has been taken
from me!' This, and more, he said in his rage. Ghastly horror took
possession of me, as I beheld his features, streaming even yet with
blood, and the ruthless hands, and the round space deprived of the eye,
and his limbs, and his beard matted with human blood. Death was before
my eyes, {and} yet that was the least of my woes. I imagined that[20]
now he was about to seize hold of me, and that now he was on the very
point of swallowing my vitals within his own; in my mind was fixed the
impress of that time when I beheld two bodies of my companions three or
four times dashed against the ground. Throwing himself on the top of
them, just like a shaggy lion, he stowed away their entrails, their
flesh, their bones with the white marrow, and their quivering limbs, in
his ravenous paunch. A trembling seized me; in my alarm I stood without
blood {in my features}, as I beheld him both chewing and belching out
his bloody banquet from his mouth, and vomiting pieces mingled with
wine; {and} I fancied that such a doom was in readiness for wretched me.

"Concealing myself for many a day, and trembling at every sound, and
both fearing death and {yet} desirous to die, satisfying hunger with
acorns, and with grass mixed with leaves, alone, destitute, desponding,
abandoned to death and destruction, after a length of time, I beheld a
ship not far off; by signs I prayed for deliverance, and I ran down to
the shore; I prevailed; and a Trojan ship received me, a Greek. Do thou
too, dearest of my companions, relate thy adventures, and those of thy
chief, and of the company, which, together with thee, entrusted
{themselves} to the ocean."

The other relates how that AEolus rules over the Etrurian seas; AEolus,
the grandson of Hippotas, who confines the winds in their prison, which
the Dulichean chief had received, shut up in a leather {bag}, a wondrous
gift; how, with a favouring breeze, he had proceeded for nine days, and
had beheld the land he was bound for; {and how}, when the first morning
after the ninth had arrived, his companions, influenced by envy and a
desire for booty, supposing it to be gold, had cut the fastenings of the
winds; {and how}, through these, the ship had gone back along the waves
through which it had just come, and had returned to the harbour of the
AEolian king.

"Thence," said he, "we came to the ancient city[21] of Lamus, the
Laestrygon. Antiphates was reigning in that land. I was sent to him, two
i