ile of firewood, which he had
been gathering against supper-time, before the mouth of the cave,
which occasioned the crash they heard. The Grecians hid themselves
in the remote parts of the cave, at sight of the uncouth monster. It
was Polyphemus, the largest and savagest of the Cyclops, who boasted
himself to be the son of Neptune. He looked more like a mountain crag
than a man, and to his brutal body he had a brutish mind answerable.
He drove his flock, all that gave milk, to the interior of the cave,
but left the rams and the he-goats without Then taking up a stone so
massy that twenty oxen could not have drawn it, he placed it at the
mouth of the cave, to defend the entrance, and sat him down to milk
his ewes and his goats; which done, he lastly kindled a fire, and
throwing his great eye round the cave (for the Cyclops have no more
than one eye, and that placed in the midst of their forehead), by the
glimmering light he discerned some of Ulysses's men.

"Ho! guests, what are you? merchants or wandering thieves?" he
bellowed out in a voice which took from them all power of reply, it
was so astounding.

Only Ulysses summoned resolution to answer, that they came neither
for plunder nor traffick, but were Grecians who had lost their
way, returning from Troy; which famous city, under the conduct of
Agamemnon, the renowned son of Atreus, they had sacked, and laid level
with the ground. Yet now they prostrated themselves humbly before his
feet, whom they acknowledged to be mightier than they, and besought
him that he would bestow the rites of hospitality upon them, for that
Jove was the avenger of wrongs done to strangers, and would fiercely
resent any injury which they might suffer.

"Fool," said the Cyclop, "to come so far to preach to me the fear of
the gods. We Cyclops care not for your Jove, whom you fable to be
nursed by a goat, nor any of your blessed ones. We are stronger than
they, and dare bid open battle to Jove himself, though you and all
your fellows of the earth join with him." And he bade them tell him
where their ship was, in which they came, and whether they had any
companions. But Ulysses, with a wise caution made answer, that they
had no ship or companions, but were unfortunate men whom the sea,
splitting their ship in pieces, had dashed upon his coast, and
they alone had escaped. He replied nothing, but griping two of the
nearest of them, as if they had been no more than children, he dashed
their br