Galatea the sea-nymph loved the mortal Acis, and Polyphemus the Cyclops loved her — when the giant saw them together he hurled Etna's summit upon the boy, and Galatea changed her slain lover into the river Acis that still runs beneath the Sicilian mountain where the shepherd Cyclops pipes his hopeless song.1
Galatea's tale
After the fall of Troy, Ovid's poem reaches Sicily. Galatea, a Nereid of lovely form, tells how Polyphemus son of Poseidon loved her and sent her gifts of milk and cheese and newly weaned lambs — while she loved only Acis, son of Faunus and the river-nymph Symaethis. Homer knew the same Cyclops as a one-eyed cannibal on a distant island; here he is Etna's amorous shepherd, piping love-songs that cannot move her heart.2
Polyphemus' jealousy
The giant raged at rivals: he tore pines from the mountain and hurled them at the sea, he cursed Acis and prayed that Galatea might feel his pain. When he found the lovers together in a cave whose entrance the sea had narrowed, he crushed Acis with a jagged fragment of the mountain — the very mass that still smokes above the strait.3
The river
Galatea could not restore the body, but she changed what remained: Acis' blood sank into the earth and rose again as a stream, his horns crowned with reeds, his waters clear though born from a god's wrath. The river keeps his name beneath Etna to this day — love transformed, not into a flower or bird, but into running water under the Cyclops' feet.4
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How the centuries saw it
Acis and Galatea
Luca Giordano, c. 1685
Giordano stages Ovid's Sicilian triangle at the fatal instant: Galatea with Acis while Polyphemus looms with the rock that will crush him.
Acis and Galatea
Claude Lorrain, 1657
Claude's golden pastoral: the lovers at ease before the Cyclops' jealousy — Sicilian idyll as classical landscape.
Acis, Galatea, and Polyphemus
François Perrier, c. 1645–1650
Perrier's Louvre canvas: Galatea and Acis slip away while Polyphemus watches from the rocks — the boulder already waiting.
Polyphemus and Galatea (Boscotrecase)
Unknown (Roman), c. 10 BC
Third-Style fresco from Boscotrecase: Polyphemus among his flock as Galatea rides a dolphin — the Sicilian romance before Ovid.