accompanied by threats of personal violence to Polyphemus himself, he not unreasonably flies into a terrible passion, and hastens to enforce Cyclopian law on the spoilers of his goods:—
"Cycl. In truth? nay, haste, and place in order quickly
The cooking-knives, and heap upon the hearth,
And kindle it, a great fagot of wood;
As soon as they are slaughtered they shall fill
My belly, broiling warm from the live coals,
Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron.
I am quite sick of the wild mountain-game,
Of stags and lions I have gorged enough,
And I grow hungry for the flesh of men."
In vain Ulysses assures Polyphemus that he has never laid hands on Silenus; that he purchased the lambs for wine, honestly as he thought, and that the lying old Satyr's nose will vouch for the exchange and barter. All was done
"By mutual compact, without force;
There is no word of truth in all he says,
For slily he was selling all your store."
But as well might a poacher accused of snaring hares or trapping foxes have pleaded innocence before that worshipful justice Squire Western, as Ulysses expect his plain tale to put down the evidence, confirmed by the very hard swearing, of Silenus. The Chorus, indeed, following its proper function of mediator between "contending opposites," assures the Cyclops that the stranger tells the simple truth, and that they saw Silenus giving the lambs to him.
