Odysseus and the Cyclops
On his long voyage home from Troy, Odysseus and his men were trapped in the cave of Polyphemus, a man-eating Cyclops and son of Poseidon. Through cunning and deception Odysseus blinded the giant and escaped, but a reckless boast of his own name earned him the lasting wrath of Poseidon.
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The Myth
During his ten-year journey home from Troy, Odysseus and twelve of his men landed on the island of the Cyclopes and entered a large cave filled with cheese and sheep. The cave belonged to Polyphemus, a one-eyed giant son of Poseidon. When the Cyclops returned with his flocks, he sealed the cave entrance with a boulder no mortal could move and discovered the intruders. Polyphemus seized two of Odysseus's men and devoured them, then did the same at every meal. Odysseus could not simply kill the sleeping giant because only Polyphemus could move the boulder. Instead, he devised a plan. He offered Polyphemus strong wine, and when the Cyclops asked his name, Odysseus answered 'Nobody.' Once Polyphemus fell into a drunken stupor, Odysseus and his men heated a sharpened olive-wood stake and drove it into the giant's single eye. Polyphemus screamed for help, but when the other Cyclopes asked who was hurting him, he cried 'Nobody is hurting me!' - and they went away. At dawn, Odysseus and his surviving men escaped by clinging to the undersides of the Cyclops's sheep as the blinded Polyphemus let them out to graze, feeling only the tops of their backs. As they sailed away, Odysseus recklessly shouted his true name. Polyphemus, now knowing his enemy, called upon his father Poseidon to curse Odysseus - ensuring that the hero's journey home would be long, painful, and marked by the loss of all his companions.
Homer frames the whole encounter as a test of xenia, the guest-host obligation that structures much of the Odyssey: Odysseus arrives asking for the hospitality any stranger was owed, and Polyphemus answers by eating his guests instead, an inversion the poem treats as monstrous specifically because it breaks that code rather than simply because the Cyclops is large or violent. The trick of the name "Nobody" works only because a proper host would be expected to recognize and name his guest; Polyphemus's later, less flattering appearance in Roman poetry, hopelessly in love with the sea-nymph Galatea and mocked for his ugliness, gives the same figure an entirely different, almost comic character with no trace of the Odyssey's menace.
Why did Odysseus tell Polyphemus his name was Nobody?
It was a defense planned in advance: Odysseus reasoned that if the trick worked and he had to hurt the Cyclops, Polyphemus would need to call for help by name, and "Nobody is hurting me" would send the other Cyclopes away thinking nothing was wrong. The plan worked exactly as intended, buying Odysseus and his men the time they needed to escape the cave.
Homer, Odyssey 9.105–9.566
Why did Odysseus shout his real name after escaping?
Pride, by Homer's own account: unable to resist claiming credit for the trick, Odysseus called back to the blinded Polyphemus and announced his real name and home, undoing the safety the false name had bought him. It is the poem's clearest example of Odysseus's cleverness curdling into recklessness, since it is this boast that lets Polyphemus name him to Poseidon and call down the curse that shapes the rest of the voyage.
Homer, Odyssey 9.105–9.566
Why did Poseidon become Odysseus's enemy?
Polyphemus was Poseidon's son, and once he knew his blinder's name, he prayed to his father either to kill Odysseus or, failing that, to see him arrive home late, alone, in another man's ship, and find trouble waiting when he got there. Poseidon could not defy fate to kill Odysseus outright, so the rest of his wandering, storm after storm and the loss of his entire crew, plays out the second half of that prayer instead.
Homer, Odyssey 9.105–9.566
Why does Homer make hospitality the center of the Cyclops episode?
Guest-friendship, xenia, was a real social and religious obligation in the world the poem describes, protected by Zeus himself as god of strangers. Odysseus approaches the cave expecting the hospitality any traveler was owed; Polyphemus instead eats his guests, which the poem marks as a violation of a near-sacred rule rather than an isolated act of monstrous violence, making the Cyclops a moral outlier as much as a physical one.
Homer, Odyssey 9.105–9.566
Is the loving, lovesick Cyclops of later poetry the same figure as Homer's Polyphemus?
Same name and parentage, very different character. Later Greek and Roman poets, especially in the story of his hopeless love for the sea-nymph Galatea, portray Polyphemus as a clumsy, self-pitying suitor rather than a man-eating threat, closer to a figure of comedy than of horror. Homer's Odyssey has no trace of the Galatea material; it belongs to a separate, later strand of tradition about the same monster.
Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.738–897
Where Accounts Differ
- Homer's monster vs. later poetry's lovesick Cyclops
- Homer's Polyphemus is a dangerous, man-eating threat; Ovid's later portrait of the same figure, pining for the nymph Galatea, is closer to comedy than horror. The two traditions are not reconciled anywhere in the surviving sources.
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Mythology
Figures In This Myth
Related Terms
Sources
- Homer, Odyssey 9.105–9.566
- Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.738–897
- W.B. Stanford, The Ulysses Theme (1963)
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)