ough dead of night.

'And now the morrow was rising in the early east, and the dewy darkness
rolled away from the sky by Dawn, when sudden out of the forest advances
a human shape strange and unknown, worn with uttermost hunger and
pitiably attired, and stretches entreating hands towards the shore. We
look back. Filthy and wretched, with shaggy beard and a coat pinned
together with thorns, he was yet a Greek, and had been sent of old to
Troy in his father's arms. And he, when he saw afar the Dardanian habits
and armour of Troy, hung back a little in terror at the sight, and
stayed his steps; then ran headlong to the shore with weeping and
prayers: "By the heavens I beseech you, by the heavenly powers and this
luminous sky that gives us breath, take me up, O Trojans, carry me away
to any land soever, and it will be enough. I know I am one out of the
Grecian fleets, I confess I warred against the household gods of Ilium;
for that, if our wrong and guilt is so great, throw [605-639]me
piecemeal on the flood or plunge me in the waste sea. If I do perish,
gladly will I perish at human hands." He ended; and clung clasping our
knees and grovelling at them. We encourage him to tell who he is and of
what blood born, and reveal how Fortune pursues him since then. Lord
Anchises after little delay gives him his hand, and strengthens his
courage by visible pledge. At last, laying aside his terror, he speaks
thus:

'"I am from an Ithacan home, Achemenides by name, set out for Troy in
luckless Ulysses' company; poor was my father Adamastus, and would God
fortune had stayed thus! Here my comrades abandoned me in the Cyclops'
vast cave, mindless of me while they hurry away from the barbarous
gates. It is a house of gore and blood-stained feasts, dim and huge
within. Himself he is great of stature and knocks at the lofty sky
(gods, take away a curse like this from earth!) to none gracious in
aspect or courteous of speech. He feeds on the flesh and dark blood of
wretched men. I myself saw, when he caught the bodies of two of us with
his great hand, and lying back in the middle of the cave crushed them on
the rock, and the courts splashed and swam with gore; I saw when he
champed the flesh adrip with dark clots of blood, and the warm limbs
quivered under his teeth. Yet not unavenged. Ulysses brooked not this,
nor even in such straits did the Ithacan forget himself. For so soon as
he, gorged with his feast and buried in wine, lay with bent