As when on a jutting rock a fisherman with a very long rod throwing food as a snare for little fishes, sends the horn of a rustic ox into the sea, and then snatching it [a fish] up, throws it out panting; so they panting were raised up to the rocks: and there at the door she fed upon them crying out, stretching out their hands to me in dreadful calamity. That of a truth was the most miserable of all the things that I witnessed with mine eyes, whatever I suffered, searching out the ways of the sea.
"But when we escaped the rocks, both terrible Charybdis and Scylla, we came immediately afterwards to the blameless island of the god; there were beautiful oxen with wide foreheads, and many fat sheep of the Sun that journeys above. Then I, still going on the sea in a black ship, heard the lowing of oxen in stalls, and the bleating of sheep: and there came into my mind the word of the blind prophet, Theban Tiresias, and of Ææan Circe, who charged me very often to avoid the island of the mortal-rejoicing Sun. Then I addressed my companions, sorrowing in my heart:
"'Hear my words, O companions, although suffering evils, that I may tell you the oracles of Tiresias, and of Ææan Circe, who charged me very often to avoid the island of the Sun that journeys above; for she said that from hence would be a most terrible evil unto us. But drive the black ship beyond the island.'
"Thus I spoke; but their dear heart was broken down. And Eurylochus immediately answered me with a harsh speech; 'Thou art severe, O Ulysses; thou hast exceeding might, nor art thou fatigued as to your limbs; surely all of them are of iron, [since] thou dost not suffer thy companions, wearied out with toil, and [oppressed with] sleep,[1] to go upon the land, where we may again prepare an agreeable supper in the sea-girt island; but thou commandest us to wander in vain through the swift night, straying from the island in the misty sea. During the nights troublesome winds arise, the destruction of ships: how could any one escape from utter destruction, if a storm of wind should by chance come on a sudden, either from the South or hard-blowing West, which especially destroy ships, against the will of the gods, who are kings? But let us indeed now obey black night, and let us
- ↑ I follow Clarke's interpretation. See Loewe.
