The mightiest of Homer's lawless Cyclopes — a one-eyed, cave-dwelling shepherd on a wooded island, son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa — whom Odysseus blinded after the giant devoured several of his comrades.1
Homer sets him apart from the divine smith-Cyclopes of Hesiod: Polyphemus and his kind plant nothing, hold no assemblies, build no ships, and each lays down the law for his own wives and children in a distant island cave. He is godlike among them all, and Poseidon the Earth-shaker bears him stubborn wrath against Odysseus because of what the hero did to his son's single eye.2
When Odysseus and twelve companions entered the giant's cave, Polyphemus blocked the entrance with a great stone and devoured two men at supper, then two more at breakfast. The hero gave him strong wine until sleep took him; then Odysseus and four comrades drove a sharpened stake into the single eye. Polyphemus cried to the neighbouring Cyclopes that Nobody was killing him by guile, and when they heard "Nobody" they went away — so the ruse held until the blinded shepherd let the flock out and Odysseus clung beneath the ram's belly to escape.3
Apollodorus adds the genealogy plainly: Polyphemus is a son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa, a huge wild cannibal with one eye on his forehead. Odysseus sharpened the club with four comrades, heated it in the fire, and put out the eye — and when the Cyclops called for help, his neighbours thought he meant that nobody was hurting him.4
Ovid sets the same Polyphemus on Sicilian Etna as a love-sick shepherd who pipes for Galatea and crushes her mortal lover Acis with a thrown crag — the Cyclops of the Odyssey reborn as the volcano-dwelling rival in Metamorphoses after Troy fell.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story