EURIPIDES
Dinner is served: the limbs of your guests,
boiled, roasted, or broiled, ready for you
to gnaw, rend, and chew
while you loll on your shaggy goatskin. 360
Don't ask me to dinner. Stow that cargo
on your own. Let me keep clear of this cave,
well clear of the Cyclops of Etna,
this loathsome glutton, 365
who gorges himself on the guts of his guests!
Savage! Stranger to mercy! A monster
who butchers his guests on his hearth,
who boils up their flesh and bolts it, 370
whose foul mouth munches
on human meat plucked from the sizzling coals!
(Odysseus appears from the cave.)
Odysseus
Zeus, how can I say what I saw in that cave? 375
Unbelievable horrors, the kind of things
men do in myths and plays, not in real life!
Coryphaeus
Has that god-forsaken Cyclops butchered
your crew? Tell us what happened, Odysseus.
Odysseus
He snatched up two of my men, the soundest
and heaviest. He weighed them in his hands. 380
Coryphaeus
How horrible! How could you stand to watch?
Odysseus
First, after we had entered the cave,
he lit a fire and tossed down on the huge hearth
logs from a vast oak—you would have needed
270