Cyclops
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.
- Tempestuous winds drove me hither against my will.
- God wot! thou art in the same plight as I am.
- Why, wert thou too drifted hither against thy will?
- I was, as I pursued the pirates who carried Bromius off.
- What land is this and who are its inhabitants?
- This is mount Aetna, the highest point in Sicily.
- But where are the city-walls and ramparts?
- There are none; the headlands, sir, are void of men.
- Who then possess the land? the race of wild creatures?
- The Cyclopes, who have caves, not roofed houses.
- Obedient unto whom? or is the power in the people’s hands?
- They are rovers; no man obeys another in anything.
- Do they sow Demeter’s grain, or on what do they live?
- On milk and cheese and flesh of sheep.
- Have they the drink of Bromius, the juice of the vine?
- No indeed! and thus it is a joyless land they dwell in.
- Are they hospitable and reverent towards strangers?
- Strangers, they say, supply the daintiest meat.
- What, do they delight in killing men and eating them?
- No one has ever arrived here without being butchered.