photo from Patras, Greece circa 2005
It's hard to know what makes for an entertaining blog post, but at least one reader has requested something involving history and myth. Fortunately, I'm an armchair expert on mythological monsters, so I think it's about time I shared another view on the life and times of history's most famous cyclops, Polyphemus.
I recently reread the Polyphemus entry in Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" and found it full of several fascinating anecdotes about Poseidon's one-eyed son. My favorite of these accounts are the ones that portray him as a victim of circumstance, "not terrifying at all, but a poor credulous monster, a most ridiculous monster."
The basic story of the Cylops is that Odysseus and his men land on his island in search of supplies, only to wind up trapped in the monster's cave. After several of them are eaten, Odysseus hatches a plan to get the Cyclops drunk, poke out its eye and sneak out with his men by concealing themselves underneath his sheep.
However, in a new version of events not found in Hamilton's collection (one that perhaps was dreamed up by me during an Aegean ferry ride), the Cyclops is not blinded by Odysseus's men, he just gets drunk and loses his contact lens.
No sooner does he begin looking for his missing lens then Odysseus's men begin playing frisbee with it, skipping it across rock and surf. This really pisses off Poseidon, who like all sons of Cronus, hates being pissed off. In exchange for the attentions of a nymph, he hires Zeus to give his sight-challenged son emergency LASEK surgery with a special phototherapeutic thunderbolt.
Once the Cyclops acquires perfect vision, he does what any enraged monster would do: he bites off the heads of the offending mortals. This would usually be horrible and not-funny, except that in this version of events, the men of the Odyssey all happen to be decked out in anachronistic 1950s black and white striped bathing suits, lending the scene an air of aesthetic comedy.
But as satisfying as it is for a few mouthfuls, snacking on the sailors like so much celery loses it's appeal when Polyphemus realizes no sea nymph will ever love him if he continues to behave so barbarously. The cyclops, in fact, has more class than most poets give him credit for. And if he reacted in blind rage, well, he can't really be blamed.
Such is the life of a lesser deity. Your radiant parents watch your back, but they never invite you out to eat on Olympus. Still, Polyphemus does his best to hold things down on his island, which in many later stories was Sicily.
It is said that after an emotional breakup, Polyphemus recorded an album of love tunes for his neglectful nymph. But because this was before Gods were allowed to own their own record labels, it is thought that only a few bootlegged tapes survived. Perhaps they will one day be discovered and the Cyclops will take his place on top of the singer/songwriter pantheon, but most scholars believe this is unlikely.
Until then, he will neither be loved, nor famous. He will only remain Polyphemus.
1 comment:
He also signed a three year contract at a local fitness club, but stopped paying after the first year because he thought he was only signing up for two months and his automatic debit stopped in December because he didn't know how to tell them to stop collecting. Now the collectors call him day and night when he's trying to sleep, trying to get a payment from him. When he finally gets charged off, all is well until he goes to Yachts R' Us and tries to buy a boat.
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