Odyssey 9.106 · Book 9, lines 106–108
The land of the Cyclopes
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Κυκλώπων δʼ ἐς γαῖαν ὑπερφιάλων ἀθεμίστων ἱκόμεθʼ, οἵ ῥα θεοῖσι πεποιθότες ἀθανάτοισιν οὔτε φυτεύουσιν χερσὶν φυτὸν οὔτʼ ἀρόωσιν,
And to the land of the overweening, lawless Cyclopes we came — who indeed, trusting in the immortal gods, neither plant a plant with their hands, nor do they plough,
Word by word
The setting
The fleet reaches the country of the Cyclopes. Before the story of Polyphemus, Odysseus describes what kind of people they are.
A note on this passage
The Cyclopes are introduced by what they lack. They are ὑπερφίαλοι, overweening, and ἀθέμιστοι, without law; and, leaving the gods to provide, they neither plant nor plough — they do no farming at all.
ἀθέμιστος is the load-bearing word: they have no θέμις, no settled order of what is right. In this poem the mark of a civilized people is agriculture and law together, and a race that will not break the soil already stands outside the human covenant. The terror of the cave is being readied by a picture of untilled ground.
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