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- This page is about the mythical creature. For other uses, see Cyclops (disambiguation).
In Greek mythology a Cyclops, or Kyklops (Greek Κύκλωψ), is a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead. The plural is Cyclopes or Kyklopes (Greek Κύκλωπες). The name means "wheel-eyed".
There are two distinct groups of Cyclopes. In Hesiod's Theogony, Zeus releases the Cyclopes, the sons of Uranus and Gaia, from Tartarus, and receives his characteristic weapon, the thunderbolt, from them; in one of the most famous passages of Homer's Odyssey, the hero Odysseus encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon and 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.[1]
[edit] Hesiod's Cyclopes
In the Theogony, the Cyclopes—Brontes (thunderer), Steropes (flasher) and Arges (brightener)—were the sons of Uranus ("Sky") and Gaia ("Earth"). Like their brothers, the Hecatonchires ("hundred-handers"), they were primordial sons of Sky and Earth. 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 strength and power, and were used to signify especially well-crafted weapons.
Uranus, fearing their strength, locked them in Tartarus. Cronus, another son of Uranus and Gaia, later freed the Cyclopes, along with the Hecatonchires, after Uranus was castrated and overthrown by Cronus. But Cronus then placed them back in Tartarus, where they remained, guarded by 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' signature weapons, were forged by all three Cyclopes: Arges added brightness, Brontes added thunder, and Steropes added lightning.
These Cyclopes also created Poseidon's trident, Artemis' bow and arrow, and the helmet that Hades gave to Perseus on his quest to kill Medusa. According to a hymn of Callimachus[2] they were Hephaestus' helpers. 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.
It is said that these Cyclopes were later killed by Apollo after Zeus killed his son, Asclepius, with a Cyclopes-forged thunderbolt.
[edit] Homer's Cyclopes
The Cyclopes were a race of huge one-eyed monsters that resided on an island with the same name. Commonly, the term "Cyclops" refers to a particular son of Poseidon and Thoosa named Polyphemus who was a Cyclops. Another member of this group of Cyclopes was Telemus, a seer.
[edit] Polyphemus
Cyclops on a Roman
mosaic in
Villa Romana del Casale, an archeological site near Piazza Armerina in Sicily, Italy
In Book 9 of Homer's Odyssey, a scouting party led by Odysseus lands on the Island of the Cyclopes and discovers a large cave. They enter into the cave and feast on food they find there. This cave is the home of Polyphemus, who soon returns and traps the trespassers in the cave. He proceeds to eat several crew members, but Odysseus devises a cunning plan for escape.
To make Polyphemus unwary, Odysseus gives him a skin of very strong, unwatered wine. When Polyphemus asks for Odysseus' name, he tells him that it is 'Outis', Greek for 'no man' or 'nobody'. Once the giant falls asleep drunk, Odysseus and his men take the spit from the fire and drive it through Polyphemus' only eye. Polyphemus' cries of help are answered by the others of his race; however, they turn away from aiding him when they hear that "Nobody" is the cause of his woes.
In the morning, Odysseus ties his men and himself to the undersides of Polyphemus' sheep. When the Cyclops lets the sheep out to graze, the men are carried out. Since Polyphemus has been blinded, he doesn't see the men, but feels the tops of his sheep to make sure the men aren't riding them. As he sailed away, Odysseus shouts "Cyclops, when your father asks who took your eye, tell him that it was Odysseus, Sacker of Cities, Destroyer of Troy, son of Laertes, and King of Ithaca," which proves to be a catastrophic example of hubris. Now knowing his attacker's name, Polyphemus asks his father Poseidon to prevent Odysseus from returning home to Ithaca, or to at least deprive him of his ship and crew.
This tale from the Odyssey is more humorously told in the only surviving satyr play, entitled Cyclops by Euripides.
The Sicilian Greek poet Theocritus wrote two poems circa 275 BC concerning Polyphemus' desire for Galatea, a sea nymph. When Galatea instead was with 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.
[edit] Origins
Walter Burkert among others suggests[3]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 were most likely much later additions to the pantheon and have no connection to blacksmithing. It is possible that 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. The Triamantes in Cretan legend have been suggested - they were a rural race of man-eating ogres who had a third eye on the back of their head. Other than the detail of the eyes, they sound very similar to the Cyclopes of Homer.
Another possible origin for the Cyclops legend is that prehistoric dwarf elephant skulls - about twice the size of a human skull were found by the Greeks on Crete. Due to the large central nasal cavity (for the trunk) in the skull, it might have been believed that this was a large, single, eye-socket. The smaller, actual, eye-sockets are on the sides and, being very shallow, hardly noticeable as such. Given the paucity of experience that the locals likely had with living elephants, they were unlikely to recognize the skull for what it actually was.
[edit] "Cyclopean" walls
- Main article: Cyclopean masonry.
After the "Dark Age" 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, he then concluded that only the Cyclopes had the combination of skill and strength to build in such a monumental fashion.
[edit] In popular culture
- In the television series Futurama, one of the main characters, Leela, has a single eye, and is therefore called a cyclops. However, in the episode Leela's Homeworld, it is revealed that Leela is a mutated human.
- One of the The Infershia Pantheon in Mahou Sentai Magiranger is the Hades God Cyclops; his Power Rangers: Mystic Force counterpart, Oculous, is also a Cyclops.
- A Cyclops named Iris appeared in the television show American Dragon: Jake Long.
- In the 1958 Ray Harryhausen film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, two giant cyclopes appear in the film. The first cyclops appears at the beginning of the film, and attacks Sinbad and his crewmembers, while the second appears in the film's climax, where it fights a losing battle with another mythological beast, a dragon.
- Cyclops is Monster in My Pocket Number 8.
- The Pokemon Dusclops is a Cyclops-based creature.
- A cyclops is a unit in the computer game Age Of Mythology; the main villain, Gargarensis, is also a cyclops.
- In the movie Krull, Rell the Cyclopes, played by Bernard Bresslaw, helps the group of adventurers to save a princess. In the film, his race was granted the power to see the future, but had to lose an eye to get this power.
- The X-Man Cyclops, created in 1963, was so named because his original "power visor" resembled one large eye. His ability to fire an energy "optic blast" has become a recurrent motif amongst subsequent depictions of cyclopes, including the cartoon Xiaolin Showdown and games like Gladius and Castlevania: Lament of Innocence.
- In the Warcraft Universe of the Warcraft computer game series, there are two-headed ogres whose second head has only one eye.
- In the game The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, there are a total of six square-shaped coral reefs that are named after the number of columns that were within its center (for example, the one that has six columns is called the "Six-Eyed Reef"), the one with only one column in its center is referred to as the "Cyclops Reef". There are a number of monsters that are cycloptic in the The Legend of Zelda (series) including several versions of the Armos and Armos Knights, Arghus, Gohma and Eyegore.
- The Cyclops is a breed of character/monster from the video game Wrath Unleashed, they are part of the Dark Chaos Empire and serve the Demigoddess of Wind, Helamis, who freed the Cyclopes from the underworld in return for their service.
[edit] See also
- Cyclopia, a fatal birth defect that results in a single enlarged eye and other facial abnormalities.
[edit] External links
