Promiscuous every guest to every bay,

These ears have heard my royal sire disclose

A dreadful story, big with future woes;

How Neptune raged, and how, by his command,

Firm rooted in a surge a ship should stand

A monument of wrath; how mound on mound

Should bury these proud towers beneath the ground.

But this the gods may frustrate or fulfil,

As suits the purpose of the Eternal Will.

But say through what waste regions hast thou stray’d

What customs noted, and what coasts survey’d;

Possess’d by wild barbarians fierce in arms,

Or men whose bosom tender pity warms?

Say why the fate of Troy awaked thy cares,

Why heaved thy bosom, and why flowed thy tears?

Just are the ways of Heaven: from Heaven proceed

The woes of man; Heaven doom’d the Greeks to bleed,

A theme of future song! Say, then, if slain

Some dear-loved brother press’d the Phrygian plain?

Or bled some friend, who bore a brother’s part,

And claim’d by merit, not by blood, the heart?”


BOOK IX.


ARGUMENT.

THE ADVENTURES OF THE CICONS, LOTOPHAGI AND CYCLOPS.


Ulysses begins the relation of his adventures: how, after the destruction of

Troy, he with his companions made an incursion on the Cicons, by whom they were

repulsed; and, meeting with a storm, were driven to the coast of the Lotophagi.

From there they sailed to the land of the Cyclops, whose manners and situation

are particularly characterised. The giant Polyphemus and his cave described;

the usage Ulysses and his companions met with there; and, lastly, the method

and artifice by which he escaped.


Then thus Ulysses: “Thou whom first in sway,

As first in virtue, these thy realms obey;

How sweet the products of a peaceful reign!

The heaven-taught poet and enchanting strain;

The well-filled palace, the perpetual feast,

A land rejoicing, and a people bless’d!

How goodly seems it ever to employ

Man’s social days in union and in joy;

The plenteous hoard high-heap’d with cates divine,