Epic poetry, Greek -- Translations into English; Homer -- Translations into English; Odysseus, King of Ithaca (Mythological character)
“With this wine I filled a great skin, and bare it with me, and corn
too I put in a wallet, for my lordly spirit straightway had a boding
that a man would come to me, a strange man, clothed in mighty strength,
one that knew not judgment and justice.[16]
[16] Literally, knowing neither dooms, nor ordinances of law.
“Soon we came to the cave, but we found him not within; he was
shepherding his fat flocks in the pastures. So we went into the cave,
and gazed on all that was therein. The baskets were well laden with
cheeses, and the folds were thronged with lambs and kids; each kind was
penned by itself, the firstlings apart, and the summer lambs apart,
apart too the younglings of the flock. Now all the vessels swam with
whey, the milk-pails and the bowls, the well-wrought vessels whereinto
he milked. My company then spake and besought me first of all to take
of the cheeses and to return, and afterwards to make haste and drive
off the kids and lambs to the swift ships from out the pens, and to
sail over the salt sea water. Howbeit I hearkened not (and far better
would it have been), but waited to see the giant himself, and whether
he would give me gifts as a stranger’s due. Yet was not his coming to
be with joy to my company.
“Then we kindled a fire, and made burnt-offering, and ourselves
likewise took of the cheeses, and did eat, and sat waiting for him
within till he came back, shepherding his flocks. And he bore a
grievous weight of dry wood, against supper time. This log he cast down
with a din inside the cave, and in fear we fled to the secret place of
the rock. As for him, he drave his fat flocks into the wide cavern,
even all that he was wont to milk; but the males both of the sheep and
of the goats he left without in the deep yard. Thereafter he lifted a
huge doorstone and weighty, and set it in the mouth of the cave, such
an one as two and twenty good four-wheeled wains could not raise from
the ground, so mighty a sheer rock did he set against the doorway. Then
he sat down and milked the ewes and bleating goats, all orderly, and
beneath each ewe he placed her young. And anon he curdled one half of
the white milk, and massed it together, and stored it in
wicker-baskets, and the other half he let stand in pails, that he might
have it to take and drink against supper time. Now when he had done all
his work busily, then he kindled the fire anew, and espied us, and made
question:
“‘Strangers, who are ye? Whence sail ye over the wet ways? On some
trading enterprise or at adventure do ye rove, even as sea-robbers over
the brine, for at hazard of their own lives they wander, bringing bale
to alien men.’
“So spake he, but as for us our heart within us was broken for terror
of the deep voice and his own monstrous shape; yet despite all I
answered and spake unto him, saying:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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