1. This pa**age is from lines 343-411 of Book IX in The Odyssey by Homer.
2. The protagonist, Odysseus, is on a long journey home to his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. His estate in Ithaca was taken over by suitors who are trying to steal his kingdom and his wife, and he is eager to come home. After fighting in the Trojan War, Odysseus was held captive by the Greek goddess Calypso, who fell in love with him and refused to let him leave. But with the help of Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom and military victory), the gods agreed to let Odysseus free to go home. Ten years after the Trojan War had ended, Odysseus set out on his journey back to Ithaca. However, there are many obstacles that he encounters along the way. One of these obstacles occurs in Book IX when Odysseus, along with his crew, sail to Cyclopes. This island is full of monsters (Cyclopses) who are extremely uncivilized and barbaric. Odysseus and his men make dinner from some goats on the island and then come across a cave with sheep, cheese, and milk. Instead of taking the things and leaving, they stick around for a little while. The monster that lives in the cave (Polyphemus) returns, k**s two of the men, and then traps Odysseus and the other men in the cave. The lines below explain how Odysseus strategically gets the Polyphemus drunk and tells the monster that his name is "Noman". When Polyphemus pa**es out drunk, Odysseus blinds him by thrusting hot wooden beams (that he made while the monster was gone) into his eyes. Some other Cyclopses hear his cry and ask him what's wrong. He replies, "Noman is k**ing me by fraud!", implying to the other Cyclopses that everything is okay, and they leave. After these lines, Odysseus and his men are able to escape and continue on their journey. This pa**age is particularly interesting because it gives the reader a message about the Odysseus's strategic, smart, and determined character.
3. (http://cla**ics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.9.ix.html)
"'Look here, Cyclops,' said I, you have been eating a great deal of man's flesh, so take this and drink some wine, that you may see what kind of liquor we had on board my ship. I was bringing it to you as a drink-offering, in the hope that you would take compa**ion upon me and further me on my way home, whereas all you do is to go on ramping and raving most intolerably. You ought to be ashamed yourself; how can you expect people to come see you any more if you treat them in this way?'
"He then took the cup and drank. He was so delighted with the taste of the wine that he begged me for another bowl full. 'Be so kind,' he said, 'as to give me some more, and tell me your name at once. I want to make you a present that you will be glad to have. We have wine even in this country, for our soil grows grapes and the sun ripens them, but this drinks like nectar and ambrosia all in one.'
"I then gave him some more; three times did I fill the bowl for him, and three times did he drain it without thought or heed; then, when I saw that the wine had got into his head, I said to him as plausibly as I could: 'Cyclops, you ask my name and I will tell it you; give me, therefore, the present you promised me; my name is Noman; this is what my father and mother and my friends have always called me.'
"But the cruel wretch said, 'Then I will eat all Noman's comrades before Noman himself, and will keep Noman for the last. This is the present that I will make him.'
As he spoke he reeled, and fell sprawling face upwards on the ground. His great neck hung heavily backwards and a deep sleep took hold upon him. Presently he turned sick, and threw up both wine and the gobbets of human flesh on which he had been gorging, for he was very drunk. Then I thrust the beam of wood far into the embers to heat it, and encouraged my men lest any of them should turn faint-hearted. When the wood, green though it was, was about to blaze, I drew it out of the fire glowing with heat, and my men gathered round me, for heaven had filled their hearts with courage. We drove the sharp end of the beam into the monster's eye, and bearing upon it with all my weight I kept turning it round and round as though I were boring a hole in a ship's plank with an auger, which two men with a wheel and strap can keep on turning as long as they choose. Even thus did we bore the red hot beam into his eye, till the boiling blood bubbled all over it as we worked it round and round, so that the steam from the burning eyeball scalded his eyelids and eyebrows, and the roots of the eye sputtered in the fire. As a blacksmith plunges an axe or hatchet into cold water to temper it- for it is this that gives strength to the iron- and it makes a great hiss as he does so, even thus did the Cyclops' eye hiss round the beam of olive wood, and his hideous yells made the cave ring again. We ran away in a fright, but he plucked the beam all besmirched with gore from his eye, and hurled it from him in a frenzy of rage and pain, shouting as he did so to the other Cyclopes who lived on the bleak headlands near him; so they gathered from all quarters round his cave when they heard him crying, and asked what was the matter with him.
"'What ails you, Polyphemus,' said they, 'that you make such a noise, breaking the stillness of the night, and preventing us from being able to sleep? Surely no man is carrying off your sheep? Surely no man is trying to k** you either by fraud or by force?
"But Polyphemus shouted to them from inside the cave, 'Noman is k**ing me by fraud! Noman is k**ing me by force!'
"'Then,' said they, 'if no man is attacking you, you must be ill; when Jove makes people ill, there is no help for it, and you had better pray to your father Neptune.'
Works Cited:
http://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Creatures/Cyclopes/cyclopes.html
http://www.articlemyriad.com/food-imagery-temptation-odyssey/
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-food-odyssey-tell-us-something-about-437954
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epithet
http://www.academia.edu/1803087/The_Greeks_and_Their_Wine_Hellenic_Identities_in_the_Fifth-Century_BC
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/simile
http://www.talesbeyondbelief.com/roman-gods/jupiter.htm
http://www.windows2universe.org/mythology/Definitions_gods/Neptune_def.html