Antigonus I - Hesiod's Cyclopes, Homer's Cyclopes, Origins, In popular culture

Macedonian soldier, one of the generals of Alexander the Great. After Alexander's death, he received the provinces of Phrygia Major, Lycia, and Pamphylia. On Antipater's death in 319 BC, he aspired to the sovereignty of Asia, and waged incessant wars against the other generals, making himself master of all Asia Minor and Syria. In 306 BC he assumed the title of king, together with his son Demetrius Poliorcetes, but was defeated and slain at Ipsus in Phrygia.

In Greek mythology a Cyclops, or Kyklops (Greek Κύκλωψ), is a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead.

There are two distinct groups of Cyclopes. In Hesiod's Theogony, Zeus releases the Cyclopes, the sons of Uranus and Gaia, from Tartarus, and receives his characteristic weapon, the thunderbolt, from them; in one of the most famous passages of Homer's Odyssey, the hero Odysseus encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon and Thoosa, who lives with his fellow Cyclopes in a distant country.

Hesiod's Cyclopes

In the Theogony, the Cyclopes—Brontes (thunderer), Steropes (flasher) and Arges (brightener)—were the sons of Uranus ("Sky") and Gaia ("Earth"). Cronus, another son of Uranus and Gaia, later freed the Cyclopes, along with the Hecatonchires, after Uranus was castrated and overthrown by Cronus. The thunderbolts, which became Zeus' signature weapons, were forged by all three Cyclopes: Arges added brightness, Brontes added thunder, and Steropes added lightning.

These Cyclopes also created Poseidon's trident, Artemis' bow and arrow, and the helmet that Hades gave to Perseus on his quest to kill Medusa. The Cyclopes were said to have built the "cyclopean" fortifications at Tiryns and Mycenae in the Peloponnese.

It is said that these Cyclopes were later killed by Apollo after Zeus killed his son, Asclepius, with a Cyclopes-forged thunderbolt.

Homer's Cyclopes

The Cyclopes were a race of huge one-eyed monsters that resided on an island with the same name. Commonly, the term "Cyclops" refers to a particular son of Poseidon and Thoosa named Polyphemus who was a Cyclops. Another member of this group of Cyclopes was Telemus, a seer.

Polyphemus

In Book 9 of Homer's Odyssey, a scouting party led by Odysseus lands on the Island of the Cyclopes and discovers a large cave.

To make Polyphemus unwary, Odysseus gives him a skin of very strong, unwatered wine.

In the morning, Odysseus ties his men and himself to the undersides of Polyphemus' sheep. When the Cyclops lets the sheep out to graze, the men are carried out. As he sailed away, Odysseus shouts "Cyclops, when your father asks who took your eye, tell him that it was Odysseus, Sacker of Cities, Destroyer of Troy, son of Laertes, and King of Ithaca," which proves to be a catastrophic example of hubris.

The Sicilian Greek poet Theocritus wrote two poems circa 275 BC concerning Polyphemus' desire for Galatea, a sea nymph.

Origins

Walter Burkert among others suggeststhat the archaic groups or societies of lesser gods mirror real cult associations: "it may be surmised that smith guilds lie behind Cabeiri, Idaian Dactyloi, Telchines, and Cyclopes." The Cyclopes seen in Homer's Odyssey are of a different type from those in the Theogony; It is possible that legends associated with Polyphemus did not make him a Cyclops before Homer's Odyssey; Other than the detail of the eyes, they sound very similar to the Cyclopes of Homer.

Another possible origin for the Cyclops legend is that prehistoric dwarf elephant skulls - about twice the size of a human skull were found by the Greeks on Crete.

After the "Dark Age" Hellenes looked with awe at the vast dressed blocks, known as Cyclopean structures that had been used in Mycenaean masonry, at sites like Mycenae and Tiryns or on Cyprus, he then concluded that only the Cyclopes had the combination of skill and strength to build in such a monumental fashion.

In popular culture

In the television series Futurama, one of the main characters, Leela, has a single eye, and is therefore called a cyclops. One of the The Infershia Pantheon in Mahou Sentai Magiranger is the Hades God Cyclops; his Power Rangers: Mystic Force counterpart, Oculous, is also a Cyclops. A Cyclops named Iris appeared in the television show American Dragon: Jake Long. In the 1958 Ray Harryhausen film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, two giant cyclopes appear in the film. The first cyclops appears at the beginning of the film, and attacks Sinbad and his crewmembers, while the second appears in the film's climax, where it fights a losing battle with another mythological beast, a dragon. Cyclops is Monster in My Pocket Number 8. A cyclops is a unit in the computer game Age Of Mythology; the main villain, Gargarensis, is also a cyclops. In the movie Krull, Rell the Cyclopes, played by Bernard Bresslaw, helps the group of adventurers to save a princess. The X-Man Cyclops, created in 1963, was so named because his original "power visor" resembled one large eye. His ability to fire an energy "optic blast" has become a recurrent motif amongst subsequent depictions of cyclopes, including the cartoon Xiaolin Showdown and games like Gladius and Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. In the game The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, there are a total of six square-shaped coral reefs that are named after the number of columns that were within its center (for example, the one that has six columns is called the "Six-Eyed Reef"), the one with only one column in its center is referred to as the "Cyclops Reef". The Cyclops is a breed of character/monster from the video game Wrath Unleashed, they are part of the Dark Chaos Empire and serve the Demigoddess of Wind, Helamis, who freed the Cyclopes from the underworld in return for their service.