Aeneid III.610-718
The Trojans add a member to their party, then lose a member. Place names are listed. Aeneas concludes his story with Book Three.
Without much delay, my father Anchises himself gave
the young man his hand, lifting his spirits by this ready trust.
At last he set his fears aside and told us:
“I’m from the land of Ithaca, a companion of unlucky Ulysses,
Achaemenides by name, and, my father Adamastus being poor,
(I wish fate had kept me so!) I set out for Troy.
My comrades left me here in the Cyclops’ vast cave,
forgetting me, as they hurriedly left that grim
threshold. It’s a house of blood and gory feasts,
vast and dark inside. He himself is gigantic, striking against
the high stars—gods, remove plagues like that from the earth!—
not pleasant to look at, affable to no one;
he eats the dark blood and flesh of wretched men.
I saw myself how he seized two of our number in his huge hands,
and reclining in the centre of the cave, broke them
on the rock, so the threshold, drenched, swam with blood;
I saw how he gnawed their limbs, dripping with dark clots
of gore, and the still-warm bodies quivered in his jaws.
Yet he did not go unpunished: Ulysses didn’t suffer it,
nor did the Ithacan forget himself in a crisis.
As soon as the Cyclops, full of flesh and sated with wine,
relaxed his neck, and lay, huge in size, across the cave,
drooling gore and blood and wine-drenched fragments
in his sleep, we prayed to the great gods, and our roles fixed,
surrounded him on all sides, and stabbed his one huge eye,
solitary, and half-hidden under his savage brow,
like a round Greek shield or the sun-disc of Phoebus,
with a sharpened stake: and so we joyfully avenged
the spirits of our friends. But fly from here, wretched men,
and cut your mooring ropes. Since, like Polyphemus, who pens
woolly flocks in the rocky cave and milks their udders, there are
a hundred other appalling Cyclopes, the same in shape and size,
everywhere inhabiting the curved bay and wandering the hills.
The moon’s horns have filled with light three times now, while I
have been dragging my life out in the woods, among the lairs
and secret haunts of wild creatures, watching the huge Cyclopes
from the cliffs, trembling at their voices and the sound of their feet.
The branches yield a miserable supply of fruits and stony cornelian
cherries, and the grasses, torn up by their roots, feed me.
Watching for everything, I saw, for the first time, this fleet
approaching shore. Whatever might happen, I surrendered myself
to you: it’s enough for me to have escaped that wicked people.
I’d rather you took this life of mine by any death whatsoever.”
He’d barely spoken, when we saw the shepherd Polyphemus
himself, moving his mountainous bulk on the hillside
among the flocks, and heading for the familiar shore,
a fearful monster, vast and shapeless, robbed of the light.
A lopped pine-trunk in his hand steadied and guided
his steps: his fleecy sheep accompanied him,
his sole delight and the solace for his evils.
As soon as he came to the sea and reached the deep water,
he washed away the blood oozing from the gouged eye-socket,
groaning and gnashing his teeth. Then he walked through
the depths of the waves without the tide wetting his vast thighs.
Anxiously we hurried our departure from there, accepting
the worthy suppliant on board, and cutting the cable in silence:
then leaning into our oars, we vied in sweeping the sea.
He heard, and bent his course towards the sound of splashing.
But when he was denied the power to set hands on us,
and unable to counter the force of the Ionian waves, in pursuit,
he raised a mighty shout, at which the sea and all the waves
shook, and the land of Italy was frightened far inland,
and Etna bellowed from its winding caverns, but the tribe
of Cyclopes, roused from their woods and high mountains,
rushed to the harbour and crowded the shore.
We saw them standing there, impotently, wild-eyed,
the Aetnean brotherhood, heads towering into the sky,
a fearsome gathering: like tall oaks rooted on a summit,
or cone-bearing cypresses in Jove’s high wood or Diana’s grove.
Acute fear drove us on to pay out the ropes on whatever tack
and spread our sails to any favourable wind.
Helenus’s orders warned against taking a course between
Scylla and Charybdis, a hair’s breadth from death
on either side: we decided to beat back again.1
When, behold, a northerly arrived from the narrow
headland of Pelorus2: I sailed past the natural rock mouth
of the Pantagias, Megara’s bay, and low-lying Thapsus.3
Such were the shores Achaemenides, the friend of unlucky Ulysses,
showed me, sailing his wandering journey again in reverse.
An island lies over against wave-washed Plemyrium4,
stretched across a Sicilian bay: named Ortygia5 by men of old.
The story goes that Alpheus, a river of Elis6, forced
a hidden path here under the sea, and merges
with the Sicilian waters of your fountain, Arethusa7.
As commanded we worshipped the great gods of this land,
and from there I passed marshy Helorus’s8 marvellously rich soil.
Next we passed the tall reefs and jutting rocks of Pachynus9,
and Camerina10 appeared in the distance, granted
immoveable, by prophecy, and the Geloan plains,
and Gela11 named after its savage river.
Then steep Acragas12, once the breeder of brave horses,
showed its mighty ramparts in the distance:
and granted the wind, I left palmy Selinus13, and passed
the tricky shallows of Lilybaeum14 with their blind reefs.
Next the harbour of Drepanum15, and its joyless shore,
received me. Here, alas, I lost my father, Anchises,
my comfort in every trouble and misfortune, I, who’d
been driven by so many ocean storms: here you left me,
weary, best of fathers, saved from so many dangers in vain!
Helenus the seer did not prophesy this grief of mine
when he warned me of many horrors, nor did grim Celaeno.
This was my last trouble, this the end of my long journey:
leaving there, the god drove me to your shores.”
So our ancestor16 Aeneas, as all listened to one man,
recounted divine fate, and described his journey.
At last he stopped, and making an end here, rested.
ipse pater dextram Anchises haud multa moratus 610
dat iuveni atque animum praesenti pignore firmat.
ille haec deposita tandem formidine fatur:
'sum patria ex Ithaca, comes infelicis Ulixi,
nomine Achaemenides, Troiam genitore Adamasto
paupere (mansissetque utinam fortuna!) profectus. 615
hic me, dum trepidi crudelia limina linquunt,
immemores socii vasto Cyclopis in antro
deseruere. domus sanie dapibusque cruentis,
intus opaca, ingens. ipse arduus, altaque pulsat
sidera (di talem terris avertite pestem!) 620
nec visu facilis nec dictu adfabilis ulli;
visceribus miserorum et sanguine vescitur atro.
vidi egomet duo de numero cum corpora nostro
prensa manu magna medio resupinus in antro
frangeret ad saxum, sanieque aspersa natarent 625
limina; vidi atro cum membra fluentia tabo
manderet et tepidi tremerent sub dentibus artus—
haud impune quidem, nec talia passus Ulixes
oblitusue sui est Ithacus discrimine tanto.
nam simul expletus dapibus vinoque sepultus 630
cervicem inflexam posuit, iacuitque per antrum
immensus saniem eructans et frusta cruento
per somnum commixta mero, nos magna precati
numina sortitique vices una undique circum
fundimur, et telo lumen terebramus acuto 635
ingens quod torva solum sub fronte latebat,
Argolici clipei aut Phoebeae lampadis instar,
et tandem laeti sociorum ulciscimur umbras.
sed fugite, o miseri, fugite atque ab litore funem
rumpite. 640
nam qualis quantusque cavo Polyphemus in antro
lanigeras claudit pecudes atque ubera pressat,
centum alii curva haec habitant ad litora vulgo
infandi Cyclopes et altis montibus errant.
tertia iam lunae se cornua lumine complent 645
cum vitam in silvis inter deserta ferarum
lustra domosque traho vastosque ab rupe Cyclopas
prospicio sonitumque pedum vocemque tremesco.
victum infelicem, bacas lapidosaque corna,
dant rami, et vulsis pascunt radicibus herbae. 650
omnia conlustrans hanc primum ad litora classem
conspexi venientem. huic me, quaecumque fuisset,
addixi: satis est gentem effugisse nefandam.
vos animam hanc potius quocumque absumite leto.'
Vix ea fatus erat summo cum monte videmus 655
ipsum inter pecudes vasta se mole moventem
pastorem Polyphemum et litora nota petentem,
monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.
trunca manum pinus regit et vestigia firmat;
lanigerae comitantur oves; ea sola voluptas 660
solamenque mali.
postquam altos tetigit fluctus et ad aequora venit,
luminis effossi fluidum lavit inde cruorem
dentibus infrendens gemitu, graditurque per aequor
iam medium, necdum fluctus latera ardua tinxit. 665
nos procul inde fugam trepidi celerare recepto
supplice sic merito tacitique incidere funem,
vertimus et proni certantibus aequora remis.
sensit, et ad sonitum vocis vestigia torsit.
verum ubi nulla datur dextra adfectare potestas 670
nec potis Ionios fluctus aequare sequendo,
clamorem immensum tollit, quo pontus et omnes
contremuere undae, penitusque exterrita tellus
Italiae curvisque immugiit Aetna cavernis.
at genus e silvis Cyclopum et montibus altis 675
excitum ruit ad portus et litora complent.
cernimus astantis nequiquam lumine torvo
Aetnaeos fratres caelo capita alta ferentis,
concilium horrendum: quales cum vertice celso
aeriae quercus aut coniferae cyparissi 680
constiterunt, silva alta Iovis lucusve Dianae.
praecipitis metus acer agit quocumque rudentis
excutere et ventis intendere vela secundis.
contra iussa monent Heleni, Scyllamque Charybdinque
inter, utrimque viam leti discrimine parvo, 685
ni teneam cursus: certum est dare lintea retro.
ecce autem Boreas angusta ab sede Pelori
missus adest: vivo praetervehor ostia saxo
Pantagiae Megarosque sinus Thapsumque iacentem.
talia monstrabat relegens errata retrorsus 690
litora Achaemenides, comes infelicis Ulixi.
Sicanio praetenta sinu iacet insula contra
Plemyrium undosum; nomen dixere priores
Ortygiam. Alpheum fama est huc Elidis amnem
occultas egisse vias subter mare, qui nunc 695
ore, Arethusa, tuo Siculis confunditur undis.
iussi numina magna loci veneramur, et inde
exsupero praepingue solum stagnantis Helori.
hinc altas cautes proiectaque saxa Pachyni
radimus, et fatis numquam concessa moveri 700
apparet Camerina procul campique Geloi,
immanisque Gela fluvii cognomine dicta.
arduus inde Acragas ostentat maxima longe
moenia, magnanimum quondam generator equorum;
teque datis linquo ventis, palmosa Selinus, 705
et vada dura lego saxis Lilybeia caecis.
hinc Drepani me portus et inlaetabilis ora
accipit. hic pelagi tot tempestatibus actus
heu, genitorem, omnis curae casusque levamen,
amitto Anchisen. hic me, pater optime, fessum 710
deseris, heu, tantis nequiquam erepte periclis!
nec vates Helenus, cum multa horrenda moneret,
hos mihi praedixit luctus, non dira Celaeno.
hic labor extremus, longarum haec meta viarum,
hinc me digressum vestris deus appulit oris.’ 715
Sic pater Aeneas intentis omnibus unus
fata renarrabat divum cursusque docebat.
conticuit tandem factoque hic fine quievit.
Find the glossary for Aeneid Daily here; subscribe to receive daily posts.
In contrast to Odysseus, who does try to navigate between the two of them in Odyssey 12. His encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus is in Odyssey 9; Vergil playfully indicates that he has just left when Aeneas gets there.
A promontory in northern Sicily.
All landmarks in eastern Sicily (a river, a bay, and a city on a peninsula).
A promontory near Syracuse.
Not Delos, a different one.
A region in the Peloponnese.
A nymph changed to a fountain while fleeing from a god’s advances.
Another Sicilian river.
A promontory in southeastern Sicily.
A city in southern Sicily.
The city and plains are named after the river, that is.
Another city in southern Sicily; the Trojans are moving west.
Another city.
Another promontory.
A city in northwestern Sicily.
The Latin simply reads “father Aeneas,” but I like that the translation has assigned all of us Trojan at birth.
*bugs bunny communist meme* OUR ancestor Aeneas