and gave them swine's food, mast, and
acorns, and chestnuts, to eat.

Eurylochus, who beheld nothing of these sad changes from where he
was stationed without the gate, only instead of his companions that
entered (who he thought had all vanished by witchcraft) beheld a herd
of swine, hurried back to the ship, to give an account of what he had
seen: but so frightened and perplexed, that he could give no distinct
report of any thing, only he remembered a palace, and a woman singing
at her work, and gates guarded by lions. But his companions, he said,
were all vanished.

Then Ulysses suspecting some foul witchcraft, snatched his sword, and
his bow, and commanded Eurylochus instantly to lead him to the place.
But Eurylochus fell down, and embracing his knees, besought him by the
name of a man whom the gods had in their protection, not to expose his
safety, and the safety of them all, to certain destruction.

"Do thou then stay, Eurylochus?" answered Ulysses: "eat thou and
drink in the ship in safety; while I go alone upon this adventure:
necessity, from whose law is no appeal, compels me."

So saying he quitted the ship and went on shore, accompanied by none;
none had the hardihood to offer to partake that perilous adventure
with him, so much they dreaded the enchantments of the witch. Singly
he pursued his journey till he came to the shining gates which stood
before her mansion: but when he essayed to put his foot over her
threshold, he was suddenly stopt by the apparition of a young man,
bearing a golden rod in his hand, who was the god Mercury. He held
Ulysses by the wrist, to stay his entrance; and "Whither wouldest thou
go?" he said, "O thou most erring of the sons of men! knowest thou
not that this is the house of great Circe, where she keeps thy friends
in a loathsome sty, changed from the fair forms of men into the
detestable and ugly shapes of swine? art thou prepared to share their
fate, from which nothing can ransom thee?" But neither his words, nor
his coming from heaven, could stop the daring foot of Ulysses, whom
compassion for the misfortune of his friends had rendered careless
of danger: which when the god perceived, he had pity to see valour
so misplaced, and gave him the flower of the herb _moly_, which is
sovereign against enchantments. The moly is a small unsightly root,
its virtues but little known, and in low estimation; the dull shepherd
treads on it every day with his clouted shoes: but it bears a