Odyssey 9.355 · Book 9, lines 355–359
'Give me more — and tell me your name'
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Polyphemus — δός μοι ἔτι πρόφρων, καί μοι τεὸν οὔνομα εἰπὲ αὐτίκα νῦν, ἵνα τοι δῶ ξείνιον, ᾧ κε σὺ χαίρῃς· καὶ γὰρ Κυκλώπεσσι φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα οἶνον ἐριστάφυλον, καί σφιν Διὸς ὄμβρος ἀέξει· ἀλλὰ τόδʼ ἀμβροσίης καὶ νέκταρός ἐστιν ἀπορρώξ.
Give me more, freely, and tell me your name right now, so that I may give you a guest-gift you will delight in; for indeed for the Cyclopes the grain-giving earth bears wine of great clusters, and the rain of Zeus swells it for them; but this is a runlet of ambrosia and nectar.
Word by word
The setting
Delighted, the Cyclops asks for another cup and, promising a guest-gift in return, demands Odysseus's name. He marvels that the drink is like no Cyclopean wine — a very runlet of the gods' own ambrosia and nectar.
A note on this passage
The giant asks for the two things that will undo him: more wine and a name. He wraps the request in the language of hospitality — a 'guest-gift' in exchange — the very custom he has been breaking by eating his guests. His praise of the wine, a splinter broken off from ambrosia and nectar, measures how far the drink has already carried him.
The request for the name sets up the poem's most famous trick, still a few lines off: Odysseus will answer 'Nobody.' The 'guest-gift' the Cyclops offers in return will be his grim joke — to eat Nobody last of all. Here the monster, drunk and expansive, is unknowingly asking for the word that will save the men and the blinding that will follow it.
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