the bar and turn it about in his eye, when sweet sleep came upon him.  And the lot fell upon those four whom I myself would have been fain to choose, and I appointed myself to be the fifth among them.  In the evening he came shepherding his flocks of goodly fleece, and presently he drave his fat flocks into the cave each and all, nor left he any without in the deep court-yard, whether through some foreboding, or perchance that the god so bade him do.  Thereafter he lifted the huge door-stone and set it in the mouth of the cave, and sitting down he milked the ewes and bleating goats, all orderly, and beneath each ewe he placed her young.  Now when he had done all his work busily, again he seized yet other two and made ready his supper.  Then I stood by the Cyclops and spake to him, holding in my hands an ivy bowl of the dark wine: 

’"Cyclops, take and drink wine after thy feast of man’s meat, that thou mayest know what manner of drink this was that our ship held.  And lo, I was bringing it thee as a drink offering, if haply thou mayest take pity and send me on my way home, but thy mad rage is past all sufferance.  O hard of heart, how may another of the many men there be come ever to thee again, seeing that thy deeds have been lawless?”

’So I spake, and he took the cup and drank it off, and found great delight in drinking the sweet draught, and asked me for it yet a second time: 

’"Give it me again of thy grace, and tell me thy name straightway, that I may give thee a stranger’s gift, wherein thou mayest be glad.  Yea for the earth, the grain-giver, bears for the Cyclopes the mighty clusters of the juice of the grape, and the rain of Zeus gives them increase, but this is a rill of very nectar and ambrosia.”

’So he spake, and again I handed him the dark wine.  Thrice I bare and gave it him, and thrice in his folly he drank it to the lees.  Now when the wine had got about the wits of the Cyclops, then did I speak to him with soft words: 

’"Cyclops, thou askest me my renowned name, and I will declare it unto thee, and do thou grant me a stranger’s gift, as thou didst promise.  Noman is my name, and Noman they call me, my father and my mother and all my fellows.”

’So I spake, and straightway he answered me out of his pitiless heart: 

’"Noman will I eat last in the number of his fellows, and the others before him:  that shall be thy gift.”

’Therewith he sank backwards and fell with face upturned, and there he lay with his great neck bent round, and sleep, that conquers all men, overcame him.  And the wine and the fragments of men’s flesh issued forth from his mouth, and he vomited, being heavy with wine.  Then I thrust in that stake under the deep ashes, until it should grow hot, and I spake to my companions comfortable words, lest any should hang back from me in fear.  But when that bar of olive wood was just about to catch fire in the flame, green though it was, and began to glow