Polyphemus the Cyclops’ Anatomy & Dark Lore Explained - Was He Truly the Monster of The Odyssey?

[00:00:01]Now, these are the gods.

[00:00:04]Keep us free.

[00:00:06]>> Listen, I know how excited we all are to watch Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey on the big screen, but before you book your tickets, let's take a closer look at the one who was arguably the biggest reason Odysius's journey home took over a decade. Yep, the Cyclops. Now, we've all heard about him, and I'm sure there are people far nerdier than me who have simply read everything there is to know about the Cyclops, but my job today is to keep things simple. We're going back to the basics, folks. Like, why did this guy have only one eye? How did that even work? And more importantly, how exactly did he become the monster we know him as today? So, let's rewind a few thousand years and see how one of Greek mythologyy's most iconic monsters came to be. And one of the most interesting parts of today's video will be how Christopher Nolan realized the monster on screen. It's going to be a fascinating video, folks. So, without wasting another second, let's get right into it.

[00:01:06]What is Polyphimas's origin story in Greek myth and the Odyssey? In Greek myth and literature, the Cyclops are a race of oneeyed giants. In fact, the name of these monsters stems from the Greek word kylo which means circle and ops referring to the eye. The translation is pretty simple, circle-eyed or round eye. And this hinted at the single eye in the middle of the forehead, which is the defining trait of these creatures. Now, there are two well-known sources about how cyclopes were related to the god of the sea, horses, and earthquakes, Osiden.

[00:01:38]First we've got the Greek poet Heidi's Theogyny according to which there were three elder cyclopes namely Stropes, Brontes and Argies which means lightning, thunder and bright flash respectively. These elder cyclopes or the first generation were the children of Uranus and Gaia and were treated as primordial deities and became the weaponsmith of the Greek gods including Poseidon, Zeus and Hades. However, through his writing, Homer established a more direct connection, and intriguingly in his version, it's the gods who get supremacy. Homer stated that the second generation cyclopes were shepherds with cannibalistic habits who lived a harsh pastoral life near Sicily, and that they descended from Poseidon. And one of the cyclopes was Poseidon's son. Yep, he became famous as the oneeyed monster, and his name was Polyphimis, a name in Poseidon's family tree. Polyphimas was the son of Poseidon and the sea nymph, Thoua. The thing is, Polyphimas was born as a Cyclops and it was accepted as normal because the Cyclopes were already an established race in Greek mythology.

[00:02:40]His deformed appearance wasn't looked at as some sort of punishment or curse. And book nine of Homer's Odyssey gives us details about how Polyphimas lived in isolation from the other Cyclopes in a cave on the island. He was portrayed as an univilized man-e-ing giant, which was consistent with how Homer depicted the race as barbaric beings. Also, fun fact about his name. Polyphimmis translates to rich in songs and legends according to Britannica. And Ovid's Polyphimas did love Galatea, the Nerriad nymph whom he tried to woo with music. So, how did Polyphimas cross paths with Odysius?

[00:03:14]While traveling home, Odysius and his 12 companions sought shelter in a cave, and lo and behold, it was full of food.

[00:03:21]Cheese, lambs, and milk awaited the hungry sailors. Of course, no brownie points for guessing that this was Polyphimas's cave. And when he returned with his flock and blocked the cave's entrance with a giant boulder, basically to protect his herd from escaping, Odysius and his men became trapped inside. And when he noticed, Odysius tried to plead with Polyphimmis, citing the Greek logic of hospitality.

[00:03:42]Polyphimmas didn't care. He then devoured about half the men in 6 days.

[00:03:47]And Odysius knew he had to do something to get out of there. Being the genius he was, he came up with a plan. He offered Polyphimas some strong wine to get him drunk, which he got as a gift from Meon, a priest of Apollo. Then he and his companions heated an olivewood steak in the fire and drove it right through Polyphimas's eye while he slept, blinding him. Earlier, when Polyphimas had asked for Odysius's name, the clever Odysius had replied, "Nobody." So when Polyphimas started yelling in the night that nobody was killing him, the others thought he was suffering from some divine affliction and didn't come to help. The next morning, Polyphimas removed the boulder from his cave so his rams could go out to pasture. He felt each animals back to prevent the Greeks from escaping, but Odysius and his men clung to the unders sides of the rams and escaped. However, when they made it back to their ship, Odysius made a blunder out of pride and revealed his true identity. He instantly recognized the name and the prophecy of Telmus, who had told that Polyphimas would lose his sight. He then prayed to his father Poseidon and furious over what Odysius had done to his son, the sea god condemned him to lose all his companions and roam the seas for years before finally returning to Ithaca alone.

[00:04:57]You're dead.

[00:04:58]>> I'm going to kill all of you.

[00:05:00]>> How big and physically powerful is Polyphimis supposed to be? Homer never explicitly stated how tall or heavy Polyphemis was. And it's not exactly like he was hitting the gym to stay in shape. Cyclopes, simply by virtue of their nature, are unbelievably strong when he used that boulder to seal the cave's entry point. Homer described its enormity by saying that 22 sturdy four-w wheeled wagons couldn't have lifted it from the ground. But for Polyphimis, it was like rolling a toy car along the floor. This alone tells us that the creature we're talking about has a skeletal frame and muscle mass on an entirely different level than any humans. Polyphimas then effortlessly tended to the vast flock. And when he didn't heed Odysius's argument of Greek hospitality, he simply grabbed Odysius's soldiers two at a time and smashed them on the ground with bare hands before feasting on them. I mean, can we even fathom the size of the hand that was capable of gripping adult male warriors?

[00:05:56]And his grip was so powerful that it crushed their bones when he slammed them on the ground. But wait, there's an even better display of Polyphimmis' immense strength. When Odysius was escaping on his ship, Homer said that if the Cyclops had managed to hear or see the departing crew clearly, he could have hurled a jagged rock with enough force to crush both the crew and the ship itself. And almost to underline that assertion, Polyphimmis broke the peak of a mountain off and hurled it at the vessel. That's right. He tore up a mountain. The rock crashed into the sea just ahead of the ship, and the impact was so violent that the surge pushed Odysius and his men back towards the shore. Then Polyphimmis lifted an even larger stone and then threw it with what Homer called measurless strength. It barely missed the stern of the ship, but the force of its impact turned the sea and drove the ship even further landward. Odysius managed to seize the ore and coordinated with his men to row as hard as possible and finally escape Polyphimas's wrath.

[00:06:53]There's also a tale about when Galatea rejected Polyphimas for the shepherd Asus and he found the pair together. He was so angry that he crushed the boy under a stove. What does Polyphimas's single eye really mean for his senses and tactics? Cyclopes were known for having one big eye, but it was never explicitly stated that Polyphimis had one eye. In fact, according to Althanosios Fergados in Hessiad's Verbal Craft 2020, Theocritus' Idol 11 presented Polyphimis with two eyes and he lost one of them in an accident before Odysius ever landed on his island. Now, popular retelling and interpretations have established that Cyclopes had one eye to ensure that Odysius could simply blind him and take away most of his power. Because that single eye that we believe Polyphimas had was his greatest strength before becoming his greatest weakness before Adysius. And that's exactly why Homer built the entire encounter around that one eye, albeit in a puzzling manner. To quote the text, "Even so, we took the fiery pointed stakes and whirled it around in his eye, and the blood flowed around the heated thing, and his eyelids holy, and his brows roundabout did the flame singe, as the eyeball burned, and its roots crackled in the fire. So, we're essentially talking about one eye, but using the plural for the brows and eyelids. Yeah, I know. Confusing, right?

[00:08:14]But let me tell you why the one eye concept worked out perfectly. Speaking biologically, having one eye right in the center of the face would have given Polyphimas a broad field of vision, though the depth perception would have been extremely compromised. But this guy lived his life in open pastures and mostly inside of his cave, of which he knew every inch. So, the trade-off between the range of vision versus the depth wouldn't have mattered much. As long as his single eye was working, the Cyclops was almost impossible to beat.

[00:08:42]And that's exactly why Odysius never tries to fight him head on. Instead, he hit that giant where it would hurt the most, because the real problem was the redundancy, or rather the lack of it.

[00:08:52]You see, humans have two eyes, and even if they lose one, they can still see.

[00:08:56]But Polyphimas only had one chance. And in a single strike, he lost his entire visual system, which rendered him almost helpless. From there on, Polyphimas began to rely on his other senses like touch and hearing. And that's exactly why he was feeling the back of every lamb in the morning when he woke up blind. And when Odysius called out from the ship, he tried aiming the rock by following his voice. And it almost worked. Was there more to Polyphimmis than his strength? Absolutely yes.

[00:09:26]Despite being a giant, Polyphimis was actually quite clever. For starters, he learned to adapt to his environment and lived as a self-sufficient pastoralist and even tended to his own flocks. He was also pretty resourceful. To quote the Odyssey, he drove part of his flocks inside, the milking you and milking goats, but left the rams and he goats outside in the fenced yard. Then he sat down and began to milk the you and the bleeding goats, all in due order, and he put the young ones to their mothers.

[00:09:53]Half the milk he now curdled, gathered the kurd, and laid it in plated baskets.

[00:09:57]The other half he left standing in the vessels, meaning to take and drink it at his supper. Having quickly dispatched these tasks of his, he rekindled the fire. This clearly suggests that Polyphimas was comfortable in his way of life and knew the basics of survival.

[00:10:11]Moreover, when he discovered the intruders, Polyphimas acted quickly and with brute force. He was even intelligent enough to ask Odysius about the location of his sheep and said, "When you came here, where did you mor your ship? Was it at some far point of the shore or was it near here?" That's a simple question, but it proves that Polyphimas was already thinking about stopping them from escaping. What do Polyphimas' eating habits tell us about how Greek myth marks a monster? In standard Greek mythology, eating raw meat was a sign of a beastial nature and univilized culture. There's a term omopagia which means consumption of raw flesh. It was an element of Dionisiac myth and eating uncooked meat was considered a symbol of victory of wildness over civilization. You know, like a sign that marked the breaking down of the boundaries that existed between civil life and nature. Sometimes it was seen as a sort of association with the god. But from what I gather, the Dionisiac diet of eating raw meat might have been primarily connected to Dionis himself rather than his followers because there's barely any solid historical proof that they too consumed the same kind of food. And Greek legends have used food time and time again to set the contrast between humans and creatures. Food became the tool that separated man from beast and from God, too. According to Greek belief, the gods received meat directly from the sacrificial altar and consumed that meat in its raw or unburnt form, while humans ate only cooked or processed foods like wine and cheese. Now, the creatures who were anim animalistic ate raw meat, which proved their savagery and a complete disregard for the laws and gifts bestowed by the Olympian gods. Let me tell you the story of the banquet of mechanized theogyny. This was the mythical event that marked the beginning of the Greek practice of animal sacrifice. As it so happened at Meccane, the Titan Prometheus slaughtered a bull and divided it into two halves. One of them contained the best portion of meat hidden inside the animal's stomach, and the other part consisted of bare bones covered in a thick layer of fat.

[00:12:13]Arguably, Prometheus deceived Zeus into taking the burnt bones and fat of the sacrificed animal, thereby allowing the humans to keep and eat the refined cooked meat. According to the myth, this marked the beginning of the Greek tradition known as the cuisine of sacrifice. This started the custom where the Greeks were nourished by sacrificial smells and ambrosia nectar while humans ate the cooked meat and bread while wild beasts devoured raw flesh. In fact, cannibalism was considered to be a huge taboo in Greek mythology. Based on one version, Tantalus killed his son Pelops and served him as food to test whether the gods were truly omniscient. It's said that all of them except Deer recognized the deception and punished Tantalus for this horrific crime by condemning him to eternal torment in the underworld where he stood in a pool of water that receded whenever he tried to drink and beneath a branch full of fruits which lifted beyond his reach whenever he tried to eat. The gods also restored Pelops to life and replaced his missing shoulder with one made of ivory.

[00:13:10]The fact that Polyphimas ate Odysius's men solidified his status as a monster, one who didn't even respect the Zenia, a sacred code of guest friendship, where hosts were obligated to provide strangers with food, a bath, and a safe bed before even asking their names, and guests were required to show respect and offer parting gifts in return. The law was overseen by Zeus Xenos. And as I said before, when Odysius tried to evoke this law, Polyphimis stated, "A fool art thou, stranger, or art come from afar, seeing that thou bidest me either to fear or to shun the gods." For the cyclopes wreck not of Zeus, who bears the aegis, nor of the blessed gods, since verily we are better far than they, nor would I, to shun the wrath of Zeus, spare either thee or thy comrades, unless my own heart should bid me. Once again, his rejection of the gods and their rules and the practice of eating uncooked flesh tells us that Polyphimas was an outandout monster, at least in Homer's Odyssey. How do the cyclopes as a race live? And where does Polyphimmas sit inside that social anatomy? Yes, Polyphimmas was absolutely terrifying.

[00:14:20]But wait until you hear how Homer described the lifestyle of the Cyclopes.

[00:14:23]Unlike the civilized Greeks whose cities functioned on laws, customs, councils, and shared responsibilities, the Cyclops society was almost anarchical in nature.

[00:14:33]They were lawless beings who neither cultivated nor built cities, let alone public assemblies. They had no king or leader to guide them, and this was seen as a huge culture shock to the tightly hierarchized human towns. They had a clear ranking system which assigned every god, mortal, nymph, titan, and monster a particular place within the cosmic order. But the cyclopes behaved as an untamed society and instead of working as a unified group, they preferred living in isolation. They simply lived side by side with no social bonds which prevented them from forming a community. Each cyclops lived in its own mountain cave with its family and ruled its household however they wished.

[00:15:11]They didn't even use the land and natural harbors surrounding their island, and neither did they try to build ships for better communication with the rest of the world. The distanced attitude of the Cyclops is accentuated when Odysius blinds Polyphimas. As I said, when the neighboring Cyclops heard Polyphimas screaming nobody was hurting them, they left it at that and returned to their business. None of them cared enough to investigate or to go check on Polyphimmis. And that reveals a lot about Cyclopian society. Yes, they belonged to the same race, but they had no sense of attachment or collectivity among them. And Polyphimmis was just one among many oneeyed giants that lived there. Since there was no stratification, Polyphimas wasn't given any special position in the Cyclope society, even though his father was an Olympian god. How have artists and storytellers redrawn Polyphimas's body over the centuries? Surprisingly, Homer didn't give us a solid description of Polyphimas's appearance. All we know is that he was a giant shepherd with a single orblike eye in the middle of his forehead. However, this lack of detail became a thriving ground for artists.

[00:16:15]And over the centuries, Polyphimas' appearance has become an object of imagination and evolved with the stories that were told about him. If we go back to the ancient Greek vase paintings, Polyphimas was depicted as a huge muscular giant and the eye became his defining feature. Now, when the Greek mythology and Polyphemis' story continued to inspire artists for generations, the Cyclops began to experience a change in portrayal.

[00:16:39]Renaissance painters invented the nuance Homer left out, portraying him as a tall, well-built man whose only sign of monstrosity was his eye. For an example, let's talk about Nicholas Pen's painting landscaped with Polyphimis of 1649. We can see the giants hovering around the lush green scenery, and they looked completely animalistic, frightening the women around. Later, when craftsmen began to be influenced by Theocritus' idol 11 and ovid's metamorphoses, they began depicting Polyphimis as an obsessed lover who was hopelessly attracted to the cymph Galatia. His cannibalistic side was somewhat suppressed. And in these stories, he even combed his hair and trimmed his beard to make himself look presentable.

[00:17:19]In Gustav Mororrow's Galatia of 1880, you can see Polyphimas looking pretty handsome with jewels and a soft, almost surrendering expression. In fact, he was given three eyes in this painting with the third working more like an adornment. However, later artistic styles leaned back into the horrific look for Polyphimis and used it to evoke horror featuring him with heavy brows and distorted body proportions. For example, modern adaptations like films and video games emphasize his grotesque size and brutish appearance. Take Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters as an example.

[00:17:52]The movie portrayed Polyphimas as a weathered giant with a big single eye.

[00:17:56]His face was like that of an ogre.

[00:17:58]However, children's books and animated adaptations often soften this design by toning down the gore and replacing it with slapstick humor. In Nolan's The Odyssey, what does Polyphemis' anatomy and behavior tell us about how Nolan reads the Cyclops? Dude, it's Christopher Nolan we're talking about.

[00:18:17]Of course, he's going to use Polyphemis as significantly as possible in the Odyssey. And no, he's not going to simply treat him like a giant monster picked up from the myths. rather with Polyphimis. Nolan tried to answer an unsettling question when it comes to ambiguous portrayal of the creature.

[00:18:31]While talking about the Cyclops sequence in an interview with Empire, the director said, "Everything about the Cyclops sequence is aimed at trying to imagine what would this be like in real life. Not approaching it from a storybook or cartoony point of view, but really trying to be in there with Odysius and his men. It's a horrifying situation." This idea shaped the entire journey of how Nolan wanted to create his Polyphimmis. the design, the behavior, everything. He wanted the Cyclops to feel like a real physical threat. And thus, instead of going by fantasy creatures, Nolan used animatronics, puppetry, and practical effects to create the threatening aura of Polyphemis. He made sure audiences felt the danger as much as Odysius did.

[00:19:13]He even made a massive 60-foot contraption which allowed the actors to react to something tangible rather than using an imaginary creature added later.

[00:19:21]And I mean, understandable. The man has never been too fond of using CGI. Nolan stated that he took inspiration from Guo Del Toro's monster design, and to quote, "I was very inspired by Gumo Del Toro."

[00:19:33]What I learned from him is that a monster isn't a monster. You have to approach them the way you approach any other character. And once you watch the movie, you'll realize how that influence worked out because Nolan's Polyphimas feels like a living being with his own instincts and physical presence. His enormous body and animall-like movements, topped off with the one eye, makes him feel less like a predator that Odysius and his men have accidentally entered the territory of. Nolan's Cyclops appearance also draws from one of the darkest images in Western art, namely Francisco Goya's Saturn devouring his son. Nolan explained, "That was very much the inspiration. We had it up on the wall. Whenever we brought in a new technology, this was the first thing we showed them." Similar to Goya's Saturn, Nolan's Polyphimmis is also built around the horror of a human-like figure committing an inhuman act. He further grounded this horror through the environment, and instead of recreating a cave, they filmed inside Neestor's cave in Msina, Greece. But boy, was it tough.

[00:20:31]As he explained, I've built a lot of caves before. Shooting in a real cave, the feeling is utterly different. Once the rock is moved across the door and you're in the dark, it's very, very oppressive. It gave it a sense of realty. In a sense, the cave becomes an extension of Polyphimas' anatomy in the movie, and the darkness adds to the horror that is lurking. Nolan made his actors work with fire light and limited visibility to capture their fear and confusion. And honestly, it's a suffocating sequence. Sadly though, guys, that's all we got for you today.

[00:21:02]Polyphimmis is one of the biggest turning points in Odysius's journey. And over the generations, his story, appearance, and even his nature have been reimagined in countless ways. But what Christopher Nolan has done with him is honestly so damn interesting, I can't even begin to explain it without spoiling the experience. So, I'll leave it for you to discover. Also, I know mythological stories change from one version to another. So, if you have any theories, interpretations, or versions that you think fit better than what we discussed today, we'd love to hear them in the comment section down below. And if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe because that's the best way to tell us you want to see more stuff like this. Otherwise, thanks for watching. Stay safe out there, and we'll see you next time.