Characters
- Antiphates — Laestrygonian king; eats a scout; raises the alarm
- Antiphates’ daughter — met at Artacia; leads scouts to the palace
- Laestrygonian queen — summons Antiphates
- Odysseus — moors outside; escapes with one ship
- Odysseus’s crew — destroyed in the harbor
- Scouts — two survivors report; one is eaten
Places
- Circe’s land — next landfall (Circe)
- Spring Artacia — where the scouts meet the princess
- Telepylus of the Laestrygonians — cliff-girt harbor of massacre
Themes
Narrative
Six days’ hard rowing from Aeolia brought Odysseus’s twelve ships to the lofty town of Telepylus in Lamos’s land, where a herdsman returning hails a herdsman going out—night and day almost meet. The fleet entered a calm harbor ringed by sheer cliffs, with a narrow mouth; Odysseus alone moored his ship outside.
Scouts met a towering girl drawing water at the spring Artacia—daughter of Antiphates, the Laestrygonian king. She led them to her father’s house. The queen, huge as a mountain peak, called her husband; Antiphates seized one scout for dinner. The other two fled. Antiphates raised the war-cry; the Laestrygonians swarmed the cliffs, hurled rocks that smashed the ships in the harbor, and speared men like fish for their feast. Only Odysseus’s outer vessel cut its cables and escaped. Eleven ships and their crews were lost. The remnant sailed on to Aeaea with the fleet almost annihilated by cannibal giants.