risking a similar rebuff said: "Comrade, it overwhelms me that a sweet
young shepherdess should be driven to complain to the echoing crags of
the gluttonous appetite that impelled you to devour her sheep. Time was
when you would have protected her sheepfold. In those days you led an
honest life. Leave your lairs and become, instead of a wolf, an honest
man again."

"What is that?" answered the wolf. "I don't see your point. You come
here treating me as though I were a carnivorous beast. But what are you,
who are talking in this strain? Would not you and yours have eaten these
sheep, which all the village is deploring, if I had not? Now say, on
your oath, do you really think I should have loved slaughter any less if
I had remained a man? For a mere word, you men are at times ready to
strangle each other. Are you not, therefore, as wolves one to another?
All things considered, I maintain as a matter of fact that, rascal for
rascal, it is better to be a wolf than a man. I decline to make any
change in my condition."

In this way did Ulysses go from one to another making the same
representations and receiving from all, large and small alike, the same
refusals. Liberty, unbridled lust of appetite, the ambushes of the
woods, all these things were their supreme delight. They all renounced
the glory attaching to great deeds.


They thought that in following their passions they were enjoying
freedom, not seeing that they were but slaves to themselves.