Cyclopes

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This article is about the one-eyed creatures in Greek mythology. For other uses,
see Cyclopes (disambiguation).

A first century AD head of a Cyclops from the Roman Colosseum

In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, the Cyclopes (/saɪˈkloʊpiːz/ sy-

KLOH-peez; Greek: Κύκλωπες, Kýklōpes, "Circle-eyes" or "Round-eyes";
[1]
 singular Cyclops /ˈsaɪklɒps/ SY-klops; Κύκλωψ, Kýklōps) are giant one-eyed
creatures.[2] Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished.
In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are the three brothers Brontes, Steropes,
and Arges, who made for Zeus his weapon the thunderbolt. In Homer's Odyssey,
they are an uncivilized 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.

Contents

 1Kinds

o 1.1Hesiodic Cyclopes

o 1.2Homeric Cyclopes
 o 1.3Cyclopean wall-builders

 2Principal sources

o 2.1Hesiod

o 2.2Homer

o 2.3Euripides

o 2.4Callimachus

o 2.5Virgil

o 2.6Apollodorus

o 2.7Nonnus

 3Transformations of Polyphemus

 4Location

 5Etymology

 6Possible origins

 7See also

 8Notes

 9References

 10External links

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 an
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 Forge of the Cyclopes", a Dutch 16th-century print after a painting by Titian

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.[6] 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. [7] The names that
Hesiod gives them: Arges (Bright), Brontes (Thunder), and Steropes (Lightning),
reflect their fundamental role as thunderbolt makers. [8] As early as the late
seventh-century BC, the Cyclopes could be used by the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus to
epitomize extraodinary size and strength.[9]
According to the accounts of Hesiod and mythographer Apollodorus, the
Cyclopes had been imprisoned by their father Uranus. [10] Zeus later freed the
Cyclopes, and they repaid him by giving him the thunderbolt. [11] 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.[12] According to Apollodorus, the
Cyclopes also provided Poseidon with his trident and Hades with his cap of
invisibility,[13] 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.[14] 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. [15] 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.[16] No other source mentions
any offspring of the Cyclopes.[17] A Pindar fragment suggests that Zeus himself
killed the Cyclopes to prevent them from making thunderbolts for anyone else. [18]
The Cyclopes' prowess as craftsmen is stressed by Hesiod who says "strength
and force and contrivances were in their works." [19] 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.[20] 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.[21] The first-century BC Latin poet Virgil, in his epic Aeneid,
has the Cyclopes: "Brontes and Steropes and bare-limbed Pyracmon" [22] toil under
the direction of Vulcan (Hephaestus), in caves underneath Mount Etna and
the Aeolian islands.[23] 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.
[24]
 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.[25]
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". [26]
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. [27] There is no evidence
for any other cult associated with the Cyclopes.[28] According to a version of the
story in the Iliad scholia (found nowhere else), when Zeus swallowed Metis, she
was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes.[29]
Although described by Hesiod as "having very violent hearts" (ὑπέρβιον ἦτορ
ἔχοντας),[30] 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. [31]
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."[32]