Polyphemus ( ; Ancient Greek: Πολύφημος, romanized: Polúphēmos, Epic Greek: [polypʰɛːmos]; Latin: Polyphēmus [pɔlʏˈpʰeːmʊs]) is the one-eyed giant son of Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek mythology, one of the Cyclopes described in Homer's Odyssey. His name can mean either "abounding in songs and legends", "many-voiced", or "very famous".
Polyphemus first appeared as a savage man-eating giant in the ninth book of the Odyssey. The satyr play Cyclops by Euripides is dependent on this episode with some differences in the story and while also being more comedic in nature. Later Classical writers that presented him in their poems linked his name with the nymph Galatea as he tried to seduce her. Often he was portrayed as unsuccessful in these, and as unaware of his disproportionate size and musical failings. In the work of even later authors, however, he is presented as both a successful lover and skilled musician. From the Renaissance on, art and literature reflect all of these interpretations of the giant.
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Odysseus and Polyphemus
Ancient sources
In Homer's epic, 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 filled with provisions. When the giant Polyphemus returns home with his flocks, he blocks the entrance with a great stone and, scorning the usual custom of hospitality, eats two of the men. The next morning, the Cyclops kills and eats two more of Odysseus' men before leaving the cave to graze his sheep.
After the giant returns in the evening and eats two more of the men, Odysseus offers Polyphemus some strong and undiluted wine given to him earlier on his journey. Drunk and unwary, the giant asks Odysseus his name, promising him a guest-gift if he answers. Odysseus tells him "Οὖτις", which means "nobody", and Polyphemus promises to eat this "Nobody" last of all. With that, he falls into a drunken sleep. Odysseus and his men take a wooden stake they had earlier hardened in the fire, return it to the fire until it is glowing hot, and drive it into Polyphemus's eye. When Polyphemus shouts for help from his fellow giants, saying that "Nobody" has hurt him, they think Polyphemus is being afflicted by divine power and recommend prayer as the answer.
In the morning, the blind Cyclops lets the sheep out to graze, feeling their backs to ensure that the men are not escaping. However, Odysseus and his men have tied themselves to the undersides of the animals and so get away. As he sails off with his men, Odysseus boastfully reveals his real name, an act of hubris that was to cause problems for him later. Polyphemus prays to his father, Poseidon, for revenge and casts huge rocks towards the ship, which Odysseus barely dodges.
The story reappears in later Classical literature. In Cyclops, the 5th-century BC play by Euripides, a chorus of satyrs offers comic relief from the grisly story of how Polyphemus is punished for his impious behaviour in not respecting the rites of hospitality. Euripides' Polyphemus is depicted as sophisticated and intellectually analogous to sophists of Euripides' time. In Cyclops both Odysseus and the Cyclops employ deft and appropriative rhetorical manipulation, "aggressive sophistry that reduces men to meat, and fine talk to deceptive barter". In this play, Polyphemus claims to be a pederast, and tries to take the satyr Silenus, whom he kept together with his sons as slaves on Mount Etna in Sicily, calling him "my Ganymede". The scene is infused with low comedy, specifically from the chorus, and Polyphemus is made to look silly: he is drunk when he explains his sexual desire, Silenus is too old to play the part of the young lover, and he himself will be subjected to penetration—with the wooden spike.
Artistic representations
The blinding of Polyphemus and the ruse by which Odysseus and his men escaped his cave are the only two scenes from the Odyssey shown on vases surviving from the seventh century BC (later pottery shows a much wider variety of scenes from the Odyssey). One such episode, on a vase featuring the hero carried beneath a sheep, was used on a 27 drachma Greek postage stamp in 1983.
The blinding was depicted in life-size sculpture, 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 later Imperial palaces by Claudius, Nero and at Hadrian's Villa.
Of the European painters of the subject, the Flemish Jacob Jordaens depicted Odysseus escaping from the cave of Polyphemus in 1635 (see gallery below) and others chose the dramatic scene of the giant casting boulders at the escaping ship. In Guido Reni's painting of 1639/40 (see above), the furious giant is tugging a boulder from the cliff as Odysseus and his men row out to the ship far below. Polyphemus is portrayed, as it often happens, with two empty eye sockets and his damaged eye located in the middle on his forehead. This convention goes back to Greek statuary and painting, and is reproduced in Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein's 1802 head and shoulders portrait of the giant (see below).
Arnold Böcklin pictures the giant as standing on rocks onshore and swinging one of them back as the men row desperately over a surging wave (see below), while Polyphemus is standing at the top of a cliff in Jean-Léon Gérôme's painting of 1902. He stands poised, having already thrown one stone, which barely misses the ship. The reason for his rage is depicted in J. M. W. Turner's painting, Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (1829). Here the ship sails forward as the sun breaks free of clouds low on the horizon. The giant himself is an indistinct shape barely distinguished from the woods and smoky atmosphere high above.
Possible origins
Folktales similar to that of Homer's Polyphemus are a widespread phenomenon throughout the ancient world. In 1857, Wilhelm Grimm collected versions in Serbian, Romanian, Estonian, Finnish, Russian, German, and others; versions in Basque, Sámi, Lithuanian, Gascon, Syriac, and Celtic are also known. More than two hundred different versions have been identified, from around twenty five nations, covering a geographic region extending from Iceland, Ireland, England, Portugal and Africa to Arabia, Turkey, Russia, and Korea. The consensus of current modern scholarship is that these "Polyphemus legends" preserve traditions predating Homer.
It has also been theorized that the story of Polyphemus originated during the Paleolithic and is connected to the prehistoric guardian-type figure of the "lord of animals". Similar tales have also been identified among several indigenous North American peoples.
Polyphemus and Galatea
Ancient sources
Writing more than three centuries after the Odyssey is thought to have been composed, Philoxenus of Cythera took up the myth of Polyphemus in his poem Cyclops or Galatea. The poem was written to be performed as a dithyramb, of which only fragments have survived, and was perhaps the first to provide a female love interest for the Cyclops. The object of Polyphemus's romantic desire is a sea nymph named Galatea. In the poem, Polyphemus is not a cave dwelling, monstrous brute, as in the Odyssey, but instead he is rather like Odysseus himself in his vision of the world: He has weaknesses, he is adept at literary criticism, and he understands people.
The date of composition for the Cyclops is not precisely known, but it must be prior to 388 BC, when Aristophanes parodied it in his comedy Plutus (Wealth); and probably after 406 BC, when Dionysius I became tyrant of Syracuse. Philoxenus lived in that city and was the court poet of Dionysius I. According to ancient commentators, either because of his frankness regarding Dionysius's poetry, or because of a conflict with the tyrant over a female aulos player named Galatea, Philoxenus was imprisoned in the quarries and had there composed his Cyclops in the manner of a Roman à clef, where the poem's characters, Polyphemus, Odysseus and Galatea, were meant to represent Dionysius, Philoxenus, and the aulos-player. Philoxenus had his Polyphemus perform on the cithara, a professional lyre requiring great skill. The Cyclops playing such a sophisticated and fashionable instrument would have been quite a surprising juxtaposition for Philoxenus's audience.
Philoxenus's Cyclops is also referred to in Aristotle's Poetics in a section that discusses representations of people in tragedy and comedy, citing as comedic examples the Cyclops of both Timotheus and Philoxenus.
The text of Aristophanes's last extant play Plutus (Wealth) has survived with almost all of its choral odes missing. What remains shows Aristophanes (as he does to some extent in all his plays) parodying a contemporary literary work — in this case Philoxenus's Cyclops. While making fun of literary aspects of Philoxenus's dithyramb, Aristophanes is at the same time commenting on musical developments occurring in the fourth century BC, developing themes that run through the whole play. It also contains lines and phrases taken directly from the Cyclops.
The slave Cario, tells the chorus that his master has brought home with him the god Wealth, and because of this they will all now be rich. The chorus wants to dance for joy, so Cario takes the lead by parodying Philoxenus's Cyclops. As a solo performer leading a chorus that sings and dances, Cario recreates the form of a dithyramb. He first casts himself in the role of Polyphemus while assigning to the chorus the roles of sheep and goats, at the same time imitating the sound of a lyre: "And now I wish — threttanello! — to imitate the Cyclops and, swinging my feet to and fro like this, to lead you in the dance. But come on, children, shout and shout again the songs of bleating sheep and smelly goats." The chorus, however, does not want to play sheep and goats, they would rather be Odysseus and his men, and they threaten to blind Cario (as had Odysseus the drunken Cyclops) with a wooden stake.
Later European interpretations
During Renaissance and Baroque times Ovid's story emerged 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 noted for its depiction of landscape and for the sensual description of the love of Acis and Galatea. It was written in homage to an earlier and rather shorter narrative with the same title by Luis Carillo y Sotomayor (1611). The story was also given operatic treatment in the very popular zarzuela of Antoni Lliteres Carrió (1708). The atmosphere here is lighter and enlivened by the inclusion of the clowns Momo and Tisbe.
In France the story was condensed to the fourteen lines of Tristan L'Hermite's sonnet "Polyphème en furie" (1641). In it the giant expresses his fury upon viewing the loving couple, ultimately throwing the huge rock that kills Acis and even injures Galatea. Later in the century, Jean-Baptiste Lully composed his opera Acis et Galatée (1686) on the theme.
In Italy Giovanni Bononcini composed the one-act opera Polifemo (1703). Shortly afterwards George Frideric Handel worked in that country and composed the cantata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (1708), laying as much emphasis on the part of Polifemo as on the lovers. Written in Italian, Polifemo's deep bass solo "Fra l'ombre e gl'orrori" (From horrid shades) establishes his character from the start. After Handel's move to England, he gave the story a new treatment in his pastoral opera Acis and Galatea with an English libretto provided by John Gay. Initially composed in 1718, the work went through many revisions and was later to be given updated orchestrations by both Mozart and Mendelssohn. As a pastoral work it is suffused with Theocritan atmosphere but largely centres on the two lovers. When Polyphemus declares his love in the lyric "O ruddier than the cherry", the effect is almost comic. Handel's rival for a while on the London scene, Nicola Porpora, also made the story the subject of his opera Polifemo (1735).
Later in the century Joseph Haydn composed Acide e Galatea (1763) as his first opera while in Vienna. Designed for an imperial wedding, it was given a happy ending centred on the transformation scene after the murder of Acis as the pair declare their undying love. Johann Gottlieb Naumann was to turn the story into a comic opera, Aci e Galatea, with the subtitle i ciclopi amanti (the amorous cyclops). The work was first performed in Dresden in 1801 and its plot was made more complicated by giving Polifemo a companion, Orgonte. There were also two other lovers, Dorinda and Lisia, with Orgonte Lisia's rival for Dorinda's love.
Artistic depictions of Polyphemus
Other uses
Polyphemus is mentioned in the "Apprentice" chapter of Albert Pike's Morals and Dogma (1871), as, within Scottish Rite Freemasonry, Polyphemus is regarded as a symbol for a civilization that harms itself using ill directed blind force.
The Polyphemus moth is so named because of the large eyespots in the middle of the hind wings.
A species of burrowing tortoise, Gopherus polyphemus, is named after Polyphemus because of their both using subterranean retreats.
In folkloristics, the episode of the blinding of Polyphemus is also known as Polyphemsage and classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 1137, "The Ogre Blinded (Polyphemus)".