Odyssey 9.291 · Book 9, lines 291–293
He ate like a lion
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τοὺς δὲ διὰ μελεϊστὶ ταμὼν ὡπλίσσατο δόρπον· ἤσθιε δʼ ὥς τε λέων ὀρεσίτροφος, οὐδʼ ἀπέλειπεν, ἔγκατά τε σάρκας τε καὶ ὀστέα μυελόεντα.
And cutting them limb from limb he made ready his supper; and he ate like a mountain-bred lion, and left nothing — the entrails and the flesh and the marrow-filled bones.
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The setting
Having killed them, the Cyclops butchers and eats the two men on the spot, leaving nothing — a mountain lion's meal, made of Odysseus's crew.
A note on this passage
The butchery is described as a meal. The verb ‘made ready his supper’ is the ordinary word for any evening feast, and that is the point: to the Cyclops this is dinner, prepared and eaten like any other. He leaves nothing — organs, flesh, bones and all.
The undercurrent is the lion simile. Homer reaches for the mountain-bred lion, the wild predator outside human walls, to say what the Cyclops is: not a wicked man but an animal that happens to speak. The comparison quietly denies him the one thing that would make his cruelty a crime — a share in humanity.
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