The Cyclops: Polyphemus Tells the Real Story

By Emerson Littlefield

The "Cyclops" of Greek myth tells the story of his life, including his famous encounter with Odysseus. He is a man, not the monster of myth, although he is extremely large, very powerful, and has but one good eye. He tells the story of his troubled childhood; his friendship with his little sister, Anastasia; his love for his mother, Thoosa; and his fraught pursuit of the beautiful island shepherdess, Galatea. It is a story of loneliness, banishment, suffering, love, and triumph. You will love Galatea's down-to-earth character and Anastasia's boundless energy and endless tricks.
Just as he is not the monster of myth, neither is Odysseus the great hero. In fact, Odysseus is a piratical raider who plunders cities like the city of the Cicones. He comes to Polyphemus's island not because he is blown off course by unfavorable winds, but because he wishes to steal food and wine for himself and his crew. Although the encounter with Odysseus takes only two days of his life, Polyphemus's take on that encounter is very different from the Homeric version and makes fascinating reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350934762

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The Cyclops: Polyphemus Tells the Real Story

© Emerson Littlefield

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 979-8-35093-475-5

eBook ISBN 979-8-35093-476-2

Contents

Preface: Of Myths and Reality

Introduction: Odysseus’s Tale in His Words

I The End is Where I Begin

II My Birth and Background

III My Youth

IV My Siblings

V My Pipes, My Voice and Learning to Read and Write

VI Galatea One

VII How I Lost My Right Eye and Became a Cyclops

VIII My Banishment

IX My Lonely Island

X My First Encounter with Odysseus

XI My Second Encounter with Odysseus

XII Galatea, Again

XIII Our Later Life and Old Age

XIV Anastasia

XV Reflections and How I Came to Write This Book

Preface:

Of Myths and Reality

Many wise and well-read people have noted that myths and legends arise when primitive—or self-serving—people take real events and color them over in order to explain that which in reality they either cannot explain or would like not to have to. Myth and reality have been at odds since storytelling began, though the former often has the seed of reality in it, and the latter is frequently more unbelievable than myth.

I ask a simple question: What if Polyphemus had been a real person, and the myths and legends that grew up around him were based on a few realities that were skewed by bards and storytellers over the centuries? We don’t have to believe that was true to use the question to make a good story with real, vulnerable and beautiful human characters.

Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, wrote that mythology is The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. The same worthy defined reality as The dream of a mad philosopher, or, employing the terminology of refining metals in a small crucible: That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom.

Polyphemus would, I’m sure, dispute Bierce’s assertion that his true accounts are inventions or the reduced essence of mere phantoms. Be that as it may, I am assured by Polyphemus himself that his story is pure gold and the Homeric account of him mere dross. With that, I give you henceforth, Polyphemus in his own words.

E.L.

Introduction:

Odysseus’s Tale

in His Words

"S o I spake, and I climbed the ship’s side, and bade my company themselves to mount, and to loose the hawsers. So they soon embarked and sat upon the benches, and sitting orderly smote the grey sea water with their oars. Now, when we had come to the land that lies hard by, we saw a cave on the border near to the sea, lofty and roofed over with laurels, and there many flocks of sheep and goats were used to rest. And about it a high outer court was built with stones, deep bedded, and with tall pines and oaks with their high crown of leaves. And a man was wont to sleep therein, of monstrous size, who shepherded his flocks alone and afar, and was not conversant with others, but dwelt apart in lawlessness of mind. Yea, for he was a monstrous thing and fashioned marvelously, nor was he like to any man that lives by bread, but like a wooded peak of the towering hills, which stands out apart and alone from others.’

• • • • •

"‘Strangers, who are ye? Whence sail ye over the wet ways? On some trading enterprise or at adventure do ye rove, even as sea robbers over the brine, for at hazard of their own lives they wander, bringing [grief] to alien men.’

"So spake he, but as for us our heart within us was broken for terror of the deep voice and his own monstrous shape; yet despite all I answered and spake unto him, saying:

"‘Lo, we are Achaeans, driven wandering from Troy, by all manner of winds over the great gulf of the sea; seeking our homes we fare, but another path have we come, by other ways: even such methinks, was the will and the counsel of Zeus. And we avow us to be the men of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, whose fame is even now the mightiest under heaven, so great a city did he sack, and destroyed many people; but as for us we have lighted here, and come to these thy knees, if perchance thou wilt give us a stranger’s gift, or make any present, as is the due of strangers. Nay, lord, have regard to the gods, for we are thy suppliants; and Zeus is the avenger of suppliants and sojourners, Zeus, the god of the stranger, who fareth in the company of reverend strangers.’

So I spake, and anon he answered out of his pitiless heart: ‘Thou art witless, my stranger, or thou hast come from afar, who biddest me either to fear or shun the gods. For the Cyclopes pay no heed to Zeus, lord of the aegis, nor to the blessed gods, for verily we are better men than they. Nor would I, to shun the enmity of Zeus, spare either thee or thy company, unless my spirit bade me. But tell me where thou didst stay thy well-wrought ship on thy coming? Was it perchance at the far end of the island, or hard by, that I may know?’¹

Ah— just one version of many that tell the same tale! Odysseus was wise and I was a lawless monster! I ask you to read my story, for it did not happen as the famous stories tell. Moreover, Odysseus is but a small part of my life’s adventure, all of which I will set forth here. I wish the greatest blessings on all who read my tale,

Polyphemus, the Cyclops.

---

1 The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by S. H. Butcher and A. Lang. Harvard Classics, 1994, 2001. 124-127

I

The End is

Where I Begin

Galatea looks over to me as I sit down to begin writing. I have prepared four good parchments, though that is expensive because each parchment means I must sacrifice a lamb or a yearling wether and flense and stretch the skins properly. I do not have so many sheep to spare. I must keep the ewes for milk with which to make my good cheese, though I need only the one ram for breeding.

We can eat only so much mutton stew.

I will need to have more parchments, or perhaps I can trade some of my wine for Egyptian papyrus. It’s possible I might barter for a whole scroll!

I wonder what Galatea is thinking. I told her she would have to be in my story, and she looked at me, surprised but, I think, secretly pleased. I shall tell you of her, the wife I have had now for forty-seven years! But that’s later. I watch her walk out of the cave to tend her garden. We’ll add leeks to the barley and mutton for our stew tonight. I still love to eat!

I begin this tale because of the stories of Odysseus I have heard, though Galatea is actually a much larger and far more important part of my life than my encounter with that piratical wanderer. Odysseus plays only a small role in my life’s story—two days. In every story I hear from the traveling bards, he is a great hero, and I am, well, a monster. Neither is true. He is certainly no hero to me. You will see what I shall tell you when you come to that part.

I suppose Odysseus is dead by now. Good riddance to him! I might have killed him those many years ago had I had a chance, but he was tough; I’ll give him that.

My name is Polyphemus. Yes, that Polyphemus. The Cyclops of legend—the man-devouring Cyclops. In fact, I have never eaten human flesh, and I am not a mythical creature but a man. I’m no legend, either. Or, rather, I am, but only because the stories you’ve heard are make-believe.

I’m an old man now. My strength is not what it once was; I have lost a few inches in height because I am stooped a little. I stopped rolling the stone over the entrance to our cave home years ago because it got too heavy—a stone that in my youth I moved easily. Now it is a door woven of grapevine canes and olive branches—much easier to move.

That stone once kept the famous Odysseus out of my cave—yes, out, not in, as the bards’ stories would have it. But I no longer use it. Were we to have another raid by Achaean pirates as we did when Odysseus was here fifty years ago, I don’t know what I would do.

The truest stories rarely get told. What gets told are the tales the powerful and famous want to be remembered by. That’s why we get Odysseus’s version of our meeting, and I am left without a voice. That’s also why I’ve decided to write down my own story. Perhaps the bards will tell it after I am dead, eh?

Perhaps not. But what can one do except try?

The truth, I have discovered, rarely matters. People like lies. They listen to the stories they think are real, while reality is left to long for a place in people’s minds and hearts. Why this must be, I don’t know, but it is so.

Bards still travel the Mediterranean, exchanging the tales they tell to the accompaniment of their lyres for a week’s meals, a place to sleep, and the adventure of seeing the world. I have heard them, which is why I’m sure Odysseus’s version is the one you will know. But I have a story, too, my own. The truth. I shall have to be my own bard, though I never travelled the Mediterranean farther than Thrinacia, where I was born, and my own island of exile, where I now live with Galatea in my old age.

My story is both sad and not sad, but the main thing is, it is not what you have heard. Mostly, it is a human story of men and women, brothers and sisters, life and death.

Let me tell it to you.

It has seven parts, as I’ve divided my life.

First, my birth and background, and how it came to be that people thought I was the son of Poseidon.

Second, my youth, which was troubled and savage in many ways. It is a part of my life I look back on with both sadness and pleasure, disappointment and joy. I was a lonely and tormented child, but even in my earliest youth I had my advocates—my mother, Thoosa, and my little sister, Anastasia, whose stories you will soon hear.

Third, my first meeting with Galatea, who would one day become my wife. Oh, I tell you! Galatea began as a torment but has been my life’s greatest blessing. It was partly in my first pursuit of the beautiful Galatea that I lost my right eye and became the cyclops of legend. But that is all I will say for now.

Fourth, my exile from the village. Ah! That was a bitter and horrible time, but I will tell it anyway, as it happened.

Fifth, the part everyone will want to hear, my encounter with Odysseus. I assure you, it is not as the famous stories tell. Not at all. You may say it is my version of events, but it is the simple and solemn truth. I am seen as monstrous and vicious because of my freakish size and my ugly face, and because I beat Odysseus and his piratical thieves single-handedly. But I am not so monstrous and not nearly so vicious as Odysseus was. If you wish to believe in the myths, go ahead. If you believe instead in human reality, then read on!

Sixth, Part Two of the story of Galatea. The best part of my life.

And seventh, my old age.

I will tell each part in turn, just as they happened—a chapter or two apiece. I am a simple storyteller, so I hope my tale will earn your approval. I am not creative at pretending. I cannot make fiction as Odysseus’s admirers have done, dressing up his violence-marred life with pretty stories. I am plain-spoken and matter-of-fact.

I shall let you decide just how villainous I was.

But let the story unfold. We’ll see what you think once the tale is done.

II

My Birth

and

Background

My name means many songs. I was born with a vocal range even broader than I am tall. My mother says that from the time I was squeezed out of her womb, I was squalling like nothing she had ever heard. Later in my lonely youth, I kept this vocal ability, and I sang to myself, often because I had no other company. Oh, I could sing! I still do.

According to legend, I am the son of Poseidon by the nymph Thoosa. I laugh at this when I hear it. It gives me a certain nobility, I grant, but I am no more the son of a god than you are. My mother really is named Thoosa, but she is no nymph. She was an island girl here in Thrinacia.² Just an island girl, and very fair in her youth, a raven-haired and dark-eyed beauty. A shepherdess, like most girls on this island. She’d tend her father’s sheep on the rugged hillsides during the day and spin the wool into thread at night. And when she had acquired the skill, she would weave the threads into clothes—shirts and cloaks for men and women. Women wove linen, too, but the linen was imported by trade from Egypt. We did not grow flaxseed here in Thrinacia.

My father appeared one day on a ship from Achaea. The Achaeans, like the Kena’ani,³ who came both before and after them, were always raiding along the coastlines of the Mediterranean. They traded, too, and founded towns and cities, but when they wanted to be, they were not traders but pirates. You think of them as the founders of civilization? So they are, though no more so than the Egyptians, who are far more ancient. The Achaeans built the best ships and were the best sailors, so they sailed about various parts of the Mediterranean, sometimes trading, sometimes on honest business, but just as often plundering. My father was the captain of one of those ships, a great sailing craft with twenty oars and a tall mast on which to raise a sail.

Like most raiders, he was ruthless. They landed to plunder our little coastal village about nine months before I was born. That was all. There was no trading, no bartering—just pitiless raiding. They didn’t care for what they did. They killed the men and took the boys and girls into captivity. When they took boys into captivity, they either sodomized them or castrated them right there on their ship’s deck, or both. Then they sold them to the Egyptians as eunuchs. The women they inevitably stole away into bondage, either to be used mercilessly at sea and disposed of there, or else sold at the courts of Mycenae or Knossos or Ilium. There, they would be used severely and age quickly.

It is said, I have heard, that my father was a very big man—six and a half feet.⁴ A rarity in my day—a man so large. But he had managed his size and strength during an adventurous youth very well, and in his seafaring life, he had risen through the ranks from oarsman to mate and finally to commander of his own vessel. It isn’t spoken of often, but I learned through piecing together bits of various tales that he got his command through a mutiny.

I believe he rose up against his captain after a failed raid on a well-defended Egyptian town and slew him in a fight. The crew were too frightened to take up their own arms against him; he was so large and fierce. So in a moment of furious glory, he took command of the ship on which he sailed, whose name I do not know, and he decided that trading in oil and wine was not lucrative enough. The most prized commodity in the world in those days was not oil or wine, nor salt, nor gold or precious gems. It was slaves.

When he came to our island, we were woefully unprepared, so I was told. We were then a humble village, though we have grown since then and now boast an actual fortification—a wall around the town. We grow grapes in the hard soil—Inzolias, Grecanicos, you would call them. We grow olive trees that dig their roots down into the rocks. The only grain we had in those days was barley.⁵ We would go fishing in the nearby sea, as we still do. And we herd sheep and goats. The sheep and goats supply us with milk, with which we make an excellent island cheese. With the barley, we make either bread or porridge or beer. The grapes become wine, our island staple. It is a simple life, and we work very hard at it, but it is good.

As an island girl, my mother worked very hard. She shepherded her father’s flocks over the neighboring parts of the western side of the island. Her father was not Phorcys, as the stories tell—a primitive sea god. He was a fisherman, a shepherd and a farmer—all three! For most of the year, he tilled his rocky patch of soil and grew barley. He had a small vineyard from which they made their own wine. Thoosa went prancing like a sheep herself amongst the rocks and hills, napping under the olive trees, drinking from the flask of wine she took with her to quench her thirst and help her swallow her hard barley cake and goat cheese. It was a hard life, but as she tells it, she was happy.

When she grew older, sixteen or seventeen years, she turned from a skinny, gawky, dark-eyed girl into a ravishing beauty. With some girls, it is this way. What had been the plain and somewhat mismatched features in the gawky ten – or twelve-year-old suddenly merged into a balanced and fabulous symmetry. The dark, rustic brows of the little girl now shaded large, dark brown eyes. Her hair, always wild, curled around her face in glorious abandon. Her olive complexion became smooth and flawless. Her many years of hard exercise amongst the hills following the flock gave her strength and a comely shape.

Unfortunately, it was not just the shy island boys of our village who noticed. The Greek pirate noticed, too. Had the raid happened when she was out in the hills above the village with our flock, he would never have seen her—and I would never have been born. But this is not as it happened. She was at home. It was very early. She had just arisen to begin her day’s work. The pirates came, just the one ship, landing before dawn when everyone was just awakening or was sitting around their hearth fires in the morning chill, preparing to set out on the day’s work. There were only, I think, twenty-two of them—not an army. Hardly a raiding party! But they were hardened men, used to battle and the hard ways of the sea. And they had swords and spears. Some had shields and even armor.

I think the origin of the story that my father was Poseidon arose because the gigantic man landed and waded ashore out of the shallow sea wearing full bronze armor—a breastplate, greaves, a fine round shield, or a hopla, embossed with bronze inlay and painted in a brilliant red with blue swirls meant to imitate waves. He had on a helmet that must have been specially made because no ordinary man’s helmet would have fit a man of his leviathan stature. And he kept his armor gleaming with its golden sheen. In fact, its color was not easily distinguishable from gold from a distance, though bronze tarnishes with green verdigris when not constantly polished, whereas gold, of course, does not.

How, you might ask, can twenty-two desperate seafarers overcome a whole village by themselves? The answer is simple: surprise and better weapons. There were a few bronze implements in our village, but not very many. Many of our farmers still harvested their barley with wooden scythes that used sharp flakes of flint inlaid along the blade as a cutting edge. Literally, in some points, we were still living in the Stone Age! Plus, we were not really fighters. Had we been prepared, we might have fended them off, even if it was with slings and clubs and wooden pitchforks. But we were not prepared. They struck like lightning. A few boys out by the beach in that early hour saw them coming and ran into the village ahead of them, crying in alarm, Poseidon is coming! then headed for the hills so as not to be taken. My grandfather was not fast enough. He grabbed a wooden stave he kept by the hearth to accompany him into the hills for fending off wolves and killing snakes, but the big man fended off a couple of blows from the staff and cut him in two with his heavy bronze sword.

My maternal grandfather! One of the elders of the village. A man of substance and wisdom I could have known had he lived.

And the pirate captain? Poseidon indeed!

Then, I’m sad to say, he saw my mother, just a young girl of seventeen years, cowering behind a stone and mud wall under a leather awning, the place where they stored their wooden wine press, made partly with canes from the vines themselves. Needless to say, he wasn’t the least bit dissuaded by her cries for mercy but forced himself on her ruthlessly and brutally right there in their house. The only fortunate thing for her was that he wanted her just for himself; she was so beautiful, so he wouldn’t let any of the other sailors touch her.

Thus, she was taken. I was conceived during that first rape. The ship set sail only hours after the pirates landed. Half the men in our village were dead, houses burned, the older women were dead, too, and about twenty girls and young boys from the village were tied and roped together and taken on board, saving only those awake and fleet enough to run into the hills.

The fact that the monstrous captain wanted to take Thoosa on the deck of his ship again after he’d already had her in her house, just to show his crew what a man he was, oddly saved her life. She was unbound, and he tried to force himself on her again, such were his passions—only an hour or two after he’d already ravaged her on land. The crew, I have heard from later tales, cheered as they watched their great captain try to rape the helpless, naked girl again.

By the grace of some god or goddess, though, the ship was by that time under full sail and headed out to sea, with the details of Thrinacia beginning to fade in the distance. Being young and fit as she was, and angry and frightened besides, she sprinted, unbound, across the deck of the ship and leaped into the sea. Only the fact that the ship was already under sail kept them from lowering the sails and turning around to pursue her under oar. They must have been a mile or more out to sea, a very long way to swim through our rough seas with their heaving waves and sometimes treacherous currents.

But Thoosa made it. Unwilling to quit, to just give up and let the sea take her, she fought on and on for hours, exhausted but more brave than exhausted.

Stepping out of the sea hours later, exhausted and used but alive and, overall, well, Thoosa barely had the strength to stand upon the shore. A few surviving villagers who saw her step thus out of the sea must have thought at first that she really was a sea nymph, so beautiful was she. She collapsed on the rock-strewn beach, called for wine, which was brought to her, and was taken to shelter by two of the villagers whose house had not been torched. Thus was born the legend of Thoosa, the sea nymph.

Happily, she found a place to live in the home of an older couple who had been up in the grapevines well above the village, trimming the canopy