Odyssey 9.340 · Book 9, lines 340–344
Sealed in; two more devoured
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αὐτὰρ ἔπειτʼ ἐπέθηκε θυρεὸν μέγαν ὑψόσʼ ἀείρας, ἑζόμενος δʼ ἤμελγεν ὄις καὶ μηκάδας αἶγας, πάντα κατὰ μοῖραν, καὶ ὑπʼ ἔμβρυον ἧκεν ἑκάστῃ. αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ σπεῦσε πονησάμενος τὰ ἃ ἔργα, σὺν δʼ ὅ γε δὴ αὖτε δύω μάρψας ὡπλίσσατο δόρπον.
And then he set in place a great door-stone, lifting it aloft, and sitting down he milked his ewes and the bleating goats, all in due order, and he put a young one under each ewe. But when he had hurried, laboring at his own tasks, then again he seized two and made his supper.
Word by word
The setting
With the flock inside, the Cyclops rolls the huge stone across the cave-mouth and goes calmly about his evening chores — milking, setting the young beneath the ewes — before turning again to his prisoners.
A note on this passage
Horror set beside routine. The same hands that seal the men in and, when the work is done, snatch two more for supper first move through the mild, orderly business of a shepherd's evening: milking in due measure, a lamb tucked under each ewe. The domesticity is exact and unbroken.
The placing is the point. Homer lets the killing arrive as one more item on the chore-list, in the same even tone — 'then again he seized two.' The monster is monstrous not because he rages but because he does not; a man is no more to him than a beast of the flock, dispatched between the milking and the meal.
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