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 brains out against the earth, and (shocking to relate) tore in pieces their limbs, and devoured them, yet warm and trembling, making a lion’s meal of them, lapping the blood:  for the Cyclops are man-eaters, and esteem human flesh to be a delicacy far above goat’s or kid’s; though by reason of their abhorred customs few men approach their coast, except some stragglers, or now and then a ship-wrecked mariner.  At a sight so horrid Ulysses and his men were like distracted people.  He, when he had made an end of his wicked supper, drained a draught of goat’s milk down his prodigious throat, and lay down and slept among his goats.  Then Ulysses drew his sword, and half resolved to thrust it with all his might in at the bosom of the sleeping monster; but wiser thoughts restrained him, else they had there without help all perished, for none but Polyphemus himself could have removed that mass of stone which he had placed to guard the entrance.  So they were constrained to abide all that night in fear.