Inscribed plaque from grotto wall With epigram by Faustinus Felix, 3rd or 4th century A.D., Sperlonga (translation from H. Anne Weis, "Odysseus at Sperlonga: Hellenistic Hero or Roman Heroic Foil?", From Pergamon to Sperlonga: Sculpture and Context, 2000, 126):
If Mantua could give back her divine Poet and Seer (i.e. Vergil), astonished at the immense work here, he would yield [his authority] to the cave, and to the treacheries of the Ithacan (i.e. the statue group with Odysseus' theft from Troy of the Palladium, the wooden Athena), the flames and the blinding of the Half-Beastómade heavy by both sleep and wine (i.e. to the statue group depicting the blinding of Polyphemus), to the caverns and the restless waters, the Cyclopean rocks, the savagery of Scylla and the ship's helm broken in the surging waters (i.e. the statue group with Odysseus' ship and Scylla).