my larder is ever provided with a haunch of lion or a fat calf; and so that I have a good crop of grass in yonder meadows, I and my cattle care alike for your Jupiter." And then he winds up with a declaration of his purpose to have a good dinner:—
"I well know
The wise man's only Jupiter is this,
To eat and drink during his little day,
And give himself no care. And as for those
Who complicate with laws the life of man,
I freely give them tears for their reward.
I will not cheat my soul of its delight,
Or hesitate in dining upon you."
Clearly, after hearing these hospitable intentions, Ulysses will need all the cunning for which he was famed. "This," he thinks, "is by far the worst scrape I ever was in. Very near was I to death when I entered Troy town as a spy, and when I cajoled Queen Hecuba to let me out of it. I just missed being transfixed by Philoctetes in Lemnos by one of his poisoned arrows, when Machaon, that skilful surgeon, was many leagues away from me, and when, even if he had been at hand, he could not perhaps have counteracted the old centaur's venom. 'About my brain,' I must not faint, but contrive to foil this brute's designs. If I cannot, better had it been for me to have died by the hand of the mad Ajax, for then I should have been decently buried by the Greeks, and Penelope have known what became of me; whereas, if I am to go down this monster's 'insatiate maw,' she may go
