In
Greek mythology and later
Roman mythology, a
cyclops (; ), is a member of a primordial race of
giants, each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead. The classical plural is
cyclopes (pronounced ; ), though the conventional plural
cyclopses is also used in English. The name is widely thought to mean "circle-eyed".
Hesiod described one group of cyclopes and the epic poet
Homer described another, though other accounts have also been written by the playwright
Euripides, poet
Theocritus and Roman epic poet
Virgil. In
Hesiod's Theogony, Zeus releases three Cyclopes, the sons of
Uranus and
Gaia, from the dark pit of
Tartarus. They provide Zeus' thunderbolt, Hades' helmet of invisibility, and Poseidon's trident, and the gods use these weapons to defeat the
Titans.
In a famous episode of
Homer's
Odyssey, the hero
Odysseus encounters the Cyclops
Polyphemus, the son of
Poseidon and a
nereid (
Thoosa), who lives with his fellow Cyclopes in a distant country. The connection between the two groups has been debated in antiquity and by modern scholars. It is upon Homer's account that Euripides and Virgil based their accounts of the mythical creatures.
Accounts of the Cyclopes
Various ancient Greek and Roman authors wrote about the cyclopes. Hesiod described them as three brothers who were primordial giants. All the other sources of literature about the cyclopes describe the cyclops
Polyphemus, who lived upon an island populated by the creatures.
Hesiod
In the
Theogony by
Hesiod, the Cyclopes – Arges, Brontes, and Steropes – were the primordial sons of
Uranus (Sky) and
Gaia (Earth) and brothers of the
Hecatonchires. They were
giants with a single eye in the middle of their forehead and a foul disposition. According to
Hesiod, they were strong, stubborn, and "abrupt of emotion". Collectively they eventually became synonyms for brute strength and power, and their name was invoked in connection with massive masonry. They were often pictured at their forge.
Uranus, fearing their strength, locked them in
Tartarus.
Cronus, another son of Uranus and Gaia, later freed the Cyclopes, along with the Hecatonchires, after he had overthrown Uranus. Cronus then placed them back in Tartarus, where they remained, guarded by the female
dragon Campe, until freed by Zeus. They fashioned thunderbolts for Zeus to use as weapons, and helped him
overthrow Cronus and the other
Titans. The thunderbolts, which became Zeus's main weapons, were forged by all three Cyclopes, in that Arges added brightness, Brontes added
thunder, and Steropes added
lightning.
These Cyclopes also created
Poseidon's
trident,
Artemis's bow and arrows of
moonlight,
Apollo's bow and arrows of
sun rays, and the helmet of darkness that
Hades gave to
Perseus on his quest to kill
Medusa. According to a
hymn of
Callimachus, they were
Hephaestus' helpers at the forge. The Cyclopes were said to have built the "cyclopean" fortifications at
Tiryns and
Mycenae in the
Peloponnese. The noises proceeding from the heart of
volcanoes were attributed to their operations.
According to
Alcestis, Apollo killed the Cyclopes, in retaliation for
Asclepius's murder at the hands of Zeus. According to Euripides' play Alkestis, Apollo was then forced into the servitude of Admetus for one year. Zeus later returned Asclepius and the Cyclopes from Hades.
Theocritus
The
Sicilian Greek poet
Theocritus wrote two poems circa
275 BC concerning Polyphemus' desire for
Galatea, a sea
nymph. When Galatea instead married
Acis, a Sicilian mortal, a jealous Polyphemus killed him with a boulder. Galatea turned Acis' blood into a river of the same name in Sicily.
Virgil
Virgil, the Roman epic poet, wrote, in book three of
The Aeneid, of how
Aeneas and his crew landed on the island of the cyclopes after escaping from
Troy at the end of the
Trojan War. Aeneas and his crew land on the island, when they are approached by a desperate
Greek man from
Ithaca,
Achaemenides, who was stranded on the island a few years previously with Odysseus' expedition (as depicted in
The Odyssey).
Virgil's account acts as a
sequel to Homer's, with the fate of Polyphemus as a blind cyclops after the escape of
Odysseus and his crew.
Origins
Walter Burkert among others suggests that the archaic groups or societies of lesser gods mirror real cult associations: "it may be surmised that smith guilds lie behind
Cabeiri,
Idaian Dactyloi,
Telchines, and Cyclopes." Given their penchant for blacksmithing, many scholars believe the legend of the Cyclopes' single eye arose from an actual practice of blacksmiths wearing an eyepatch over one eye to prevent flying sparks from blinding them in both eyes. The Cyclopes seen in Homer's
Odyssey are of a different type from those in the
Theogony; they have no connection to blacksmithing. It is possible that independent legends associated with Polyphemus did not make him a Cyclops before
Homer's
Odyssey; Polyphemus may have been some sort of local
daemon or monster originally.
Another possible origin for the Cyclops legend, advanced by the paleontologist
Othenio Abel in 1914, is the prehistoric
dwarf elephant skulls – about twice the size of a human skull – that may have been found by the Greeks on
Cyprus,
Crete and
Sicily. Abel suggested that the large, central nasal cavity (for the trunk) in the skull might have been interpreted as a large single eye-socket. Given the inexperience of the locals with living
elephants, they were unlikely to recognize the skull for what it actually was.
Veratrum album, or
white hellebore, an herbal medicine described by
Hippocrates before 400 BC, contains the alkaloids
cyclopamine and
jervine, which are
teratogens capable of causing
cyclopia (holoprosencephaly). Students of
teratology have raised the possibility of a link between this developmental deformity and the myth for which it was named.
"Cyclopean" walls
Cyclopean walls at Mycenae.
After the "Dark Age", when Hellenes looked with awe at the vast dressed blocks, known as
Cyclopean structures that had been used in
Mycenaean masonry, at sites like
Mycenae and
Tiryns or on
Cyprus, they concluded that only the Cyclopes had the combination of skill and strength to build in such a monumental manner.
See also
A case of cyclopia from the Old Anatomical Theater of
Tartu, Estonia.
A Cyclops at the Natural History Museum in London
- Stereopsis, the ability to see with two eyes information that is hidden from each eye alone.
- Cyclopia, a birth defect that results in a single enlarged eye and other facial abnormalities.
