While Galatea[70] was giving her hair be to combed, heaving sighs, she addressed her in such words as these: "{ And} yet, O maiden, no ungentle race of men does woo thee; and as thou dost, thou art able to deny them with impunity. But I, whose sire is Nereus, whom the azure Doris bore, who am guarded, too, by a crowd of sisters, was not able, but through the waves, to escape the passion of the Cyclop;" and as she spoke, the tears choked her utterance. When, with her fingers like marble, the maiden had wiped these away, and had comforted the Goddess, "Tell me, dearest," said she, "and conceal not { from me} ({ for} I am true to thee) the cause of thy grief." In these words did the Nereid reply to the daughter of Cratæis:[71] "Acis was the son of Faunus and of the Nymph Symæthis, a great delight, indeed, to his father and his mother, yet a still greater to me. For the charming { youth} had attached me to himself alone, and eight birth-days having a second time been passed, he had { now} marked his tender cheeks with the dubious down. Him I { pursued}; incessantly did the Cyclop me pursue. Nor can I, shouldst thou enquire, declare whether the hatred of the Cylops, or the love of Acis, was the stronger in me. They were equal. O genial Venus! how great is the power of thy sway. For that savage, and one to be dreaded by the very woods, and beheld with impunity by no stranger, the contemner of great Olympus with the Gods { themselves}, { now} feels what love is; and, captivated with passion for me, he burns, forgetting his cattle and his caves.
"And now, Polyphemus, thou hast a care for thy looks, and now for { the art of} pleasing; now thou combest out thy stiffened hair with rakes, { and} now it pleases thee to cut thy shaggy beard with the sickle, and to look at thy fierce features in the water, and { so} to compose them. Thy love for carnage, and thy fierceness, and thy insatiate thirst for blood, { now} cease; and the ships both come and go in safety. Telemus, in the mean time arriving at the Sicilian Ætna, Telemus, the son of Eurymus, whom no omen had { ever} deceived, accosts the dreadful Polyphemus, and says, 'The single eye that thou dost carry in the midst of thy forehead, Ulysses shall take away from thee.' He laughed, and said, 'O most silly of the prophets, thou art mistaken, { for} another has already taken it away.' Thus does he slight him, in vain warning him of the truth; and he either burdens the shore, stalking along with huge strides, or, wearied, he returns to his shaded cave.