"ὣς εἰπὼν τὸν κριὸν ἀπὸ ἕο πέμπε θύραζε.

ἐλθόντες δ᾽ ἠβαιὸν ἀπὸ σπείους τε καὶ αὐλῆς

πρῶτος ὑπ᾽ ἀρνειοῦ λυόμην, ὑπέλυσα δ᾽ ἑταίρους.

καρπαλίμως δὲ τὰ μῆλα ταναύποδα, πίονα δημῷ,

πολλὰ περιτροπέοντες ἐλαύνομεν, ὄφρ᾽ ἐπὶ νῆα465

ἱκόμεθ᾽. ἀσπάσιοι δὲ φίλοις ἑτάροισι φάνημεν,

οἳ φύγομεν θάνατον, τοὺς δὲ στενάχοντο γοῶντες.

ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ οὐκ εἴων, ἀνὰ δ᾽ ὀφρύσι νεῦον ἑκάστῳ,

κλαίειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκέλευσα θοῶς καλλίτριχα μῆλα

πόλλ᾽ ἐν νηὶ βαλόντας ἐπιπλεῖν ἁλμυρὸν ὕδωρ.470

οἱ δ᾽ αἶψ᾽ εἴσβαινον καὶ ἐπὶ κληῖσι καθῖζον,

ἑξῆς δ᾽ ἑζόμενοι πολιὴν ἅλα τύπτον ἐρετμοῖς.

ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε τόσσον ἀπῆν, ὅσσον τε γέγωνε βοήσας,

καὶ τότ᾽ ἐγὼ Κύκλωπα προσηύδων κερτομίοισι·

‘Κύκλωψ, οὐκ ἄρ᾽ ἔμελλες ἀνάλκιδος ἀνδρὸς ἑταίρους475

ἔδμεναι ἐν σπῆι γλαφυρῷ κρατερῆφι βίηφι.

καὶ λίην σέ γ᾽ ἔμελλε κιχήσεσθαι κακὰ ἔργα,

σχέτλι᾽, ἐπεὶ ξείνους οὐχ ἅζεο σῷ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ

ἐσθέμεναι: τῷ σε Ζεὺς τίσατο καὶ θεοὶ ἄλλοι.’

ὣς ἐφάμην, ὁ δ᾽ ἔπειτα χολώσατο κηρόθι μᾶλλον,480

ἧκε δ᾽ ἀπορρήξας κορυφὴν ὄρεος μεγάλοιο,

κὰδ δ᾽ ἔβαλε προπάροιθε νεὸς κυανοπρῴροιο

τυτθόν, ἐδεύησεν δ᾽ οἰήιον ἄκρον ἱκέσθαι,

ἐκλύσθη δὲ θάλασσα κατερχομένης ὑπὸ πέτρης·

τὴν δ᾽ αἶψ᾽ ἤπειρόνδε παλιρρόθιον φέρε κῦμα,485

πλημυρὶς ἐκ πόντοιο, θέμωσε δὲ χέρσον ἱκέσθαι.

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ χείρεσσι λαβὼν περιμήκεα κοντὸν

ὦσα παρέξ, ἑτάροισι δ᾽ ἐποτρύνας ἐκέλευσα

ἐμβαλέειν κώπῃς, ἵν᾽ ὑπὲκ κακότητα φύγοιμεν,

κρατὶ κατανεύων· οἱ δὲ προπεσόντες ἔρεσσον.490

ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ δὶς τόσσον ἅλα πρήσσοντες ἀπῆμεν,

καὶ τότε δὴ Κύκλωπα προσηύδων: ἀμφὶ δ᾽ ἑταῖροι

μειλιχίοις ἐπέεσσιν ἐρήτυον ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος·

‘σχέτλιε, τίπτ᾽ ἐθέλεις ἐρεθιζέμεν ἄγριον ἄνδρα;

ὃς καὶ νῦν πόντονδε βαλὼν βέλος ἤγαγε νῆα495

αὖτις ἐς ἤπειρον, καὶ δὴ φάμεν αὐτόθ᾽ ὀλέσθαι.

εἰ δὲ φθεγξαμένου τευ ἢ αὐδήσαντος ἄκουσε,

σύν κεν ἄραξ᾽ ἡμέων κεφαλὰς καὶ νήια δοῦρα

μαρμάρῳ ὀκριόεντι βαλών: τόσσον γὰρ ἵησιν.’

Released from the sheep, the crew returns to the ship. Odysseus pushes the crew on board and out to sea. Once they are “as far off as a shout could carry” (475), Odysseus begins to taunt Polyphemus, who angrily throws a huge boulder at his escaped prisoners, washing the ship back to shore. They barely escape, the crew rowing furiously while Odysseus pushes off with a long pole. They get twice as far away and yet Odysseus cannot restrain himself from more taunting, despite the pleas of his crew

The sequence of events here is telling. Having shut off any display of emotion by his crew, Odysseus then once again imperils them all, giving in not once but twice to his own need to crow over his defeat of the monster. The centrifugal Odysseus reemerges here (see essay on 12.153-91), who declines Calypso’s offer of timeless immortality to plunge back into the arena of death and change, where he can strike out against the numbing effects of oblivion through self-assertion.

read full essay

He will resurface on Circe’s island, with the same catastrophic results for his crew. Odysseus’ curiosity, his desire to “know the cities and minds of men” (1.3) will lead them once again into danger. To know, in this sense, is to control through imposing limits and therefore meaning on what is unknown, to stave off oblivion. To stay alive in an existential sense, he must keep asserting himself, even when it puts him and his crew in danger.

After one last bit of bluster from Odysseus, Polyphemus prays to his father Poseidon to avenge him either by destroying Odysseus and his ships or, if they are fated to make it back home, to make the journey as perilous as possible. Now we have the backstory for the god’s hatred, as the poet lays in a link back to the story’s beginning (1.20–21). Polyphemus’s next throw falls short, washing the ship away toward the neighboring island, where the rest of the Greeks are waiting by the shore. The joyous reunion that Odysseus’s need to vaunt had quelled can now proceed. The last lines of the book are full of traditional language, of feasting, dawn rising, and the launching of ships, returning the story to the comforting and familiar, after the spectacular horrors of the monster’s cave.

It’s easy to see why Odysseus’s encounter with Cyclops has been one of the most enduring parts of the Odyssey: a colorful, intriguing monster, defeated by an underdog’s witty wordplay, the elevation of intelligence over brute force, all in the service of returning Odysseus to his proper place in Ithaka. Viewed in the larger context of the entire poem, the episode encapsulates most of the story’s recurrent narrative patterns, each one building toward Odysseus’s ultimate triumph over the suitors. The sexual imagery in the blinding of Polyphemus, followed by Odysseus’s re-assumption of his heroic identity, echoes in a particularly vivid way the sequence that we have noted above: a male traveler penetrating a feminized milieu (reflected in the womblike cave and perhaps, from the Greeks’ perspective, in the monster’s fussy housekeeping), leading to the release of Odysseus. The pattern will recur in the hero’s encounter with Circe, the underworld, the Sirens, Skylla and Charybdis, even the cattle of the sun, as we will see.

The pun at the center of the Cyclops episode dramatizes in an arresting way Odysseus’s repeated journey from anonymous stranger to famous hero. The wordplay involving the hero’s name takes us to the heart of Odysseus’s character. To progress from Οὖτις to Odysseus requires the application of ὀδύνη, and he is always the principal agent of pain for others, slipping away but leaving destruction in his wake. Calypso, the Phaeacians, Polyphemus, the ghosts in Hades, and of course all the Greek sailors who entrusted their lives to his care pay a heavy price for the hero’s return. Athena, Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Penelope all insist that Odysseus is a beneficent king who has suffered at the hands of the greedy suitors. From our perspective, he is one of the hardest, most relentless of all Greek heroes, qualities that are on vivid display in the Cyclops episode.

The nature of the civilization that Odysseus’s heroic exertions as culture hero are meant to preserve gets a similarly ambiguous portrait on Polyphemus’s island. The monster’s supposedly savage existence, punctuated by cannibalism and arrogant disregard of the Olympian gods, is also characterized by fastidious husbandry and housekeeping, all in the service of a fierce independence worthy of an Achilles. His parodic transgressions of the norms of hospitality, though they tarnish his credentials as host, also highlight Odysseus’s serious shortcomings as a guest—no one, after all, forced him to invade the cave of the lonely shepherd. A culture hero is meant to impose civilizing order on monstrous chaos, but Odysseus’s heroic acts bring their own chaos, transforming the monocular but self-sufficient existence of Polyphemus into helpless isolation.

 

Further Reading

Thalmann, W. 1992. The Odyssey: An Epic of Return, 87–88. New York: Twayne Publishers.

 

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey,      93–94. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

461  ἕο: gen. sing. 3rd pers. personal pron.

462  ἠβαιὸν: “a little,” “a short distance,” adverbial.

463  λυόμην: “I let go," "I got myself free,” unaugmented mid. impf. (LSJ λύω A.I.2.b).

465  περιτροπέοντες ἐλαύνομεν: “we rounded up and drove off” (LSJ ἐλαύνω I.A.2, “to drive away, carry off,” of stolen cattle or horses).

465  ὄφρ(α): “until.”

466  φάνημεν: “we appeared,” i.e. arrived, unaugmented 1st pl. aor. pass. > φαίνω.

467  τοὺς δὲ: “but those (who were killed by the Cyclops)…”

468  οὐκ εἴων: “I did not allow them,” impf.  > ἐάω, with the infinitive κλαίειν in line 469.

468  ἀνὰ: “upward,” adverbial. Even in modern Greece, nodding the head up and raising the eyebrows means “no.”

470  βαλόντας: “put,” aor. ptc., agreeing with an implied τούς (“them”), referring to Odysseus’s men.

471–72: = lines 9.179–80.

473  ἀλλ(ά) … βοήσας: “but when I was as far away as [someone] can be heard shouting.” The correlatives, τόσσον … ὅσσον, are accusatives of extent of time or space (Monro 138).

473  τε: generalizes the statement (Monro 332).

475  οὐκ: most commentators take this with ἀνάλκιδος ἀνδρὸς, “of a not weak man” (litotes), rather than with ἔμελλες (“you were not going to…”).

476  ἔδμεναι: infin. > ἔδω.

476  κρατερῆφι βίηφι: the -φι endings indicate an instrumental meaning (Smyth 280).

477  καὶ λίην: “most certainly,” “by all means,” used for emphasis at the beginning of a statement (Authenrieth λίην).

477  σέ γ᾽ ἔμελλε κιχήσεσθαι: “were sure to catch up with you.” The subject is κακὰ ἔργα, the verb singular with a neuter plural subject.

478  οὐχ ἅζεο: “were not ashamed to,” 2nd person sing. impf. > ἅζομαι, with the infinitive in line 479

479  ἐσθέμεναι: infin. > ἐσθίω.

479  τῷ: “for this reason” (LSJ ὁ A.VIII.2).

479  τίσατο: “has made you pay the price,” aor. mid. > τίνω.

481  ἧκε δ᾽ ἀπορρήξας: “he broke off ... and hurled.” 

481  ἧκε: 3 sing. aor. > ἵημι.

481  ἀπορρήξας: aor. ptc. > ἀπορρήγνυμι.

482  κὰδ: κατά, either adverbial (“down”) or in tmesis with ἔβαλεν.

482  προπάροιθε: “in front of” + gen.

483  ἐδεύησεν ... ἱκέσθαι: "failed to reach," "just missed."

483:  This line appears to be interpolated from line 9.540 and out of place here. If the rock is thrown in front of (προπάροιθε) the ship, it is hard to see how it could have just missed the rudder (οἰήϊον).

484 ἐκλύσθη: "surged," aor. pass. 3 sing > κλύζω.

485  τὴν: “it,” the ship.

485  φέρε: unaugmented impf.

486  πλημυρὶς: in apposition to κῦμα.

486  θέμωσε δὲ χέρσον ἱκέσθαι: “and drove it ashore.” The verb θεμόω (“to drive onto, or toward”) appears only here and in line 542.

488  ἑτάροισι: dative after ἐκέλευσα, or possibly with the participle ἐποτρύνας (dative with a compound verb, Smyth 1544–45).

489  ἐμβαλέειν κώπῃς: supply χεῖρας, “to ply the oars” (LSJ ἐμβάλλω II.3).

490  κρατὶ: dative of means > κράς κρατός, ὁ “the head” (= κάρα), with κατανεύων. Odysseus is gesturing his commands to his crew.

490  προπεσόντες: “straining forward,” lit., “falling forward” > προπίπτω.

490  ἔρεσσον: “began to row,” inchoative impf. (Smyth 1900).

491  ὅτε δὴ: “just when.”

491  δὶς τόσσον: “twice as far.”

491  ἅλα πρήσσοντες: ἅλα is the direct object of the participle πρήσσοντες ( > πρήσσω, "to traverse, make one’s way over" LSJ πράσσω Ι).

492  ἀμφὶ: “οn all sides,” adverbial.

493  ἐρήτυον: “tried to prevent,” conative impf. (Smyth 1895); supply “me” as the object.

493  ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος: “from all directions”

495  βέλος: a projectile, in this case the rock thrown by the Cyclops.

496  φάμεν: “we thought” (LSJ φημί I.A.b), introducing indirect discourse.

497-8  εἰ … ἄκουσε, … / κεν ἄραξ(ε)…: past contrary to fact conditional (Goodell 649).

498  ἄραξ(ε): aor. > ἀράσσω.

497  τευ: “someone” = τινος, genitive of source after ἄκουσε (Goodell 509). The other genitives agree with τευ.

498  σύν: “together,” adverbial.

498  ἡμέων: genitive of possession = ἡμῶν.

499  τόσσον: “so far.”

article nav
Previous
9.409-460
Next
9.500-535

Suggested Citation

Thomas Van Nortwick and Rob Hardy, Homer: Odyssey 5–12. Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Dickinson College Commentaries, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-947822-17-7 https://dcc.dickinson.edu/ro/homer-odyssey/ix-461-499