This page has been validated.
70
THE ÆNEID.

cannibal meal, and the vengeance which Ulysses took upon him by burning out his eye.[1] Æneas relates how he met there with one of Ulysses' crew, who by some mischance had been left behind, and who had hid himself three months (so close is the date of the two voyages) from the clutches of Polyphemus and his fellow-Cyclops. They took the wretched fugitive on board, and put to sea again just in time to escape the blind monster, who waded into the sea after them at the sound of the oars. They skirted the coast of Sicily, and at Drepanum the chief had buried his father Anchises. It was on casting off from Sicily that he had been driven by the storm on this unknown coast of Libya, on the spot soon to be famous enough as the site of Carthage.

"So king Æneas told his tale,
While all beside were still—
Rehearsed the fortunes of his sail,
And Fate's mysterious will:
Then to its close his legend brought,
And gladly took the rest he sought."

  1. See Homer's Odyssey, p. 69.