The Cyclops: Polyphemus and Odysseus

The Cyclops of the Odyssey is Polyphemus: a one-eyed giant, a herdsman of monstrous size, and a son of the sea-god Poseidon. His episode falls in Book 9, told by Odysseus himself at the Phaeacian court, and it is the most famous single scene in the poem. It is also a near-perfect miniature of the whole story: hunger, cunning, a false name, a real name, and a consequence that outlasts the escape.

The Cave

Odysseus lands with his men and, curious about who lives on the wild coast, takes a picked party and a skin of powerful wine into a giant's cave. He expects the ordinary rule of the Greek world: a stranger is welcomed, fed, and only then asked his business. Polyphemus expects nothing of the kind. He rolls a boulder across the mouth of the cave, a stone so vast no team of men could shift it, and when he learns strangers are inside he answers the law of hospitality by snatching up two of the men and eating them. Morning and evening he eats two more. Odysseus cannot simply fight his way out: even if he killed the giant, no one but Polyphemus could move that door-stone. Force alone is a trap. He has to think.

The Wine and the Name

Odysseus offers the giant the dark, unmixed wine he has carried. Polyphemus, who has never tasted anything so strong, drains bowl after bowl and, pleased, asks his guest's name so he can give a guest-gift in return. Odysseus answers with the trick the whole plan turns on. In Samuel Butler's translation — which throughout uses the Roman names, so the hero is Ulysses — he says:

"Cyclops, you ask my name and I will tell it you... my name is Noman; this is what my father and mother and my friends have always called me."

"Noman" is Butler's rendering of the Greek Outis — Nobody. The giant's grim joke of a gift is that he will eat "Noman" last of all. Then the wine takes him and he collapses into a drunken sleep.

The Blinding

Odysseus and his men heat a great stake of olive-wood in the embers until it is glowing, then drive it into the giant's single eye and lean on it, turning it "as though I were boring a hole in a ship's plank with an auger." Polyphemus wakes howling and calls to the other Cyclopes on the headlands. They come and ask what is wrong — is any man killing him by trick or by force? From inside he roars back that Noman is killing him. Hearing that no man is attacking him, they tell him he must be sick, advise him to pray, and go home. The pun in the name has done what a sword could not.

The Escape Beneath the Rams

Blinded, Polyphemus rolls back the stone and sits in the doorway, hands spread to catch anyone slipping out. Odysseus lashes the rams together in threes with a man hidden beneath the middle of each, and takes the largest ram for himself, clinging face-upward to the wool of its belly. At dawn the flock streams out to pasture. The giant strokes each animal's back as it passes and never thinks to feel underneath. The men ride out under the sheep and reach the ships.

The Fatal Boast

The escape would be flawless if Odysseus could leave in silence. He cannot. From the safety of the water he shouts back that it was "Ulysses, sacker of cities," son of Laertes, who put out the giant's eye. Now Polyphemus has a name — and a name is what a curse requires. He lifts his hands and prays to his father that Odysseus reach home "late and in sore plight after losing all his men... in another man's ship," to find trouble in his house. Poseidon hears him. That prayer is the exact shape of the rest of the Odyssey: late, alone, borrowed passage, a house in ruin.

Read the cave in full and the scene is richer than any retelling: the smell of the flock, the auger simile, the giant talking to his ram. That is the argument for reading the poem rather than only hearing about it — see is the Odyssey worth reading and the Odyssey explained, and follow the curse to how the Odyssey ends. The Home Pack ($19) gives you Butler's complete text as PDF and EPUB plus notes that place Polyphemus inside the whole route home.