon,²

whose fame is the proudest thing on earth these days,

so great a city he sacked, such multitudes he killed!

But since we’ve chanced on you, we’re at your knees

in hopes of a warm welcome, even a guest-gift,

the sort that hosts give strangers. That’s the custom.

Respect the gods, my friend. We’re suppliants—at your mercy!

Zeus of the Strangers guards all guests and suppliants:

strangers are sacred—Zeus will avenge their rights!”

“Stranger,” he grumbled back from his brutal heart,

“you must be a fool, stranger, or come from nowhere,

telling me to fear the gods or avoid their wrath!

We Cyclops never blink at Zeus and Zeus’s shield

of storm and thunder, or any other blessed god—

we’ve got more force by far.

I’d never spare you in fear of Zeus’s hatred,

you or your comrades here, unless I had the urge.

But tell me, where did you moor your sturdy ship

when you arrived? Up the coast or close in?

I’d just like to know.”

So he laid his trap

but he never caught me, no, wise to the world

I shot back in my crafty way, “My ship?

Poseidon³ god of the earthquake smashed my ship,

he drove it against the rocks at your island’s far cape,

dashed it against a cliff as the winds rode us in.

I and the men you see escaped a sudden death.”

Not a word in reply to that, the ruthless brute.

Lurching up, he lunged out with his hands toward my men

and snatching two at once, rapping them on the ground

he knocked them dead like pups—

their brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor—

and ripping them limb from limb to fix his meal

he bolted them down like a mountain-lion, left no scrap,

devoured entrails, flesh and bones, marrow and all!

We flung our arms to Zeus, we wept and cried aloud,

looking on at his grisly work—paralyzed, appalled.

But once the Cyclops had stuffed his enormous gut

with human flesh, washing it down with raw milk,

he slept in his cave, stretched out along his flocks.

And I with my fighting heart, I thought at first

to steal up to him, draw the sharp sword at my hip

and stab his chest where the midriff packs the liver—

I groped for the fatal spot but a fresh thought held me back.

There at a stroke we’d finish off ourselves as well—

how could we with our bare hands heave back

that slab he set to block his cavern’s gaping maw?

he left me there, the heart inside me brooding on revenge:

how could I pay him back? would Athena give me glory?

Here was the plan that struck my mind as best . . .

the Cyclops’ great club: there it lay by the pens,

olivewood, full of sap. He’d lopped it off to brandish

once it dried. Looking it over, we judged it big enough

to be the mast of a pitch-black ship with her twenty oars,

a freighter broad in the beam that plows through miles of sea—

so long, so thick it bulked before our eyes. Well,

flanking it now, I chopped off a fathom’s length,

pushed it to comrades, told them to plane it down,

and they made the club smooth as I bent and shaved

the tip to a stabbing point. I turned it over

the blazing fire to char it good and hard,

then hid it well, buried deep under the dung

that littered the cavern’s floor in thick wet clumps.

And now I ordered my shipmates all to cast lots—

who’d brave it out with me

to hoist our stake and grind it into his eye

when sleep had overcome him? Luck of the draw:

I got the very ones I would have picked myself,

four good men, and I in the lead made five . . .

Nightfall brought him back herding his woolly sheep

and he quickly drove the sleek flock into the vaulted cavern,

rams and all—none left outside in the walled yard—

his own idea, perhaps, or a god led him on.

Then he hoisted the huge slab to block the door

and squatted to milk his sheep and bleating goats,

each in order, putting a suckling underneath each dam,

and as soon as he’d briskly finished all his chores

he snatched up two more men and fixed his meal.

But this time I lifted a carved wooden bowl,

brimful of my ruddy wine,

and went right up to the Cyclops, enticing,

“Here, Cyclops, try this wine—to top off

the banquet of human flesh you’ve bolted down!

Judge for yourself what stock our ship had stored.

I brought it here to make you a fine libation,

hoping you would pity me, Cyclops, send me home,

but your rages are insufferable. You barbarian—

how can any man on earth come visit you after this?

What you’ve done outrages all that’s right!”

At that he seized the bowl and tossed it off

and the heady wine pleased him immensely. “More”—

he demanded a second bowl—“a hearty helping!

I poured him another fiery bowl—

three bowls I brimmed and three he drank to the last drop,

the fool, and then, when the wine was swirling round his brain,

I approached my host with a cordial, winning word:

“So, you ask me the name I’m known by, Cyclops?

I will tell you. But you must give me a guest-gift

as you’ve promised. Nobody—that’s my name. Nobody—

so my mother and father call me, all my friends.”

But he boomed back at me from his ruthless heart,

“Nobody? I’ll eat Nobody last of all his friends—

I’ll eat the others first! That’s my gift to you!”

With that

he toppled over, sprawled full-length, flat on his back

and lay there, his massive neck slumping to one side,

and sleep that conquers all overwhelmed him now

as wine came spurting, flooding up from his gullet

with chunks of human flesh—he vomited, blind drunk.

Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers

to get it red-hot and rallied all my comrades:

“Courage—no panic, no one hang back now!”

And green as it was, just as the olive stake

was about to catch fire—the glow terrific, yes—

I dragged it from the flames, my men clustering round

as some god breathed enormous courage through us all.

Hoisting high that olive stake with its stabbing point,

straight into the monster’s eye they rammed it hard—

I drove my weight on it from above and bored it home

as a shipwright bores his beam with a shipwright’s drill

that men below, whipping the strap back and forth, whirl

and the drill keeps twisting faster, never stopping—

So we seized our stake with its fiery tip

and bored it round and round in the giant’s eye

till blood came boiling up around that smoking shaft

and the hot blast singed his brow and eyelids round the core

and the broiling eyeball burst—

its crackling roots blazed

and hissed—

as a blacksmith plunges a glowing ax or adze

in an ice-cold bath and the metal screeches steam

and its temper hardens—that’s the iron’s strength—

so the eye of the Cyclops sizzled round that stake!

He loosed a hideous roar, the rock walls echoed round

and we scuttled back in terror. The monster wrenched the spike

from his eye and out it came with a red geyser of blood—

he flung it aside with frantic hands, and mad with pain

he bellowed out for help from his neighbor Cyclops

living round about in caves on windswept crags.

Hearing his cries, they lumbered up from every side

and hulking round his cavern, asked what ailed him:

“What, Polyphemus, what in the world’s the trouble?

Roaring out in the godsent night to rob us of our sleep.

Surely no one’s rustling your flocks against your will—

surely no one’s trying to kill you now by fraud or force!”

“Nobody, friends”—Polyphemus bellowed back from his cave—

“Nobody’s killing me now by fraud and not by force!”

“If you’re alone,” his friends boomed back at once,

“and nobody’s trying to overpower you now—look,

it must be a plague sent here by mighty Zeus

and there’s no escape from that.

You’d better pray to your father, Lord Poseidon.”

They lumbered off, but laughter filled my heart

to think how nobody’s name—my great cunning stroke—

had duped them one and all. But the Cyclops there,

still groaning, racked with agony, groped around

for the huge slab, and heaving it from the doorway,

down he sat in the cave’s mouth, his arms spread wide,

hoping to catch a comrade stealing out with sheep—

such a blithering fool he took me for!

But I was already plotting . . .

what was the best way out? how could I find

escape from death for my crew, myself as well?

My wits kept weaving, weaving cunning schemes—

Life at stake, monstrous death staring us in the face—

till this plan struck my mind as best. That flock,

those well-fed rams with their splendid thick fleece,

sturdy, handsome beasts sporting their dark weight of wool:

I lashed them abreast, quietly, twisting the willow-twigs

the Cyclops slept on—giant, lawless brute—I took them

three by three; each ram in the middle bore a man

while the two rams either side would shield him well.

So three beasts to bear each man, but as for myself?

There was one bellwether ram, the prize of all the flock,

And clutching him by his back, tucked up under

his shaggy belly, there I hung, face upward,

both hands locked in his marvelous deep fleece,

clinging for dear life, my spirit steeled, enduring . . .

So we held on, desperate, waiting Dawn’s first light.

As soon

as young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more

the rams went rumbling out of the cave toward pasture,

the ewes kept bleating round the pens, unmilked,

their udders about to burst. Their master now,

heaving in torment, felt the back of each animal

halting before him here, but the idiot never sensed

my men were trussed up under their thick fleecy ribs.

And last of them all came my great ram now, striding out,

weighed down with his dense wool and my deep plots.

Stroking him gently, powerful Polyphemus murmured,

“Dear old ram, why last of the flock to quit the cave?

In the good old days you’d never lag behind the rest—

you with your long marching strides, first by far

of the flock to graze the fresh young grasses,

first by far to reach the rippling streams,

first to turn back home, keen for your fold

when night comes on—but now you’re last of all.

And why? Sick at heart for your master’s eye

that coward gouged out with his wicked crew?—

only, after he’d stunned my wits with wine—

that, that Nobody . . .

who’s not escaped his death, I swear, not yet.

And with that threat he let my ram go free outside,

But soon as we’d got one foot past cave and courtyard,

first I loosed myself from the ram, then loosed my men,

then quickly, glancing back again and again we drove

our flock, good plump beasts with their long shanks,

straight to the ship, and a welcome sight we were

to loyal comrades—we who’d escaped our deaths—

But once offshore as far as a man’s shout can carry,

I called back to the Cyclops, stinging taunts:

“So, Cyclops, no weak coward it was whose crew

you bent to devour there in your vaulted cave—

you with your brute force! Your filthy crimes

came down on your own head, you shameless cannibal,

daring to eat your guests in your own house—

so Zeus and the other gods have paid you back!”

That made the rage of the monster boil over.

Ripping off the peak of a towering crag, he heaved it

so hard the boulder landed just in from of our dark prow

and a huge swell reared up as the rock went plunging under—

a tidal wave from the open sea. The sudden backwash

drove us landward again, forcing us close inshore

but grabbing a long pole, I thrust us off and away,

tossing my head for dear life, signaling crews

to put their backs in the oars, escape grim death.

They threw themselves in the labor, rowed on fast

but once we’d plowed the breakers twice as far,

again I began to taunt the Cyclops—men around me

trying to check me, calm me, left and right:

“So headstrong—why? Why rile the beast again?”

“That rock he flung in the sea just now, hurling our ship

to shore once more—we thought we’d die on the spot!”

“If he’d caught a sound from one of us, just a whisper,

he would have crushed our heads and ship timbers

with one heave of another flashing, jagged rock!”

“Good god, the brute can throw!”

So they begged

but they could not bring my fighting spirit round.

I called back with another burst of anger, “Cyclops—

if any man on the face of the earth should ask you

who blinded you, shamed you so—say Odysseus,

raider of cities, he gouged out your eye,

Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca!”

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