What is Cyclops?

The Cyclops is a mythological one-eyed giant in Homer’s classic poem The Odyssey. When King Odysseus and his men seek refuge in Polyphemus’ cave, he tries to eat them. The cyclops’ bad behavior sets into motion a chain of events that will change the lives of Odysseus, his soldiers, and his family forever. It also gives rise to one of the most famous tales in all of world literature. Hesiod describes one group of cyclopes and Homer describes another. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Zeus releases three Cyclopes, the sons of Uranus and Gaia, from the dark pit of Tartarus. They provide Zeus’s 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, 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.  In the Theogony, the Cyclopes – Arges, Brontes, and Steropes – were the primordial sons of Uranus  and Gaia and brothers of the Hecatonchires.

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