Polyphemus the Cyclops — Land of the Cyclopes (Κύκλωπες), landfall 5 of 15 on the voyage of odysseus

The goat island

Across a strait from the Cyclopes' coast lies a low wooded island swarming with wild goats — no ships, no farmers, no hunters, because the Cyclopes have no boats. The fleet lands in the dark, without a pilot, guided (Odysseus swears) by some god.

The crews feast on goat meat and Maron's wine for a day. It could end here, harmlessly. But smoke rises across the water, and voices, and the bleating of flocks. Odysseus takes his own ship and twelve men to see 'whether they are savage or hospitable to strangers.' Curiosity — his great gift, his great flaw — pulls the story into the cave.

The shepherd of the cliffs

Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, keeps his flocks alone under Etna — a mountain walking as a man, contemptuous of the gods themselves. 'The Cyclopes,' he says, 'pay no heed to Zeus. We are stronger.'

In his cave the scouts find cheeses in racks, lambs in pens, pails of whey — a tidy monstrous dairy. The men beg to steal what they can and run. Odysseus refuses: he wants to see the owner, and claim a guest-gift. The mistake is made before the giant ever appears.

Nobody's trick

The giant rolls a stone over the door that twenty wagons could not move, and eats two men raw for supper, two for breakfast, two more at dusk. Prayers mean nothing; the guest-law means nothing. No sword can help — kill him, and the stone seals the cave forever.

So it must be cunning. Odysseus offers the giant Maron's unmixed wine, three bowls of it, and gives his name: Nobody. While Polyphemus snores, drunk, the Greeks drive a fire-hardened olive stake into his single eye. His screams bring the other Cyclopes to the door: 'Who is hurting you?' — 'Nobody!' — 'Then it is a sickness from Zeus; pray to your father Poseidon.' And they leave him.

“Nobody is my name; Nobody they call me — my mother and my father and all my companions.” — Odyssey IX, 366–367

Under the bellies of the rams

Blind, Polyphemus opens the cave at dawn to let the flock out to pasture, spreading his hands across their backs to catch the men escaping. But Odysseus has lashed the rams together in threes, and under the middle belly of each trio hangs a man.

He himself clings beneath the greatest ram of all, fingers twisted in its fleece. The giant strokes that very ram, wondering aloud why it leaves last today — 'do you grieve for your master's eye?' The wool holds. The men run the flock down to the ship.

The name shouted across the water

Safe offshore, Odysseus cannot resist. He shouts his taunt across the strait, and the blind giant tears the top from a mountain and hurls it at the voice — the wave nearly drives the ship back to the beach. The crew beg him to stop. He shouts again, and this time gives everything: his name, his father, his island.

It is the costliest boast in literature. With a true name, Polyphemus can pray — and his father is the sea. Poseidon hears: let Odysseus come home late and broken, on a stranger's ship, alone, to find trouble in his house. Every disaster that follows flows from this moment of pride.

“Say that Odysseus sacker of cities took your eye — the son of Laertes, whose home is in Ithaca.” — Odyssey IX, 504–505

The rocks are still there: This map follows the oldest tradition and sets the Cyclopes under Etna. At Aci Trezza on Sicily's coast, the basalt stacks offshore are still called the Faraglioni dei Ciclopi — the rocks Polyphemus threw. The one-eyed giant himself may be older than the story: fossil skulls of Sicilian dwarf elephants have a single huge nasal cavity where an eye socket ought to be.