in secret here
  The dastard lurks, all trembling with his fear: 
  Swung round and round and dash’d from rock to rock,
  His batter’d brains should on the pavement smoke. 
  No ease, no pleasure my sad heart receives,
  While such a monster as vile Noman lives.”

Once out of the cave, Ulysses cut the bonds of his men, with whose aid he drove part of Polyphemus’ flock on board of his ship, which he had hidden in a cove.  He and his companions were scudding safely past the headland where blind Polyphemus idly sat, when Ulysses tauntingly raised his voice to make known his escape and real name.  With a cry of rage, the giant flung huge masses of rock in the direction of his voice, hotly vowing his father Neptune would yet avenge his wrongs!

Book X. After leaving the island of the Cyclops, Ulysses visited Aeolus, king of the winds, and was hospitably entertained in his cave.  In token of friendship and to enable Ulysses to reach home quickly, Aeolus bottled up all the contrary winds, letting loose only those which would speed him on his way.  On leaving Aeolus, Ulysses so carefully guarded the skin bottle containing the adverse gales that his men fancied it must contain jewels of great price.  For nine days and nights Ulysses guided the rudder, and only when the shores of Ithaca came in sight closed his eyes in sleep.  This moment was seized by his crew to open the bottle, whence the captive winds escaped with a roar, stirring up a hurricane which finally drove them back to Aeolus’ isle.

  “They said:  and (oh cursed fate!) the thongs unbound! 
  The gushing tempest sweeps the ocean round;
  Snatch’d in the whirl, the hurried navy flew,
  The ocean widen’d and the shores withdrew. 
  Roused from my fatal sleep, I long debate
  If still to live, or desperate plunge to fate;
  Thus doubting, prostrate on the deck I lay,
  Till all the coward thoughts of death gave way.”

On seeing them return with tattered sails, Aeolus averred they had incurred the wrath of some god and therefore drove them away from his realm.  Toiling at the oar, they reached, after seven days, the harbor of the Laestrigonians, cannibal giants, from whose clutches only a few ships escaped.  Sorrowing for their lost friends, the Greeks next landed in the island of Circe, where Ulysses remained with half his men by the ships, while the rest set out to renew their supplies.  This party soon discovered the abode of the enchantress Circe, who, aware of their approach, had prepared a banquet and a magic drug.  Enticed by her sweet voice, all the men save one sat down to her banquet, and ate so greedily that the enchantress, contemptuously waving her wand over them, bade them assume the forms of the animals they most resembled!  A moment later a herd of grunting pigs surrounded her, pigs which, however, retained a distressing consciousness of their former human estate.