Odysseus finally reveals himself: "I am Ulysses son of Laertes, renowned among mankind for all manner of subtlety, so that my fame ascends to heaven," and he names Ithaca as his home. He then begins the long story of his wanderings. After leaving Troy, his twelve ships reached the land of the Cicones, allies of the Trojans, and sacked their city, Ismarus. Odysseus urged his men to leave quickly, but they stayed to drink and feast on the beach, and the Cicones gathered reinforcements and counterattacked at dawn. Six men from each ship were killed before the rest escaped. Then a storm sent by Zeus tore their sails, and as they tried to round Cape Malea toward home, the winds drove them off course for nine days.
On the tenth day they reached the land of the Lotus-Eaters. These people were not hostile, but they gave the scouts the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, and anyone who ate it lost all wish to go home and wanted only to stay and eat lotus forever. Odysseus dragged the weeping men back to the ships, tied them under the benches, and ordered everyone to row away before others could taste it. Next they came to the land of the Cyclopes, lawless one-eyed giants who neither plow nor hold assemblies, each ruling his own cave. The fleet landed on a wooded island nearby full of wild goats, and Odysseus took his own ship and crew to explore the mainland.
With twelve men and a skin of extraordinarily strong wine given to him by Maron, a priest of Apollo, Odysseus entered a huge cave full of cheeses, lambs, and kids. His men begged him to take some cheese and animals and leave, but Odysseus wanted to see the owner and receive guest-gifts. The owner was Polyphemus, a Cyclops and son of Poseidon. He drove his flocks in and blocked the entrance with a boulder so huge that twenty-two wagons could not move it. When Odysseus asked for hospitality in the name of Zeus, the Cyclops laughed that his kind care nothing for Zeus. Then he seized two men, dashed their brains out on the ground, and ate them. In the morning he ate two more and drove his flocks out, sealing the cave behind him. Odysseus could not kill him while he slept, because no one but the Cyclops could move the stone.
So Odysseus made a plan. He found a great olive-wood club, cut a length of it, sharpened it, and hardened the point in the fire, then hid it in the dung. That evening, after the Cyclops ate two more men, Odysseus offered him the wine. Polyphemus drank three bowls and asked his name, promising a gift. "My name is Noman," Odysseus replied (Butler's word for the Greek Outis, "Nobody"). The Cyclops said his gift would be to eat Noman last, then collapsed into a drunken sleep. Odysseus and four men drove the glowing stake into his eye and twisted it like a shipwright's drill. Polyphemus roared, and the other Cyclopes came to ask who was hurting him. "Noman is killing me by fraud; no man is killing me by force," he cried, so they told him to pray to his father and went away.
The next morning the blinded giant sat at the entrance with his hands spread out to catch anyone leaving. Odysseus tied his men under the bellies of rams, three rams to each man, and clung himself to the fleece beneath the largest ram. Polyphemus felt the backs of his sheep but not their undersides, and sadly asked his favorite ram why it was last to leave. Once they were safely aboard, Odysseus could not resist shouting taunts. The Cyclops hurled a hilltop that nearly washed the ship back to shore. Despite his men's pleas, Odysseus shouted again, this time revealing his real name. Polyphemus recalled a prophecy that a man named Odysseus would blind him, and he prayed to Poseidon that Odysseus should never reach home — or, if he must, that he should arrive late, alone, on a stranger's ship, and find trouble in his house. Poseidon heard the prayer.
Quoted lines are from Samuel Butler’s 1900 prose translation (Project Gutenberg #1727), which calls Odysseus by his Roman name, Ulysses.
