Passage 1 Pg.

83

So speaking he went away back into the house of Odysseus,
And a cloud of heart-wasting sorrow was on her, she had no strength left
To sit down in a chair, though there were many there in the palace, but sat down on
the floor of her own well-wrought bedchamber
Weeping pitifully, and about her her maids were wailing
All, who were there in the house with her, both young and old ones.
To them weeping constantly Penelope spoke now:
Hear me, dear friends. The Olympian has given me sorrows
beyond all others who were born and brought up together
with me, for first I lost a husband with the heart of a lion
and who among the Danaans surpassed in all virtues,
and great, whose fame goes wide through Hellas and midmost Argos;
and now again the stormwinds have caught away my beloved
son, without trace, from the halls, and I never heard when he left me.
Hard-hearted, not one out of all of you then remembered
To wake me out of my bed, though your minds knew all clearly,
when he went out and away to board the hollow black ship.
For if I had heard that he was considering this journey,
Then he would have had to stay, though hastening to his voyage,
Let someone make her way quickly and summon the old man Dolios,
My own servant, whom my father gave me to have as I cam here, and he keeps an
orchard full of trees for me, so that he may
Go with speed to Laertes and sit beside him and tell him
All, and perhaps he, weaving out the design in his heart,
to waste away his own seed and that of godlike Odysseus.


Passage 2 Pg 187
But of the two rocks, one reaches up into the wide heaven
with a pointed peak, and a dark cloud stands always around it,
and never at any time draws away from it, nor does the sunlight
ever hold that peak, either in the early or the late summer,
not could any man who was mortal climb there, or stand mounted
on the summit, not if he had twenty hands and twenty
feet, for the rock goes sheerly up, as if it were polished.
Half way up the cliff there is a cave, misty-looking
And turned toward Erebos and the dark, the very direction
From which, O shining Odysseus, you and your men will be steering
Your hollow ship; and from the hollow ship no vigorous
Young man with a bow could shoot to the hole in the Cliffside.
In that cavern Skylla lives, whose holwing is terror.
Her voice indeed is only as loud as a new-born puppy
Could make, but she herself is an evil monster. No one,
Not even a god encountering her, could be glad at that sight.
She has twelve feet, and all of them wave in the air. She has six necks upon her,
grown to great length, and upon each neck
There is a horrible head, with teeth in it, set in three rows
Close together and stiff, full of black death. Her body
From the waist down is holed up inside the hollow cavern,
But she holds her heads poked out and away from the terrible hollow, for dolphinds
or dogfish to catch or anything bigger,
Some sea monster, of whom Amphitrite keeps so many;
Never can sailors boast aloud that their ship has passed her
Without any loss of men, for with each of her heads she snatches one many away
and carries him off from the dark-prowed vessel.



Page 196 lines 426 446

After this the west wind ceased from its stormy blowing,
And the South Wind came swiftly on, bringing to my spirit
Grief that I must measure the whole way back to Charybdis.
All that night I was carried along, and with the sun rising
I came to the sea rock of Skylla, and dreaded Charybdis.
At this time Charybdis sucked down the seas salt water,
But I reached high in the air above me, to where the tall fig tree
Grew, and caught hold of it and clung like a bat; there was no
Place where I could firmly brace my feet, or climb up it,
For the roots of it were far from me, and the branches hung out
Far, big and long branches that overshadowed Charybdis.
Inexorably I hung on, waiting for her to vomit
The keel and mast back up again. I long for them, and they came
late; at the time when a man leaves the law court, for dinner,
After judging the many disputes brought him by litigious young men;
That was the time it took the timber to appear from Charybdis.
Then I let go my hold with hands and feet, and dropped off, and came crashing
down between and missing the two long timbers,
But I mounted these, and with both hands I paddled my way out.
But the Father of Gods and men did not let Skylla see me again, or I could not have
escaped from sheer destruction.












Pg 191 lines 234 257

So we sailed up the narrow strait lamenting. On one side
Was Skylla, and on the other side was shingin Charybdis,
who made her terrible ebb and flow of the seas water.
When she vomited it up, like a caldron over a strong fire,
The whole sea would boil up in turbulence, and the foam flying
Spattered the pinnacles of the rocks in either direction;
But when in turn again she sucked down the seas salt water,
The turbulence showed all the inner sea, and the rock around it
Black with sand and green fear fixed upon my companions.
We in fear of destruction kept our eyes on Charybdis,
But meanwhile Skylla out of the hollow vessel snatched six
Of my companionas, the best of them for strength and hands work, and when I
turned to look at the ship, with other companions,
I saw their feet and hands from below, already lifted
High above me and they cried out to me and called me
By name, the last time they ever did it, in hearts sorrow
And as a fisherman with a very long rod, on a jutting
Rock, will cast his treacherous bait for the little fishes,
And sinks the horn of a field-ranging ox into the water,
Then hauls them up and throws them on the dry land, gasping
And struggling, so they gasped and struggled as they were hoisted
up the cliff. Right in her doorway she ate them up. They were screaming
and reaching out their hands to me in this horrid encounter.










Pg 144 lines 287 306

So I spoke, but he in pitiless spirit answered 287
nothing, but sprang up and reached for my companions, 288
caught up two together and slapped them, like killing puppies, 289
against the ground and the brains ran all over the floor, soaking 290
the ground. Then he cut them up limb by limb and got supper ready, 291
and like a lion reared in the hills, without leaving anything, 292
ate them, entrails, flesh and the marrowy bones alike. We 293
cried out aloud and held our hands up to Zeus, seeing the 294
cruelty of what he did, but our hearts were helpless. 295
But when the Cyclops had filled his enormous stomach, feeding 296
On human flesh and drinking down milk unmixed with water, 297
He lay down to sleep in the cave sprawled out through his sheep. Then i 298
Took counsel with myself in my great-hearted spirit 299
To go up close, drawing from beside my thigh the sharp sword, 300
And stab him in the best, where the midriff join on the liver, 301
Feeling for the place with my hand; but the second thought stayed me; 302
For there we too would have perished away in sheer destruction, 303
Seeing that our hands could never have pushed from the lofty 304
Gate of the cave the ponderous boulder he had propped there. 305
So mourning we waited, just as we were, for the divine Dawn. 306

The connections among these three images demonstrates how Odysseus is not quite
as clever at persuasion of humanity against the incivility of the Cyclops is significant
because his failure to convince Polyphemos in to helping his companion causes utter
destruction and ultimately his demise and prevention of nostos.