The Phaeacians (Books 7–9)

Odysseus went up to the city, and Athena poured a thick mist around him, so that none of the proud Phaeacians should meet him and mock him and ask him who he was. He marveled at the harbors and the trim ships, at the meeting places of the heroes and the long high walls fitted with palisades. And when he came to the palace of Alcinous, he stood still, his heart deeply stirred, before he crossed the bronze threshold. For there was a gleam as of the sun or moon over the high-roofed house. Bronze walls ran this way and that, with a frieze of blue enamel; golden doors closed the house, on silver doorposts; and on either side stood golden and silver dogs, which Hephaestus had made with cunning skill to guard the house of great-hearted Alcinous, immortal and ageless all their days.

Through the hall went much-enduring Odysseus, wrapped in the mist, until he came to Arete and the king, and threw his arms around the knees of the queen; and the mist melted away from him. He begged her to send him home quickly. And Alcinous raised him up and set him on a shining chair, and promised to send him home, without even asking his name. But white-armed Arete knew the cloak and tunic he was wearing, fine garments that she herself had made with her women; and she asked him: "Stranger, who are you, and where do you come from? Who gave you these clothes?" He told her of Calypso and the shipwreck, and of the princess at the river; but his name he did not tell. And Alcinous was so pleased with him that he said: "I would wish, by father Zeus, Athena and Apollo, that a man like you, thinking as I think, might have my daughter and be called my son-in-law, and stay here."

The next day the Phaeacians held games, and when the stranger, full of sorrows, refused to take part, Euryalus mocked him openly: "No, stranger, I do not think you look like a man skilled in contests, but like a captain of merchant sailors, who thinks about his cargo and his profits." Odysseus looked at him from under his brows: "That was not well said, stranger; you look like a reckless man." And springing up, cloak and all, he seized a discus, larger and thicker by far than the ones the Phaeacians threw, and whirled it round and let it fly from his stout hand; and the stone hummed as it flew, and the long-oared Phaeacians ducked down to the ground under its rush, and it flew past all their marks. Then Alcinous calmed the quarrel with dancing; and Euryalus begged pardon, and gave him a bronze sword with a silver hilt.

Then the herald led in the beloved minstrel Demodocus, whom the Muse loved above all men, and gave him both good and evil: she took away his eyes, but gave him sweet song. He sang how lame Hephaestus caught Ares and Aphrodite together in his bed, with chains fine as a spider's web, and how unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods who came to look.

In the evening, at the feast, Odysseus sent a choice cut of meat to the blind singer, and asked him to sing of the wooden horse, which Epeius made with Athena's help, and which godlike Odysseus once led up into the citadel by guile, filled with the men who sacked Troy. And Demodocus, moved by the god, began; and he sang how the Achaeans burned their huts and sailed away, and how the Trojans dragged the horse into their city and argued over it, and how the sons of the Achaeans poured out of it and sacked the city, and Odysseus, like Ares, went to the house of Deiphobus.

This was the song the famous singer sang. And Odysseus melted, and tears wet his cheeks under his eyelids. As a woman weeps, throwing her arms around her dear husband, who has fallen before his city and his people, fighting to keep the pitiless day from his city and his children, and she sees him dying and gasping, and clings to him and wails aloud, while the enemy behind her beat her back and shoulders with their spears and lead her away into slavery, to toil and grief: so Odysseus let fall pitiful tears from under his brows.

No one noticed his weeping except Alcinous, who sat beside him and heard him groan. And he stopped the song, and said: "Tell us, stranger, the name by which your father and mother called you, your country and your city. And tell us why you weep and grieve when you hear the fate of the Argives and of Troy."

And Odysseus, the man of many counsels, answered him: "I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to all men for my wiles, and my fame reaches to heaven. I live in clear-seen Ithaca. Truly, there is nothing sweeter than a man's own country and his parents, even if he lives in a rich house far away. But come, I will tell you of my troubled homecoming, which Zeus laid on me as I came from Troy."

"The wind that carried me from Ilium brought me to the Cicones, at Ismarus. I sacked their city; but my men, great fools, would not flee at once, and lingered drinking and slaughtering sheep on the shore, until the Cicones came at dawn, as many as the leaves and flowers in spring, and six men from each ship were killed.

"Then for nine days I was carried by deadly winds over the teeming sea, and on the tenth we came to the land of the Lotus-eaters, who eat a flowery food. I sent three men ahead, to find out what people lived there. The Lotus-eaters did them no harm, but gave them the lotus to taste; and whoever ate the honey-sweet fruit no longer wanted to bring back word or go home, but wanted to stay there, feeding on the lotus and forgetting his homecoming. I brought them back to the ships by force, weeping, and tied them under the benches.

"From there we sailed on, grieving at heart, and came to the land of the Cyclopes, an overbearing and lawless people, who have no assemblies and no laws, but live in hollow caves on the mountain peaks, each one ruling his wife and children and caring nothing for the others. I took twelve of my best men and a goatskin of dark sweet wine, which Maron, the priest of Apollo, had given me, and went to see what sort of men these were.

"We came to a cave, high up, near the sea, shaded with laurels, where many flocks slept. Inside there were baskets loaded with cheeses, and pens crowded with lambs and kids. My comrades begged me to take some cheeses and drive off the lambs and sail away; but I would not listen, though it would have been far better, for I wanted to see the man himself, and whether he would give me gifts of hospitality. He came home in the evening with a load of dry wood, and threw it down with a crash, and we fled in terror into the back of the cave. He drove his fat flocks inside, and then lifted a great stone and set it in the doorway, so huge that twenty-two good four-wheeled wagons could not have moved it from the ground. When he saw us, he asked us who we were. I told him we were Achaeans, driven from Troy, and begged him, in the name of Zeus who protects strangers, to receive us. He answered me with a pitiless heart: 'You are a fool, stranger, or you come from far away, to tell me to fear the gods. The Cyclopes care nothing for Zeus, for we are much stronger.' And he sprang up and seized two of my comrades, and dashed them to the ground like puppies, and their brains ran out on the floor; and he tore them limb from limb and ate them, like a mountain lion, leaving nothing.

"I thought of drawing my sharp sword and stabbing him in the chest; but then we too would have died, for we could never have moved the great stone from the doorway. So we waited, groaning, for the dawn. In the morning he ate two more, and drove his flocks out, and put the stone back as easily as one puts a lid on a quiver. Then I found a great club of green olive wood lying in the pen, and cut off a fathom's length, and sharpened it, and hardened the point in the fire, and hid it under the dung.

"In the evening he came back, and ate two more of my men. Then I went up to him, holding a bowl of the dark wine. 'Here, Cyclops, drink wine, after your meal of human flesh.' He took it and drank, and was terribly pleased, and asked for more, and asked my name, so that he might give me a gift. Three times I gave it to him, and three times he drank it in his folly. Then I said to him, with honeyed words: 'Cyclops, you ask my famous name. Nobody is my name; Nobody my mother and father and all my comrades call me.' And he answered with a pitiless heart: 'Nobody I will eat last, after his comrades. That shall be my gift to you.' And he fell over on his back, his thick neck bent sideways, and sleep, that conquers all, took hold of him; and wine and pieces of human flesh came gushing out of his throat.

"Then I thrust the stake into the embers until it grew hot, and my comrades took it, and drove it into his eye, and I, leaning on it from above, twirled it round, as a man bores a ship's timber with a drill. The blood boiled around the hot point, and the eyeball hissed, as when a smith plunges a great axe into cold water to temper it. He gave a great and terrible cry, and the rock rang round, and we fled in terror. He called aloud to the Cyclopes who lived round about in caves on the windy heights, and they came and stood outside the cave and asked what ailed him. 'Is someone driving off your flocks, Polyphemus? Is someone killing you by craft or force?' And mighty Polyphemus answered them from the cave: 'My friends, Nobody is killing me by craft and not by force!' And they answered: 'If nobody is harming you, alone as you are, then it is a sickness sent by great Zeus, and you must pray to our father, lord Poseidon.' And they went away, and my heart laughed within me, that my name and my clever plan had deceived them.

"In the morning, when he opened the door to let his flock out to graze, he sat in the doorway, feeling along the backs of the sheep as they went by. I tied the rams together in threes, and under each middle one a man clung; and I myself took the best ram of all, and hung under his shaggy belly, gripping his wool with my hands. The great ram came last, weighed down by his wool and by me, and the Cyclops felt him and said: 'Dear ram, why are you the last of the flock to leave the cave? You were never left behind before. Surely you are grieving for your master's eye, which a wicked man has put out.' And so we escaped.

"When we were as far from shore as a man's shout carries, I called out to the Cyclops, mocking him. And he, more angry still, broke off the top of a great mountain and hurled it, and it fell just ahead of the ship, and the wave drove us back toward the land. Still I would not be quiet, though my comrades begged me, and I shouted: 'Cyclops, if any mortal man asks you who put out your eye, tell him it was Odysseus, the sacker of cities, the son of Laertes, whose home is in Ithaca!'

"Then he prayed to lord Poseidon, stretching his hands to the starry heaven: 'Hear me, Poseidon, earth-holder, dark-haired god. If I am truly your son, grant that Odysseus may never reach his home. But if it is his fate to see his friends and reach his house, let him come late and in misery, having lost all his comrades, in a stranger's ship, and find trouble in his house.' So he prayed, and the dark-haired god heard him."

(End of Episode 3 — continued in Episode 4: The Wanderings)