The Odyssey

by Homer

ARGUMENT.
THE ADVENTURES OF THE CICONS, LOTOPHAGI AND CYCLOPS.

Ulysses begins the relation of his adventures: how, after the destruction of Troy, he with his companions made an incursion on the Cicons, by whom they were repulsed; and, meeting with a storm, were driven to the coast of the Lotophagi. From there they sailed to the land of the Cyclops, whose manners and situation are particularly characterised. The giant Polyphemus and his cave described; the usage Ulysses and his companions met with there; and, lastly, the method and artifice by which he escaped.

Then thus Ulysses: “Thou whom first in sway,
As first in virtue, these thy realms obey;
How sweet the products of a peaceful reign!
The heaven-taught poet and enchanting strain;
The well-filled palace, the perpetual feast,
A land rejoicing, and a people bless’d!
How goodly seems it ever to employ
Man’s social days in union and in joy;
The plenteous hoard high-heap’d with cates divine,
And o’er the foaming bowl the laughing wine!

“Amid these joys, why seeks thy mind to know
The unhappy series of a wanderer’s woe?
Rememberance sad, whose image to review,
Alas, I must open all my wounds anew!
And oh, what first, what last shall I relate,
Of woes unnumbered sent by Heaven and Fate?

“Know first the man (though now a wretch distress’d)
Who hopes thee, monarch, for his future guest.
Behold Ulysses! no ignoble name,
Earth sounds my wisdom and high heaven my fame.

“My native soil is Ithaca the fair,
Where high Neritus waves his woods in air;
Dulichium, Same and Zaccynthus crown’d
With shady mountains spread their isles around.
(These to the north and night’s dark regions run,
Those to Aurora and the rising sun).
Low lies our isle, yet bless’d in fruitful stores;
Strong are her sons, though rocky are her shores;
And none, ah none no lovely to my sight,
Of all the lands that heaven o’erspreads with light.
In vain Calypso long constrained my stay,
With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay;
With all her charms as vainly Circe strove,
And added magic to secure my love.
In pomps or joys, the palace or the grot,
My country’s image never was forgot;
My absent parents rose before my sight,
And distant lay contentment and delight.

“Hear, then, the woes which mighty Jove ordain’d
To wait my passage from the Trojan land.
The winds from Ilion to the Cicons’ shore,
Beneath cold Ismarus our vessels bore.
We boldly landed on the hostile place,
And sack’d the city, and destroy’d the race,
Their wives made captive, their possessions shared,
And every soldier found a like reward
I then advised to fly; not so the rest,
Who stay’d to revel, and prolong the feast:
The fatted sheep and sable bulls they slay,
And bowls flow round, and riot wastes the day.
Meantime the Cicons, to their holds retired,
Call on the Cicons, with new fury fired;
With early morn the gather’d country swarms,
And all the continent is bright with arms;
Thick as the budding leaves or rising flowers
O’erspread the land, when spring descends in showers:
All expert soldiers, skill’d on foot to dare,
Or from the bounding courser urge the war.
Now fortune changes (so the Fates ordain);
Our hour was come to taste our share of pain.
Close at the ships the bloody fight began,
Wounded they wound, and man expires on man.
Long as the morning sun increasing bright
O’er heaven’s pure azure spreads the glowing light,
Promiscuous death the form of war confounds,
Each adverse battle gored with equal wounds;
But when his evening wheels o’erhung the main,
Then conquest crown’d the fierce Ciconian train.
Six brave companions from each ship we lost,
The rest escape in haste, and quit the coast,
With sails outspread we fly the unequal strife,
Sad for their loss, but joyful of our life.
Yet as we fled, our fellows’ rites we paid,
And thrice we call’d on each unhappy shade,

“Meanwhile the god, whose hand the thunder forms,
Drives clouds on clouds, and blackens heaven with storms:
Wide o’er the waste the rage of Boreas sweeps,
And night rush’d headlong on the shaded deeps.
Now here, now there, the giddy ships are borne,
And all the rattling shrouds in fragments torn.
We furl’d the sail, we plied the labouring oar,
Took down our masts, and row’d our ships to shore.
Two tedious days and two long nights we lay,
O’erwatch’d and batter’d in the naked bay.
But the third morning when Aurora brings,
We rear the masts, we spread the canvas wings;
Refresh’d and careless on the deck reclined,
We sit, and trust the pilot and the wind.
Then to my native country had I sail’d:
But, the cape doubled, adverse winds prevail’d.
Strong was the tide, which by the northern blast
Impell’d, our vessels on Cythera cast,
Nine days our fleet the uncertain tempest bore
Far in wide ocean, and from sight of shore:
The tenth we touch’d, by various errors toss’d,
The land of Lotus and the flowery coast.
We climb’d the beach, and springs of water found,
Then spread our hasty banquet on the ground.
Three men were sent, deputed from the crew
(A herald one) the dubious coast to view,
And learn what habitants possess’d the place.
They went, and found a hospitable race:
Not prone to ill, nor strange to foreign guest,
They eat, they drink, and nature gives the feast
The trees around them all their food produce:
Lotus the name: divine, nectareous juice!
(Thence call’d Lotophagi); which whose tastes,
Insatiate riots in the sweet repasts,
Nor other home, nor other care intends,
But quits his house, his country, and his friends.
The three we sent, from off the enchanting ground
We dragg’d reluctant, and by force we bound.
The rest in haste forsook the pleasing shore,
Or, the charm tasted, had return’d no more.
Now placed in order on their banks, they sweep
The sea’s smooth face, and cleave the hoary deep:
With heavy hearts we labour through the tide,
To coasts unknown, and oceans yet untried.

“The land of Cyclops first, a savage kind,
Nor tamed by manners, nor by laws confined:
Untaught to plant, to turn the glebe, and sow,
They all their products to free nature owe:
The soil, untill’d, a ready harvest yields,
With wheat and barley wave the golden fields;
Spontaneous wines from weighty clusters pour,
And Jove descends in each prolific shower,
By these no statues and no rights are known,
No council held, no monarch fills the throne;
But high on hills, or airy cliffs, they dwell,
Or deep in caves whose entrance leads to hell.
Each rules his race, his neighbour not his care,
Heedless of others, to his own severe.

“Opposed to the Cyclopæan coast, there lay
An isle, whose hill their subject fields survey;
Its name Lachaea, crown’d with many a grove,
Where savage goats through pathless thickets rove:
No needy mortals here, with hunger bold,
Or wretched hunters through the wintry cold
Pursue their flight; but leave them safe to bound
From hill to hill, o’er all the desert ground.
Nor knows the soil to feed the fleecy care,
Or feels the labours of the crooked share;
But uninhabited, untill’d, unsown,
It lies, and breeds the bleating goat alone.
For there no vessel with vermilion prore,
Or bark of traffic, glides from shore to shore;
The rugged race of savages, unskill’d
The seas to traverse, or the ships to build,
Gaze on the coast, nor cultivate the soil,
Unlearn’d in all the industrious art of toil,
Yet here all products and all plants abound,
Sprung from the fruitful genius of the ground;
Fields waving high with heavy crops are seen,
And vines that flourish in eternal green,
Refreshing meads along the murmuring main,
And fountains streaming down the fruitful plain.