n Greek mythology, the Cyclopes (/saɪˈkloʊpiːz/ sy-KLOH-peez; Greek: Κύκλωπες, Kýklōpes,

"Circle-eyes" or "Round-eyes";[1] singular Cyclops /ˈsaɪklɒps/ SY-klops; Κύκλωψ, Kýklōps), were

giant one-eyed creatures.[2] Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished. In Hesiod's Theogony,
they are the brothers: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who provided Zeus with his weapon
the thunderbolt. In Homer's Odyssey, they are an uncivillized group of shepherds, the brethren
of Polyphemus encountered by Odysseus. Cyclopes were also famous as the builders of
the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns.
The fifth-century BC playwright Euripides wrote a satyr play entitled Cyclops, about Odysseus'
encounter with Polyphemus. Mentions of the Hesiodic and the wall-builder Cyclopes also figure in
his plays. The third-century BC poet Callimachus makes the Hesiodic Cyclopes the assistants of
smith-god Hephaestus. So does Virgil in his Latin epic Aeneid, where he seems to equate the
Hesiodic and Homeric Cyclopes.
From at least the fifth-century BC, Cyclopes have been associated with the island of Sicily, and the
volcanic Aeolian islands.

Kinds[edit]
Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished: the Hesiodic, the Homeric and the wall-
builders.[3] In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are the three brothers: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges,
sons of Uranus and Gaia, who made for Zeus his characteristic weapon, the thunderbolt.
In Homer's Odyssey, the Cyclopes are a uncivilized group of shepherds, one of whom, Polyphemus,
the son of Poseidon, is encountered by Odysseus. Cyclopes were also said to have been the
builders of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns.[4] A scholiast, quoting the fifth-century BC
historian Hellanicus, tells us that, in addition to the Hesiodic Cyclopes, (whom the scholiast
describes as 'the gods themselves'), and the Homeric Cyclopes, there was a third group of
Cyclopes: the builders of the walls of Mycenae.[5]

Hesiodic Cyclopes[edit]

The Cyclops, gouache and oil by Odilon Redon (1840–1916), undated (Kröller-Müller Museum)[6]

Hesiod, in the Theogony (c. 700 BC), described three Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who
were the sons of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), and the brothers of the Titans and Hundred-
Handers, and who had a single eye set in the middle of their foreheads.[7] They made for Zeus his all-
powerful thunderbolt, and in so doing, the Cyclopes played a key role in the Greek succession myth,
which told how the Titan Cronus overthrew his father Uranus, and how in turn Zeus overthrew
Cronus and his fellow Titans, and how Zeus was eventually established as the final and permanent
ruler of the cosmos.[8] The names that Hesiod gives them: Brontes (Thunder) and Steropes
(Lightning) and Arges (Bright), reflect their fundamental role as thunderbolt makers.[9] As early as the
late seventh-century BC, the Cyclopes could be used by the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus to epitomize
extraodinary size and strength.[10]
According to the accounts of Hesiod and mythographer Apollodorus, the Cyclopes had been
imprisoned by their father Uranus.[11] Zeus later freed the Cyclopes, and they repaid him by giving
him the thunderbolt.[12] The Cyclopes provided for Hesiod, and others theogony-writers, a convenient
source of heavenly weaponry, since the smith-god Hephaestus—who would eventually take over
that role—had not yet been born.[13] According to Apollodorus, the Cyclopes also
provided Poseidon with his trident and Hades with his cap of invisibility,[14] and the gods used these
weapons to defeat the Titans.
Although the primordial Cyclopes of the Theogony were presumably immortal (as were their brothers
the Titans), the sixth-century BC Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, has them being killed
by Apollo.[15] Later sources tell us why: Apollo's son Asclepius had been killed by Zeus' thunderbolt,
and Apollo killed the Cyclopes, the makers of the thunderbolt, in revenge.[16] According to a scholiast
on Euripides' Alcestis, the fifth-century BC mythographer Pherecydes supplied the same motive, but
said that Apollo, rather than killing the Cyclopes, killed their sons (one of whom he named Aortes)
instead.[17] No other source mentions any offspring of the Cyclopes.[18] A Pindar fragment suggests
that Zeus himself killed the Cyclopes to prevent them from making thunderbolts for anyone else.[19]
The Cyclopes' prowess as craftsmen is stressed by Hesiod who says "strength and force and
contrivances were in their works."[20] Being such skilled craftsmen of great size and strength, later
poets, beginning with the third-century BC poet Callimachus, imagine these Cyclopes, the primordial
makers of Zeus' thunderbolt, becoming the assistants of the smith-god Hephaestus, at his forge in
Sicily, underneath Mount Etna, or perhaps the nearby Aeolian Islands.[21] In his Hymn to Artemis,
Callimachus has the Cyclopes on the Aeolian island of Lipari, working "at the anvils of Hephaestus",
make the bows and arrows used by Apollo and Artemis.[22] The first-century BC Latin poet Virgil in his
epic Aeneid, has the Cyclopes: "Brontes and Steropes and bare-limbed Pyracmon"[23] toil under the
direction of Vulcan (Hephaestus), in caves underneath Mount Etna and the Aeolian islands.[24] Virgil
describes the Cyclopes, in Vulcan's smithy forging iron, making a thunderbolt, a chariot for Mars,
and Pallas's Aegis, with Vulcan interrupting their work to command the Cyclopes to fashion arms
for Aeneas.[25] The later Latin poet Ovid also has the Hesiodic Cyclopes Brontes and Steropes (along
with a third Cyclops named Acmonides), work at forges in Sicilian caves.[26]
According to a Hellenistic astral myth, the Cyclopes were the builders of the first altar. The myth was
a catasterism, which explained how the constellation the Altar (Ara) came to be in the heavens.
According to the myth, the Cyclopes built an altar upon which Zeus and the other gods swore
alliance before their war with the Titans. After their victory, "the gods placed the altar in the sky in
commemoration", and thus began the practice, according to the myth, of men swearing oaths upon
altars "as a guarantee of their good faith".[27]
According to the second-century geographer Pausanias, there was a sanctuary called the "altar of
the Cyclopes" on the Isthmus of Corinth at a place sacred to Poseidon, where sacrifices were
offered to the Cyclopes.[28] There is no evidence for any other cult associated with the
Cyclopes.[29] According to a version of the story in the Iliad scholia (found nowhere else), when Zeus
swalowed Metis, she was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes.[30]
Although described by Hesiod as having "very violent hearts" (ὑπέρβιον ἦτορ ἔχοντας),[31] and while
their extraordinary size and strength would have made them capable of great violence, there is no
indication of the Hesiodic Cyclopes having behaved in any other way than as dutiful servants of the
gods.[32]
Walter Burkert suggests that groups or societies of lesser gods, like the Hesiodic Cyclopes, "mirror
real cult associations (thiasoi) ... It may be surmised that smith guilds lie behind Cabeiri, Idaian
Dactyloi, Telchines, and Cyclopes."[33]