Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/208

172 would show me the way to return. But when now I avoided my companions, going through the island, having washed my hands where there was a shelter from the wind, I made vows to all the gods who inhabit Olympus: and they poured sweet sleep over my eyebrows. But Eurylochus was the beginner of evil counsel unto my companions.

Hear my words, O companions, although suffering evils: all deaths are hateful to wretched mortals; but, through hunger, it is most miserable to die and draw on one's fate. But come, having driven away the best of the oxen of the Sun, we will sacrifice to the immortals who possess the wide heaven. But if we come to Ithaca, our father-land, we will immediately build a rich temple to the Sun, who journeys on high, where we may place many and excellent images. But if by any means wrathful on account of the straight-horned oxen, he should wish to destroy our ship, and the other gods follow, I had rather at once lose my life gaping in the wave, than waste away any longer, remaining on a desert island.'

"Thus spoke Eurylochus; and my other companions approved. But immediately having driven the best of the oxen of the Sun from near at hand, (for the beautiful black oxen, with their broad foreheads, pastured not far away from the dark-prowed ship,) they stood around them, and prayed to the gods, having cropped the tender leaves of a lofty-tressed oak; for they had not white barley on the well-benched ship.

"But when they had prayed, and slain and skinned them, they cut off the thighs, and covered them with fat, doubling them, and they set the raw parts upon them: nor had they wine to make libations over the burnt sacrifices, but making libations with water, they roasted all the entrails. But when they had burnt the thighs, and tasted the bowels, they cut up the other parts, and fixed them on spits: and then sweet sleep rushed away from my eyebrows: and I hastened to the swift ship and the shore of the sea. But as I was now going near the ship rowed on both sides, then the sweet vapour of the fat came upon me: and mourning, I cried out to the immortal gods:

O father Jove, and ye other blessed gods, who exist for ever, certainly ye laid me to sleep in a pitiless sleep, to my harm, but my companions remaining here have devised a heinous deed.'