Cyclops
Give way, make way! What is going on here? What means this slackness? Why this Bacchic holiday? Here is no Dionysus,
[205]
no bronze castanets, no rattle of drums. How fare my new-born lambs in the cave? Are they at the teat and running to their mothers' sides? The milk for cheeses—has it been put in rush buckets?
[210]
What say you? This club will soon make someone cry. Look up, not down!
Chorus-Leader
looking up at Polyphemus
There! My head is turned up toward Zeus himself and the stars, and I see Orion!
Cyclops
Is my dinner well prepared?
Chorus-Leader
[215]
It is: just be sure your gullet is ready.
Cyclops
Are the mixing-bowls filled with milk as well?
Chorus-Leader
So much that you can drink an entire storage-jar if you like.
Cyclops
Cows' milk or sheep's or a mixture of both?
Chorus-Leader
Whatever you like. Just don't swallow me down.
Cyclops
[220]
I wouldn't think of it: you would be the death of me with your dance-steps, leaping around in the middle of my belly.
He spies Odysseus and his men.
Hey! What is this crowd I see near my cave? Have some pirates or robbers landed here? I do see lambs here from my cave,
[225]
their bodies bound with twisted willow-withes, and my cheese-buckets all in disarray, and an old man with his bald head swollen with blows.1
Silenus
Oh! Oh! Wretched me! What a fever I have got from being beaten up!
Cyclops
By whom? Who has been pummeling your head, old man?
Silenus
[230]
These men, because I would not let them take your property.
Cyclops
Did they not know that I am a god and descended from gods?
Silenus
I told them so, but they went on plundering your possessions, and, what is more, they started in on the cheese, though I tried to stop them, and began to carry off the sheep. And they said that they would collar you
[235]
like a dangerous dog and right before your very eye pull out your guts by force, flay your back nicely with a whip, then bind you hand and foot and throw you onto the rowing-benches of their ship and sell you to someone
[240]
to pry up rocks with or throw you into a mill.