![]() ![]() No other source mentions any offspring of the Cyclopes. According to a scholiast on Euripides' Alcestis, the fifth-century BC mythographer Pherecydes supplied the same motive, but said that Apollo, rather than killing the Cyclopes, killed their sons (one of whom he named Aortes) instead. Later sources tell us why: Apollo's son Asclepius had been killed by Zeus' thunderbolt, and Apollo killed the Cyclopes, the makers of the thunderbolt, in revenge. According to Apollodorus, the Cyclopes also provided Poseidon with his trident and Hades with his cap of invisibility, and the gods used these weapons to defeat the Titans.Īlthough the primordial Cyclopes of the Theogony were presumably immortal (as were their brothers the Titans), the sixth-century BC Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, has them being killed by Apollo. The Cyclopes provided for Hesiod, and other theogony-writers, a convenient source of heavenly weaponry, since the smith-god Hephaestus-who would eventually take over that role-had not yet been born. Zeus later freed the Cyclopes, and they repaid him by giving him the thunderbolt. Īccording to the accounts of Hesiod and mythographer Apollodorus, the Cyclopes had been imprisoned by their father Uranus. As early as the late seventh-century BC, the Cyclopes could be used by the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus to epitomize extraordinary size and strength. The names that Hesiod gives them: Arges (Bright), Brontes (Thunder), and Steropes (Lightning), reflect their fundamental role as thunderbolt makers. They made for Zeus his all-powerful thunderbolt, and in so doing, the Cyclopes played a key role in the Greek succession myth, which told how the Titan Cronus overthrew his father Uranus, and how in turn Zeus overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans, and how Zeus was eventually established as the final and permanent ruler of the cosmos. 700 BC), described three Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who were the sons of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), and the brothers of the Titans and Hundred-Handers, and who had a single eye set in the middle of their foreheads. "The Forge of the Cyclopes", a Dutch 16th-century print after a painting by Titian A scholiast, quoting the fifth-century BC historian Hellanicus, tells us that, in addition to the Hesiodic Cyclopes (whom the scholiast describes as "the gods themselves"), and the Homeric Cyclopes, there was a third group of Cyclopes: the builders of the walls of Mycenae. ![]() Cyclopes were also said to have been the builders of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. In Homer's Odyssey, the Cyclopes are an uncivilized group of shepherds, one of whom, Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, is encountered by Odysseus. ![]() In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are the three brothers: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, sons of Uranus and Gaia, who made for Zeus his characteristic weapon, the thunderbolt. Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished: the Hesiodic, the Homeric and the wall-builders. The third-century BC poet Callimachus makes the Hesiodic Cyclopes the assistants of smith-god Hephaestus as does Virgil in the Latin epic Aeneid, where he seems to equate the Hesiodic and Homeric Cyclopes.įrom at least the fifth century BC, Cyclopes have been associated with the island of Sicily and the volcanic Aeolian Islands. In Cyclops, the fifth-century BC play by Euripides, a chorus of satyrs offers comic relief based on the encounter of Odysseus and Polyphemus. Cyclopes were also famous as the builders of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. In Homer's Odyssey, they are an uncivilized group of shepherds, the brethren of Polyphemus encountered by Odysseus. In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are the three brothers Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who made for Zeus his weapon the thunderbolt. Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished. In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, the Cyclopes ( / s aɪ ˈ k l oʊ p iː z/ sy- KLOH-peez Greek: Κύκλωπες, Kýklōpes, "Circle-eyes" or "Round-eyes" singular Cyclops / ˈ s aɪ k l ɒ p s/ SY-klops Κύκλωψ, Kýklōps) are giant one-eyed creatures. A first century AD head of a Cyclops from the Roman Colosseum ![]()
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