"In the third watch of the night
when the stars had shifted their places, Zeus raised a great gale of
wind that flew a gale so that land and sea were covered with thick
clouds, and night sprang forth out of the heavens. When the child of
morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, we brought the ship to land
and drew her into a cave wherein the sea-nymphs hold their courts and
dances [khoros], and I called the men together in
council.
"‘My friends,’ said I,
‘we have meat and drink in the ship, let us mind, therefore, and
not touch the cattle, or we shall suffer for it; for these cattle and
sheep belong to the mighty sun, who sees and gives ear to everything.
And again they promised that they would obey.
"For a whole month the wind blew
steadily from the South, and there was no other wind, but only South
and East. As long as grain and wine held out the men did not touch
the cattle when they were hungry; when, however, they had eaten all
there was in the ship, they were forced to go further afield, with
hook and line, catching birds, and taking whatever they could lay
their hands on; for they were starving. One day, therefore, I went up
inland that I might pray heaven to show me some means of getting
away. When I had gone far enough to be clear of all my men, and had
found a place that was well sheltered from the wind, I washed my
hands and prayed to all the gods in Olympus till by and by they sent
me off into a sweet sleep.
"Meanwhile Eurylokhos had been
giving evil counsel to the men, ‘Listen to me,’ said he,
‘my poor comrades. All deaths are bad enough but there is none
so bad as famine. Why should not we drive in the best of these cows
and offer them in sacrifice to the immortal gods? If we ever get back
to Ithaca, we can build a fine temple to the sun-god and enrich it
with every kind of ornament; if, however, he is determined to sink
our ship out of revenge for these horned cattle, and the other gods
are of the same mind, I for one would rather drink salt water once
for all and have done with it, than be starved to death by inches in
such a desert island as this is.’
Homer. The Odyssey. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Samuel Butler. Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. A. C. Fifield, London. 1900 (?).
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.