Odyssey 9.395 · Book 9, lines 395–398
The Cyclops shrieks; the men scatter
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σμερδαλέον δὲ μέγʼ ᾤμωξεν, περὶ δʼ ἴαχε πέτρη, ἡμεῖς δὲ δείσαντες ἀπεσσύμεθʼ· αὐτὰρ ὁ μοχλὸν ἐξέρυσʼ ὀφθαλμοῖο πεφυρμένον αἵματι πολλῷ. τὸν μὲν ἔπειτʼ ἔρριψεν ἀπὸ ἕο χερσὶν ἀλύων,
And terribly he shrieked aloud, and round about the rock rang; and we in terror rushed away. But he dragged the stake out of his eye, fouled with much blood. Then he flung it from himself with his hands, beside himself.
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The setting
The stake is in the eye. The cave erupts in sound.
A note on this passage
Now the noise. The Cyclops screams so hugely that the rock itself rings, and the terrified men bolt into the recesses. He wrenches the stake from his eye, running with blood, and hurls it away, out of his mind with pain.
The verbs do the work: he is ἀλύων, ‘beside himself,’ the helpless frenzy the poem elsewhere gives to the wounded and the grief-mad. The monster who felt nothing while he ate men alive is, for this moment, only a body in agony — and a small human band has done it to him.
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