1 I had nine ships, and the people flocked to fill them.
2 And I saw Tityus son of Gaia stretched upon the plain and covering some nine acres of ground.
3 There were nine guilds with five hundred men in each, and there were nine bulls to each guild.
4 Nine days and nine nights did we sail, and on the tenth day our native land showed on the horizon.
5 There is a great town there, Cnossus, where Minos reigned who every nine years had a conference with Jove himself.
6 Before the Achaeans went to Troy, nine times was I in command of men and ships on foreign service, and I amassed much wealth.
7 There we fought for nine whole years, but in the tenth we sacked the city of Priam and sailed home again as heaven dispersed us.
8 On this a servant hurried off to bring the lyre from the king's house, and the nine men who had been chosen as stewards stood forward.
9 Hence I was carried along for nine days till on the tenth night the gods stranded me on the Ogygian island, where dwells the great and powerful goddess Calypso.
10 He says that you have here the most ill-starred of all those who fought nine years before the city of King Priam and sailed home in the tenth year after having sacked it.
11 I was driven thence by foul winds for a space of nine days upon the sea, but on the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower.
12 They were the finest children that were ever born in this world, and the best looking, Orion only excepted; for at nine years old they were nine fathoms high, and measured nine cubits round the chest.
13 My brave comrades were drowned every man of them, but I stuck to the keel and was carried hither and thither for the space of nine days, till at last during the darkness of the tenth night the gods brought me to the Ogygian island where the great goddess Calypso lives.