Текст книги "The Library of Greek Mythology"

Автор книги: Apollodorus

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²Diomedes performed deeds of valour* and wounded Aphrodite when she came to the aid of Aeneas; and when he encountered Glaucos, he remembered the friendship between their fathers and exchanged armour* with him. Hector challenged the bravest man present to single combat. Although many stepped forward, Aias was chosen by lot and engaged in combat; but the pair were separated at nightfall by the heralds.

³To protect the anchorage, the Greeks constructed a wall and a ditch; and after a battle on the plain, the Trojans chased the Greeks to the safety of their wall. The Greeks dispatched Odysseus, Phoenix, and Aias as envoys to Achilles, to ask him to assist them in the fighting and promise him Briseis and other gifts. ⁴At nightfall, they sent Odysseus and Diomedes on reconnaissance; and they killed Dolon, son of Eumelos, and Rhesos the Thracian (who had arrived the previous day as anally of the Trojans, and because he had yet to enter battle, had set up camp at some distance from the Trojan force, and separately from Hector). They also killed the twelve men who were sleeping around Rhesos and took their horses to the ships. ^sThe next day, a fierce battle developed. Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus, Eurypylos, and Machaon were wounded, and the Greeks were put to flight; Hector breached the wall and passed inside, and after Aias had retreated, set fire to the ships.

⁶When he saw the ship of Protesilaos in flames, Achilles sent out Patroclos with the Myrmidons, equipping him with his own arms and lending him his horses. When the Trojans saw Patroclos, they took him for Achilles, and turned to flee. Patroclos pursued them up to the city wall, killing many of them, including Sarpedon, son of Zeus, but met his own death at the hand of Hector after first being wounded by Euphorbos. ⁷In the fierce battle that developed for his corpse, Aias performed deeds of valour and, with difficulty, rescued the body. Achilles now put his anger aside, and recovered Briseis; and when a full set of arms was brought to him from Hephaistos, he put on the armour and went out to fight. He chased the Trojans in a mass as far as the Scamander, killing many of them including Asteropaios, son of Pelagon, son of the River Axios. The river rushed out at him in fury, ⁸but Hephaistos turned its flooding waters dry, and pursued it [back to its bed] with a massive flame.* And Achilles killed Hector in single combat, and tying him by the ankles to his chariot, dragged him back to the ships. When he had buried Patroclos, he celebrated games in his honour, in the course of which Diomedes won the chariot race, Epeios the boxing, and Aias and Odysseus the wrestling. After the games, Priam visited Achilles, and ransomed Hector’s body and buried it.

Penthesileia the Amazon; Memnon and the death of Achilles; the suicide of Aias

^lPenthesileia, daughter of Otrere and Ares, had accidentally

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killed Hippolyte* and had been purified by Priam. She killed many Greeks in battle, including Machaon, but later died at the hand of Achilles, who fell in love with the Amazon after her death, and killed Thersites* for abusing him. [ ²]†

³Memnon,* the son of Tithonos and Dawn, arrived at Troy to fight the Greeks, accompanied by a large force of Ethiopians, and after killing many of the Greeks, including Antilochos, he met his own death at the hand of Achilles. When Achilles went in pursuit of the Trojans also, he was shot down in front of the Scaean Gates* by Alexander and Apollo, with an arrow in the ankle.* ⁴In the fight for his body, Aias killed Glaucos, and asking someone else to carry Achilles’ arms to the ships, he picked up the body, and surrounded by the enemy, carried it away through a hail of missiles while Odysseus fought off the attackers.

⁵At the death of Achilles, the army was filled with gloom. They buried him with Patroclos [on the White Island*], mixing the bones of the pair together. It is said that Achilles lives on after his death as the husband of Medea on the Isles of the Blessed.* The Greeks held games in his honour, in the course of which Eumelos won the chariot race and Diomedes the footrace, Aias the discus-throwing, and Teucros the archery. ⁶When Achilles’ armour was offered as a prize to the bravest, Aias and Odysseus entered the lists. With the Trojans acting as judges,* or according to some, the allies,* Odysseus was picked as the winner. Aias was so overcome by resentment that he planned a night attack on the army; but Athene drove him out of his wits and turned him against the cattle, sword in hand, and in his delusion, he slaughtered the cattle along with their herdsmen, supposing them to be the Achaeans.* ⁷Afterwards, however, when he had recovered his wits, Aias killed himself.* Agamemnon ordered that his body should not be burned, so Aias alone of the men who fell at Ilion lies in a coffin. His grave is at Rhoiteion.

Philoctetes and the death of Paris; conditions for the fall of Troy

⁸When the war had already lasted for ten years and the Greeks were losing heart, Calchas prophesied that Troy could not be taken unless they had the bow of Heracles* to help them. On hearing this prophecy, Odysseus made his way to Lemnos with Diomedes to see Philoctetes,* and gaining possession of his bow by a trick, he persuaded him to sail to Troy. So Philoctetes arrived there, and after he had been cured by Podaleirios,* killed Alexander with an arrow.

⁹After the death of Alexander, Helenos and Deiphobos quarrelled over Helen’s hand; and because Deiphobos was preferred, Helenos left Troy and went to live on Mount Ida. But when Calchas declared that Helenos had knowledge of the oracles that protected the city, Odysseus captured him in an ambush and brought him to the camp; ¹⁰and Helenos was forced to reveal* how Ilion could be captured. This could be achieved if, in the first place, the bones of Pelops* were brought to the Greeks, and then if Neoptolemos fought as their ally, and thirdly, if the Palladion (which had fallen from heaven) was stolen from Troy—for while it remained inside the walls, the city was impregnable.

¹¹When they heard this, the Greeks had the bones of Pelops brought over, and sent Odysseus and Phoenix to Lycomedes on Scyros to persuade him to allow Neoptolemos* to go to war. So Neoptolemos arrived in the camp, where he received his father’s arms from Odysseus, who willingly surrendered them; and he killed a large number of the Trojans. ¹²Eurypylos, the son of Telephos, later arrived as an ally of the Trojans, bringing with him a powerful force of Mysians. He performed deeds of valour, but died at the hand of Neoptolemos.*

¹³Odysseus went up to the city with Diomedes by night. Leaving Diomedes waiting outside, he assumed a mean appearance and put on shabby clothing, and entered the city undetected in the guise of a beggar. He was recognized, however, by Helen, and with her assistance he stole the Palladion, and then, after killing many of the guards, he took it to the ships with the aid of Diomedes.*

The wooden horse

¹⁴Odysseus later had the idea of constructing a wooden horse, and he suggested it to Epeios,* who was an architect. Using timber felled on Mount Ida, Epeios constructed a horse that was hollow within and opened up at the side. Odysseus urged fifty—or according to the author of the Little Iliad, three thousand*—of the bravest men to enter this horse; as for all the rest, they were to burn their tents when night fell and put out to sea, but then lie in wait off Tenedos, ready to sail back again the following night. ¹⁵Persuaded by his plan, the Greeks put their bravest men inside the horse, making Odysseus their commander; and they carved an inscription on it reading, ‘For their return home, a thank-offering to Athene from the Greeks.’ The others burned their tents, and leaving Sinon in place to light a beacon for them, they put out to sea at night and lay in wait off Tenedos.

¹⁶When day came and the Trojans saw the Greek camp deserted, they thought that the Greeks had fled. Overjoyed, they hauled the horse to the city, stationed it beside the palace of Priam, and debated what they should do. ¹⁷When Cassandra said that there was an armed force inside it and she received support from the seer Laocoon, some proposed that they should burn it, and others that they should throw it down a cliff; but the majority decided that they should spare it because it was an offering sacred to a deity, and they turned to sacrifice and feasting. ¹⁸A sign was then sent to them by Apollo; for two serpents swam across the sea from the islands nearby and devoured the sons of Laocoon.* ¹⁹When night fell and all were fast asleep, the Greeks sailed over from Tenedos, and Sinon lit a fire on the grave of Achilles to guide their way. And Helen walked around the horse and called out to the heroes within, imitating the voice of each of their wives; but when Anticlos wanted to answer, Odysseus covered his mouth.* ²⁰When they judged that their enemies were asleep, they opened up the horse and climbed out with their weapons. Echion, son of Portheus, the first to emerge, was killed by the leap, but the others lowered themselves on a rope, made their way to the wall, and opened the gates to let in the Greeks who had sailed back from Tenedos.

The sack of Troy

²¹Advancing into the city fully armed, they entered the houses and killed the Trojans as they slept. Neoptolemos killed Priam, who had taken refuge at the altar of Zeus of the Courtyard. But when Odysseus and Menelaos recognized Glaucos, son of Antenor, fleeing to his house, they came to his rescue* arms in hand. Aeneas picked up his father Anchises and fled, and the Greeks allowed him to pass because of his piety.* ²²Menelaos killed Deiphobos and led Helen away to the ships. Aithra,* the mother of Theseus, was led away also by Demophon and Acamas, the sons of Theseus (for they say that the two of them had later arrived at Troy*). The Locrian Aias saw Cassandra clinging to the wooden image of Athene and raped her; and for that reason, they say, the statue looks up towards the sky.*

²³After killing the Trojans, they set fire to the city and divided the spoils. When they had sacrificed to all the gods, they hurled Astyanax from the ramparts* and slaughtered Polyxene* on the grave of Achilles. ²⁴As a special honour, Agamemnon received Cassandra, and Neoptolemos received Andromache, and Odysseus Hecuba. According to some accounts, however, Hecuba was awarded to Helenos, who crossed over to the Chersonese with her, where she turned into a bitch and was buried by him at the place now called the Bitch’s Tomb.* ²⁵As for Laodice, the most beautiful of Priam’s daughters,* the earth swallowed her up in chasm in full view of everyone. As the Greeks were about to sail off after sacking Troy, they were held back by Calchas, who said that Athene was angry with them because of the impiety of Aias. And they intended to kill him, but he took refuge by the altar* and they let him be.

14. The returns

Menelaos and Agamemnon quarrel; Calchas and Mopsos

¹After these events, the Greeks gathered together in assembly,

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and Agamemnon and Menelaos quarrelled, Menelaos advising that they should sail away and Agamemnon urging that they should remain and sacrifice to Athene.* Diomedes, Nestor, and Menelaos set out to sea together, and the first two had a favourable passage, but Menelaos ran into a storm, and losing the rest of his vessels, arrived in Egypt with only five ships.*

²Amphilochos, Calchas, Leonteus, Podaleirios, and Polypoites left their ships at Ilion and travelled on foot to Colophon, where they buried Calchas the diviner; for he had been told in an oracle that he would die if he met a better diviner than himself. ³Now they were received at Colophon by the diviner Mopsos, who was a son of Apollo and Manto,* and this Mopsos challenged Calchas to a contest in the art of divination. There was a wild fig tree growing there, and when Calchas asked, ‘How many figs is it carrying?’, Mopsos replied, ‘Ten thousand, or a bushel with one fig left over,’ which was discovered to be the case. ⁴Mopsos then questioned Calchas about a pregnant sow, asking, ‘How many piglets is she carrying in her womb?’ When Calchas replied, ‘Eight,’ Mopsos smiled and said, ‘The divination of Calchas is anything but exact, but I, who am a son of Apollo and Manto, am richly provided with the clarity of vision that arises from exact divination, and I maintain that there are not eight piglets, as Calchas says, but nine piglets in her womb; and I can say, furthermore, that all of them are males and will be born tomorrow at the sixth hour without a doubt.’* When this all turned out to be true, Calchas was so dejected that he died. He was buried at Notion.

Agamemnon sails with the main fleet; the storm at Tenos, and Nauplios the wrecker

⁵Agamemnon put to sea when he had offered his sacrifice, and called in at Tenedos. Neoptolemos was visited by Thetis,* who persuaded him to remain for two days and then offer a sacrifice; so he remained. But the others sailed off and were caught in a storm at Tenos (for Athene had appealed to Zeus to send a storm against the Greeks). And many ships were sunk.

⁶Athene hurled a thunderbolt at the ship of Aias, but when the ship broke up, Aias escaped to safety on a rock and proclaimed that he had saved himself against the goddess’s will. But Poseidon split the rock with a blow from his trident, and Aias fell into the sea and was killed.* His body was washed ashore and buried by Thetis at Myconos.

⁷When the others were driven towards Euboea by night, Nauplios* lit a beacon on Mount Caphereus, and the Greeks, thinking that it came from some comrades who had escaped, sailed towards it, only to have their vessels wrecked on the Capherian Rocks, with the loss of many lives.

⁸Now Palamedes, the son of Nauplios by Clymene, daughter of Catreus, had been stoned to death as a result of the intrigues of Odysseus.* And when Nauplios had come to hear of it, he had sailed to the Greeks and demanded restitution for the death of his son; ⁹but turning back with nothing achieved (because all the Greeks had wanted to gratify King Agamemnon, who had been involved with Odysseus in the murder of Palamedes), he had sailed along the coast of Greece contriving that the wives of the Greeks should be unfaithful to their husbands, Clytemnestra with Aigisthos, Aigialeia* with Cometes, son of Sthenelos, and Meda, wife of Idomeneus,* with Leucos. ¹⁰But Leucos killed Meda along with her daughter, Cleisithyra, who had taken refuge in a temple; and he then arranged the defection of ten Cretan cities and became their tyrant. And when Idomeneus landed in Crete after the Trojan War, Leucos drove him out. ¹¹These, then, were the earlier machinations of Nauplios, and later, when he learned that the Greeks were returning home to their countries, he lit the beacon on Mount Caphereus, which is now called Xylophagos.* It was there that the Greeks approached the shore, supposing it to be a harbour, and met their deaths.

The fate of Neoptolemos; various wanderings and returns

¹²After he had remained in Tenedos for two days as Thetis had advised, Neoptolemos travelled by land to the country of the Molossians,* accompanied by Helenos. Along the way, Phoenix died, and Neoptolemos buried him. He became king of the Molossians after defeating them in battle, and had a son, Molossos, by Andromache. ¹³Helenos founded a city in Molossia, where he settled, and Neoptolemos gave him his mother, Deidameia, as a wife. When Peleus was expelled from Phthia by the sons of Acastos, and died, Neoptolemos recovered his father’s kingdom.*

¹⁴And when Orestes went mad,* Neoptolemos abducted his wife, Hermione, who had been promised to him previously at Troy,* and he was killed for that reason by Orestes at Delphi. But some say that he went to Delphi to demand reparation from Apollo for the death of his father,* and that he plundered the votive offerings and set fire to the temple, and was killed on that account by Machaireus* the Phocian.

^15.After their wanderings, the Greeks landed in different countries and settled there, some in Libya, some in Italy, others in Sicily, others again in the islands near Iberia, or along the River Sangarios; and there were some who settled in Cyprus too.

Agapenor settled in Cyprus. [Gouneus went to Libya, and leaving his ships behind, he made his way to the River Cinyps, where he settled. Meges and Prothoos were killed with many others at Caphereus in Euboea . . . and after Prothoos had been shipwrecked at Caphereus, the Magnesians with him were cast ashore on Crete and settled there.*]

[After the sack of Ilion, Menestheus, Pheidippos, and Antiphos, and the companions of Elephenor, and Philoctetes sailed together as far as Mimas. Then Menestheus went to Melos, where he became king because the previous king, Polyanax, had died. Antiphos, son of Thessalos, went to the land of the Pelasgians, and after seizing control of it, named it Thessaly. Pheidippos was driven to Andros with the Coans, and then to Cyprus, where he settled. Elephenor had died at Troy, but his companions were carried to the Ionian Gulf and settled at Apollonia in Epirus. The companions of Tlepolemos called in at Crete, and were then driven by the winds to the Iberian Islands, where they settled. The companions of Protesilaos were cast up on the [peninsula of] Pallene near the plain of Canastron. Philoctetes was driven to the land of the Campanians in Italy, and after a war against [the Lucanians], he settled at Crimissa, near Croton and [Thourioi]. Now that his wanderings had reached an end, he founded a sanctuary of Apollo the Wanderer, to whom, according to Euphorion, he dedicated his bow.]

[The Navaithos, a river in Italy, bears that name (according to Apollodorus and the rest) because after the capture of Ilion, the daughters of Laomedon and sisters of Priam, Aithylla, Astyoche, and Medesicaste, arrived in that part of Italy with the other captives, and fearing that they might become slaves in Greece, set fireto the ships. As a result, the river was called Navaithos, and the women the Nauprestides*And the Greeks who were with them settled there after the loss of their ships.]

¹⁶Demophon* called in at the land of the Thracian Bisaltians with a small number of ships. Phyllis, the king’s daughter, fell in love with him, and her father offered her in marriage to Demophon with the kingdom for her dowry; but he wanted to leave for his own country, and after much pleading, and swearing to come back again, he departed. Phyllis accompanied him as far as the place known as Nine Ways,* and she gave him a basket, telling him that it contained an object sacred to Mother Rhea, and that he was not to open it unless he had abandoned all hope of returning to he. ¹⁷Demophon went to Cyprus and settled there. When the appointed time had elapsed, Phyllis called down curses on Demophon and killed herself. Demophon opened the basket, and terrorstruck,* he jumped on to his horse and rode it at such a reckless pace that he lost his life; for the horse stumbled, and Demophon was thrown off and fell on his sword. His companions settled in Cyprus.

¹⁸Podaleirios arrived in Delphi and asked the god where he should settle; and he received an oracle that he should settle in the city where he would suffer no harm if the surrounding heavens fell in. So he settled at a place in the Carian Chersonese which is girded by mountains on every side.

¹⁹Amphilochos, son of Alcmaion, who, according to some accounts, had later arrived at Troy, was driven by a storm to the land of King Mopsos; and according to some accounts, they fought in single combat for the kingdom and killed one another.*

²⁰The Locrians with some difficulty made their way back to their own land; and when, three years later, Locris was struck by a plague,* they received an oracle telling them to propitiate Trojan Athene and to send her two maidens as suppliants for the next thousand years. The first to be picked out by the lot were Periboia and Cleopatra. ²¹On their arrival at Troy, they were pursued by the inhabitants and fled to the sanctuary. Without ever approaching the goddess, they swept and sprinkled her sanctuary; and they never went outside the temple, and kept their heads shorn and wore only a single tunic without any shoes. ²²When the first suppliants died, the Locrians sent others. They entered the city by night to ensure that they would not be seen outside the sacred precinct and be put to death. Later, however, they sent them as babies with their nurses; and after the Phocian War,* when the thousand years had elapsed, they stopped sending the suppliants.

The later history of the Pelopids

²³When Agamemnon arrived back at Mycenae with Cassandra, he was killed by Aigisthos and Clytemnestra;* for she gave him a tunic without sleeves or a neck, and he was struck down as he tried to put it on. Aigisthos became king of Mycenae, and they killed Cassandra too.* ²⁴But Electra, one of the daughters of Agamemnon, stole away her brother Orestes, and entrusted him to Strophios the Phocian to rear; and he brought him up with his own son, Pylades. On reaching manhood, Orestes went to Delphi to ask the god whether he should take vengeance on his father’s murderers. ²⁵When this was authorized by the god, he left Mycenae in secret, accompanied by Pylades, and killed his mother and Aigisthos.* Not long afterwards, he was struck by madness, and pursued by the Furies, he went to Athens, where he was put on trial in the Areiopagos. According to some, he was indicted by the Furies, or according to others, by Tyndareus, or again, by Erigone, the daughter of Aigisthos and Clytemnestra, and when the votes at his trial were evenly divided, he was acquitted.*

²⁶When Orestes asked the oracle how he could be delivered from his affliction, the god replied that this would be achieved if he fetched the wooden statue that lay in the land of the Taurians.* Now the Taurians are part of the Scythian race, who murder strangers and cast their bodies into the sacred fire. The fire lay in the sanctuary and rose up from Hades through a certain rock. ²⁷So when Orestes arrived with Pylades in the land of the Taurians, they were discovered, captured, and taken in chains to Thoas, the king, who dispatched the pair of them to the priestess. But Orestes was recognized by his sister, who was performing the rites amongst the Taurians, and he fled with her, taking the wooden statue with him. It was brought to Athens, where it is now called the Tauropolos Statue; but it is said by some that Orestes was driven by a storm to the island of Rhodes, [where the statue remained] and was dedicated in a defensive wall in obedience to an oracle. ²⁸Returning to Mycenae, he united his sister Electra to Pylades, while he himself married Hermione, or according to some, Erigone, and became the father of Tisamenos.* He died from a snake-bite at Oresteion in Arcadia.

²⁹Menelaos, with a total of five ships under his command, put in at Sounion, a headland of Attica; and when he was driven away from there by the winds towards Crete, he was carried a great distance, and wandered along the coasts of Libya, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt collecting a wealth of treasure.* ³⁰According to some accounts, he discovered Helen at the court of Proteus, king of Egypt; for until that time, Menelaos had possessed only a phantom* of her, fashioned from clouds. After wandering for eight years, he sailed back to Mycenae, where he found Orestes, who was there after avenging his father’s murder. From there, he went to Sparta and recovered his own kingdom; and after he had been made immortal by Hera, he went to the Elysian Fields with Helen.*

The return of Odysseus (a summary of theOdyssey,)

¹Odysseus, according to some accounts, wandered to Libya,

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or according to others, to Sicily, or again around the Ocean and the Tyrrhenian Sea.

²After putting to sea from Ilion, he called in at Ismaros, a city of the Ciconians, and seized it by force of arms and pillaged it, sparing only Maron, who was a priest of Apollo. When the Ciconians who lived on the mainland came to hear of this, they armed themselves and advanced against him. Losing six men from each ship, he put to sea and fled.

³Landing at the country of the Lotos-Eaters, he sent some of his men to discover who the inhabitants were. But they tasted the lotos and remained where they were; for in that land, there grew a delicious fruit called the lotos, which caused those who tasted it to forget all else. When Odysseus learned of this, he kept the others back, and dragged the men who had tasted the lotos back to the ships by force. And he set sail for the land of the Cyclopes and approached its shore.

⁴Leaving the rest of his ships at the neighbouring island, he approached the land of the Cyclopes with only a single ship, and disembarked with twelve companions. Close to the sea there was a cave, which he entered, taking with him the wineskin that Maron had given him. This cave was owned by Polyphemos, who was a son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa; he was a man of enormous size, a savage man-eater with a single eye on his forehead. ^sLighting a fire, Odysseus and his companions sacrificed some of the kids and began to feast; but the Cyclops arrived, and after he had driven his flocks into the cave and placed a huge stone at its entrance, he caught sight of the men and devoured some of them. ⁶Odysseus gave him some of Maron’s wine to drink. He drank it down and asked for more, and then, when he had drunk for a second time, he asked Odysseus to tell him his name. Odysseus replied that he was called Nobody, and the Cyclops promised that he would kill Nobody last and the others before him: such was the gift of friendship that he promised him in return for the wine. And overcome by drunkenness he fell asleep.

⁷Odysseus found a club lying in the cave, and helped by four of his comrades, he sharpened its point, and then, after heating it in the fire, blinded the Cyclops with it. Polyphemos cried out to the neighbouring Cyclopes and they came to help; but when they asked who was hurting him, and he replied, ‘Nobody,’ they went away again, believing him to mean that he was being injured by nobody. ⁸When the flocks sought to leave for their usual pasture, he opened up the cave, and standing at the entrance, stretched out his hands to feel the sheep [as they passed]. But Odysseus tied three rams together and slipping beneath the largest of them, he hid under its belly and left with the sheep; and then, after releasing his companions from their sheep, he drove the animals to the ships, and as he was sailing away, shouted to the Cyclops that he was Odysseus and had escaped from his hands. ⁹Now the Cyclops had been warned by a diviner that he would be blinded by Odysseus, and when he heard the name, he tore rocks from the ground and hurled them into the sea; and the ship only just escaped them. It was these events that gave rise to Poseidon’s anger against Odysseus.

¹⁰Sailing to sea with all [his ships], he came to the island of Aiolia, where Aiolos was king. He had been appointed controller of the winds by Zeus, with power both to calm them and send them forth. After entertaining Odysseus as his guest, he gave him an oxhide bag in which he had imprisoned the winds, and when he had shown him which he should use on the voyage, he attached the bag securely to the ship. By making use of the appropriate winds, Odysseus had a successful passage, but when he drew close to Ithaca and could already see the smoke rising from the town, he fell asleep; ¹¹and his companions, thinking that he was carrying gold in the bag, untied it, and released the winds. Swept away by the winds, they travelled back the way they had come. Odysseus went to Aiolos and asked him for a favourable wind, but Aiolos drove him from the island, saying that he was unable to save a man if the gods were working against him.

¹²So he sailed on until he arrived at the land of the Laistrygonians, [where he put in,] mooring his own ship last in the line. The Laistrygonians were cannibals and their king was Antiphates. Wanting to learn about the inhabitants, Odysseus sent some of his men to investigate; and the king’s daughter met with them and took them to her father. ¹³He grasped hold of one of them and swallowed him down, but the others fled, and he chased after them, shouting out to summon the rest of the Laistrygonians. And the Laistrygonians rushed down to the sea, where they broke up the vessels by hurling rocks at them, and devoured the men. Odysseus cut the cable of his ship and made his way out to sea, but all the other ships were lost together with their crews.

¹⁴Left with a single ship, he put in at the island of Aiaie, the home of Circe, a daughter of the Sun and Perse and sister of Aietes, who had knowledge of all manner of drugs. Separating his comrades into two groups, he himself remained by the ship in accordance with the lot, while Eurylochos went to visit Circe with twenty-two companions. ¹⁵At her invitation, all except Eurylochos went inside, and she offered each of them a cup that she had filled with cheese, honey, barleymeal, and wine, with a drug mixed in. And when they had drunk, she touched them with her wand and transformed them, turning some of them into wolves, and others into pigs, or asses, or lions.* ¹⁶Eurylochos saw everything and went to tell Odysseus. Obtaining some moly* from Hermes, Odysseus went to Circe and sprinkled it into her potions, so that when he drank from them, he alone escaped her enchantments. He drew his sword, with the intention of killing her, but Circe allayed his anger, and restored his comrades to their original form. After he had received an oath from her that she would cause him no harm, Odysseus went to bed with her, and she bore him a son, Telegonos.*

¹⁷After delaying there for a year, he sailed on the Ocean, and then, after offering sacrifices to the souls [of the dead], he consulted the diviner Teiresias as Circe had advised, and beheld the souls of heroes and heroines alike. He also saw his mother Anticleia, and Elpenor, who had died from a fall in Circe’s house.