Odyssey 9.296 · Book 9, lines 296–298
The giant lies down to sleep
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αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ Κύκλωψ μεγάλην ἐμπλήσατο νηδὺν ἀνδρόμεα κρέʼ ἔδων καὶ ἐπʼ ἄκρητον γάλα πίνων, κεῖτʼ ἔντοσθʼ ἄντροιο τανυσσάμενος διὰ μήλων.
But when the Cyclops had filled his great belly, eating human flesh and drinking unmixed milk upon it, he lay down inside the cave, stretched out among his flocks.
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The setting
His meal finished, the Cyclops drinks unmixed milk on top of the human flesh and stretches out to sleep inside the cave, among his sheep and goats.
A note on this passage
The scene settles into a grotesque domestic calm. The giant tops off his meal with milk drunk neat — no wine, no water, the diet of a herdsman who lives beyond the customs of the table — and lies down among his animals to sleep.
The undercurrent is the detail of the unmixed milk. Greeks drank their wine watered; to drink anything ‘unmixed’ was a mark of the uncivilized. It is a small note, but it does the same work as the lion simile: it places the Cyclops just outside the human, in the same breath that shows him full and sleeping and, for the first time, vulnerable.
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