No More Learning

ULYSSES:
From Ilion, and from the Trojan toils. _100

SILENUS:
How, touched you not at your paternal shore?

ULYSSES:
The strength of tempests bore me here by force.

SILENUS:
The self-same accident occurred to me.

ULYSSES:
Were you then driven here by stress of weather?

SILENUS:
Following the Pirates who had kidnapped Bacchus. _105

ULYSSES:
What land is this, and who inhabit it? --

SILENUS:
Aetna, the loftiest peak in Sicily.

ULYSSES:
And are there walls, and tower-surrounded towns?

SILENUS:
There are not. --These lone rocks are bare of men.

ULYSSES:
And who possess the land? the race of beasts? _110

SILENUS:
Cyclops, who live in caverns, not in houses.

ULYSSES:
Obeying whom?
Or is the state popular?

SILENUS:
Shepherds: no one obeys any in aught.

ULYSSES:
How live they? do they sow the corn of Ceres?

SILENUS:
On milk and cheese, and on the flesh of sheep. _115

ULYSSES:
Have they the Bromian drink from the vine's stream?

SILENUS:
Ah! no; they live in an ungracious land.

ULYSSES:
And are they just to strangers? --hospitable?

SILENUS:
They think the sweetest thing a stranger brings
Is his own flesh.

ULYSSES:
What! do they eat man's flesh? _120

SILENUS:
No one comes here who is not eaten up.

ULYSSES:
The Cyclops now--where is he? Not at home?