Polyphemus is the giant, one-eyed son of Poseidon and Toosa in Greek mythology, one of the Cyclopes described in Homer’s Odyssey. His name means “abundant in songs and legends.” Polyphemus first appears as a savage, man-eating giant in the ninth book of the Odyssey. Some later classical writers link his name with the nymph Galatea and present him in a different light.
Polyphemus was a giant kyklops (cyclops) who fed on men, a monster with a single orb-shaped eye in the center of his forehead. Odysseus encountered him on his return from Troy and was trapped in the giant’s cave. To escape, the hero doused him with wine and, while he slept, drove a burning stake into his eye. The blind giant tried to prevent Odysseus from escaping by throwing rocks at his ship, but failing that, he prayed to his father, Poseidon, for revenge.
Polyphemus loved the nymph Galatea and courted her with music and song. She rejected him because of her love for the shepherd Acis, but when the giant spied on the couple, he crushed the child under a rock.
1. Content
He was the giant son of the god Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek mythology. He was one of the Cyclopes, having only one eye. According to the Odyssey, Odysseus arrived on the island of the Cyclopes (Sicily) while trying to return to his homeland, Ithaca. There, he and his men entered a cave full of food. Polyphemus, who lived in the cave, returned and sealed the entrance so that no one could escape; then he grabbed two of Odysseus’ men and ate them.
The next morning, he left to tend to his sheep, but not before eating two more of the men. Upon his return, Odysseus offered him some strong wine he had with him, intoxicating him. Polyphemus, drunk, asked what the name of the kind man was, and Odysseus replied, “Nobody.” Polyphemus said he would eat “Nobody” last in gratitude, and fell into a deep sleep.
Odysseus, having planned this, took a wooden stake and blinded Polyphemus’s only eye. The giant began to scream for help, but when the other giants arrived, they told them that “Nobody” had blinded him; his friends thought that a god had attacked him and told him to pray.
2. Ulysses and Polyphemus
Greek terracotta statuette, Polyphemus reclining and holding a drinking vessel. Late 5th to 4th century BC, Boeotia. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The classical accounts
In Homer’s epic poem, Odysseus lands on the island of the Cyclopes during his journey home from the Trojan War and, together with some of his men, enters a cave full of provisions.
After the giant returns at night and eats two of the men, Odysseus offers Polyphemus a strong, undiluted wine that was given to him earlier on his journey. Odysseus tells him “Οuτιc,” which means “nobody,” and Polyphemus promises to eat this “Nobody” last. With that, he falls into a drunken sleep.
In the morning, the blind Cyclops let the sheep out to graze, feeling their backs to make sure the men did not escape. However, Odysseus and his men had tied themselves to the underside of the animals and thus escaped.
While sailing with his men, Odysseus boastfully reveals his true name, an act of arrogance that would cause him problems later. Polyphemus begs his father, Poseidon, for revenge and throws huge rocks at the ship, which Odysseus barely escapes.
The story reappears in later classical literature. In Cyclops, a play from the 5th century BC by Euripides, a chorus of satyrs provides comic relief from the gruesome story of how Polyphemus is punished for his ungodly behavior in failing to respect the rites of hospitality.
3. Artistic representations
The vivid nature of the Polyphemus episode made it a favorite subject of ancient Greek painted pottery, with the most frequently illustrated scenes being the blinding of the Cyclops and the ruse by which Odysseus and his men escape. One such episode, on a vase with the hero carried under a sheep, was used on a Greek 27-drachma stamp in 1983.
The blinding was depicted in life-size sculptures, including a giant Polyphemus, in the Sperlonga sculptures probably made for the emperor Tiberius. This may be an interpretation of an existing composition, and was apparently repeated in variations in the later imperial palaces of Claudius, Nero, and in Hadrian’s Villa.
Of the European painters of the subject, the Flemish Jacob Jordaens depicted Odysseus escaping from Polyphemus’ cave in 1635, and others chose the dramatic scene of the gigantic rocks being cast at the escaping ship. In Guido Reni’s painting from 1639/40, the furious giant is pulling a rock from the cliff while Odysseus and his men run toward the ship far below.
4. Polyphemus and Galatea
While there are some earlier references to the story of Polyphemus’ love for the sea nymph Galatea and her preference for the human shepherd Acis, the best-known source is a lost work by Philoxenus of Cythera, of which some fragments and several accounts remain.
These fragments date from around 400 BC, link the love story to the arrival of Odysseus, and, according to ancient sources, had a clever contemporary subtext. Philoxenus supposedly had an affair with the mistress of Dionysius I of Syracuse and, as a result, was condemned to work in the stone quarries. Here he is supposed to have composed The Cyclops, with the tyrant in the role of the giant, while the successful lovers are the poet and his Galatea.
The Hellenistic poet Theocritus painted a more sympathetic picture of Polyphemus in the following century. The story is recast in the pastoral style of the poet, who idealized the simple lives of shepherds. In Idyll XI, Polyphemus becomes a young shepherd who finds solace in a song for his love of a sea nymph. Its essence focuses on the antinomies of earth and water that make them different and keep them apart, but it concludes with the thought that there are other girls on earth who find him attractive.
However, there are hints that Polyphemus’ courtship had a more successful outcome. In one of Lucian of Samosata’s dialogues, one of Galatea’s sisters, Doris, congratulates her with resentment on her conquest of love and defends Polyphemus. From the conversation, one understands that Doris is jealous that her sister has a lover. Galatea admits that she does not love Polyphemus, but that she is pleased to have been chosen by him over all her companions.
5. The descendants of Polyphemus and Galatea.
In one of the murals rescued from the site of Pompeii, Polyphemus is depicted sitting next to her, seated on a rock with a cithara (instead of a syringe), extending a hand to receive a love letter from Galatea, which is carried by a wing. Cupid is riding on a dolphin.
In another fresco, also dating from the 1st century AD, the two are locked in a naked embrace. From their union came the ancestors of several wild and warlike races. According to some accounts, the Celts were descendants of their son Galatos. Other sources credit them with three sons, Celtus, Illyrius, and Galas, from whom the Celts, Illyrians, and Gauls are descended, respectively.
A different story appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. At first, the treatment of the story is an extended paraphrase of the two idylls of Theocritus. But in the final passage, Polyphemus spies Acis and Galatea making love and jealously crushes Acis with a rock. Galatea, who had fled to her native element, returns and turns her dead lover into the spirit of the river Acis in Sicily. It was this account that had the greatest impact in later ages.
6. Later European versions
During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Ovid’s story emerged once again as a popular theme. In Spain, Luis de Góngora y Argote wrote the much-admired narrative poem, Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea, published in 1627. It is particularly known for its depiction of the landscape and for its sensual description of the love between Acis and Galatea.
It was written in homage to an earlier and much shorter story of the same title by Luis Carillo y Sotomayor (1611). The story also received an operatic treatment in the popular zarzuela by Antoni Lliteres Carrió (1708). The mood here is lighter and enlivened by the inclusion of the clowns Momo and Tisbe.
In France, the story was condensed into the fourteen lines of Tristan L’Hermite’s sonnet Polyphème en furie (1641). In it, the giant expresses his fury at seeing the lovers, and finally throws the enormous rock that kills Acis and even wounds Galatea. Later in the century, Jean-Baptiste Lully composed his opera Acis et Galatée (1686) on the same theme.
7. Painting and sculpture
Paintings featuring Polyphemus in the story of Acis and Galatea can be grouped according to their themes. Most notably, the story takes place within a pastoral landscape in which the figures are almost incidental. This is particularly true of Nicholas Poussin’s 1649 “Landscape with Polyphemus,” in which the lovers play a minor role in the foreground.
On the right, Polyphemus merges with a distant mountain peak where he plays his pipes. In an earlier painting by Poussin from 1630, the couple is among several figures embracing in the foreground, protected from Polyphemus’ view, who plays his flute higher up the slope. Another variation on the theme was painted by Pietro Dandini during this period.
An earlier fresco by Giulio Romano from 1528 shows Polyphemus seated against a rocky background with a lyre raised in his right hand. The lovers can only be seen through a hole in the rock facing the sea in the lower right. Corneille Van Clève (1681) depicts a Polyphemus seated in his sculpture, except that in his version it is pipes that the giant holds in his lower hand. Otherwise, he has a large club on his body and turns to the left to look over his shoulder.
8. Other uses
Polyphemus is mentioned in the chapter “Apprentice Entered” of Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma (1871). Within Scottish Rite Freemasonry, he is considered a symbol of a civilization that damages itself through the use of misdirected blind force.
The Polyphemus moth is so named because of the large eye spots in the middle of its hind wings. A number of English ships and steam locomotives have also been named after the giant.
The Polyphemus episode was featured in the 1905 short film Ulysses and in Georges Mélies’ Giant Polyphemus. This is combined with the Calypso episode and uses special effects. Other films that include it are the 1911 Odyssey and the 1955 Ulysses.
9. Polyphemus’ family
Polyphemus’ parents were Poseidon and Thoosa, and his son was Galatos.
10. Encyclopedia
Polyphemus (Polufemas) in Homeric poems, the Cyclopes are a race of gigantic, insolent, and lawless shepherds who lived in the southwestern part of Sicily and devoured human beings. They neglected agriculture, and the fruits of the field were harvested by them without labor. They had no laws or political institutions, and each lived with his wives and children in a cave in a mountain, ruling them with arbitrary power.
Homer does not clearly state that all Cyclopes were one-eyed, but Polyphemus, the chief among them, is described as having a single eye in the middle of his forehead. The Homeric Cyclopes are no longer servants of Zeus, but they are unaware of this.
11. Polyphemus and the Odyssey
He [Odysseus] then sailed to the land of the Kyklopes (Cyclopes) and landed there. He left the other ships on the neighboring island, took one to the land of the Kyklopes, and landed with twelve companions. Not far from the sea was a cave, into which he entered with a jug of wine given to him by Maron.
It was the cave of a son of Poseidon and a nymph named Thoosa, a huge savage man-eater named Polyphemus (Polyphemus), who had one eye in his forehead. When they had made a fire and sacrificed some children, they sat down to eat, but the Cyclops arrived and, after driving his herd inside, blocked the entrance with a large rock. When he saw the men, he ate something.
Odysseus gave him some wine from Maron to drink. He drank and demanded more, and after drinking that, he asked Odysseus his name. When Odysseus said his name was Nobody, the Cyclops promised him that he would not eat anyone else after the others: this was his act of friendship in exchange for the wine. The wine put them to sleep.
The Cyclops had received a prophecy from a seer that he would be blinded by Odysseus, and when he heard the name, he tore rocks from the sea and threw them at the ship, causing it to sink. And from that moment on, Poseidon was angry with Odysseus.
