Cyclopes

Pronunciation

The Uranian Cyclopes

The most complete ancient account of the Uranian Cyclopes comes from Hesiod’s Theogony.^[4] These Cyclopes, named Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, were the children of Gaia and Uranus and were imprisoned beneath the earth by their father. Eventually, however, they were freed by Zeus and the Olympians, whom they subsequently helped in their war against the Titans.

The Uranian Cyclopes were great craftsmen; they fashioned the weapons of the gods, including the lightning bolts of Zeus. In later traditions, they were said to be assistants of Hephaestus, the god of the forge, and to have workshops in the great volcanoes of Sicily. There, they produced arms and ornaments for gods and heroes, shaking the towns of Sicily with their hammering.^[5]

While Hesiod told of only three Cyclopes born to Uranus and Gaia, some later sources listed additional Cyclopes (possibly the sons of the original three).

Though the Uranian Cyclopes were usually thought to be immortal—they were, after all, children of the primordial gods Uranus and Gaia—there were various ancient traditions that told of their deaths. In the most familiar version, Apollo killed the Cyclopes because they fashioned the lightning bolt Zeus used to kill Apollo’s son Asclepius.^[6] In other traditions, Zeus killed the Cyclopes to prevent them from making lightning and thunder for anyone else.^[7]

The Sicilian Cyclopes

The Sicilian Cyclopes were quite different from their Uranian counterparts. They were savage shepherds living somewhere west of Greece; in the earliest literature, it is not clear exactly where they made their home, but later sources located them on the island of Sicily, by Mount Etna.^[8] In most traditions, the Sicilian Cyclopes were sons of Poseidon, the god of the sea.^[9] Thus, the Uranian Cyclopes and the Sicilian Cyclopes had different parents.

It was the Sicilian Cyclopes that the hero Odysseus encountered on his way home from Troy. Homer describes them as 

an overweening and lawless folk, who, trusting in the immortal gods, plant nothing with their hands nor plough; but all these things spring up for them without sowing or ploughing, wheat, and barley, and vines, which bear the rich clusters of wine, and the rain of Zeus gives them increase. Neither assemblies for council have they, nor appointed laws, but they dwell on the peaks of lofty mountains in hollow caves, and each one is lawgiver to his children and his wives, and they reck nothing one of another.^[10]

Though Homer never says so explicitly, these Cyclopes must have been one-eyed (the myth of Odysseus’ blinding of Polyphemus would make no sense otherwise). They were also huge and extremely strong. 

However, the similarities between Homer’s Sicilian Cyclopes and Hesiod’s Uranian Cyclopes end there. With no knowledge of civilization or any kind of craft, the brutish Sicilian Cyclopes were virtually the antithesis of the Uranian ones, who functioned primarily as craftsmen. The Sicilian Cyclopes were imagined as cruel, impious, and imbued with cannibalistic tendencies; one of them, Polyphemus, imprisoned Odysseus and his men and even ate several of them.

The Hand-to-Mouth Cyclopes, or the Wall-Builders

Ancient sources referred to the third breed of Cyclopes as either “Gasterocheires” or “Cheirogastores,” meaning “Hand-to-Mouthers” (or, more literally, “Belly-Handers”)—a reference to the fact that they earned their food by working with their hands.^[11] According to the geographer Strabo, there were seven of these Cyclopes.^[12]

Little can be said definitively about the origins and descent of these Cyclopes. They may well have been related to the Uranian Cyclopes, as both breeds shared significant similarities: most notably, both were craftsmen who distinguished themselves in the service of gods and heroes. According to the fifth-century BCE historian Hellanicus, these Cyclopes were named for Uranus’ son Cyclops, but the identity of this “Cyclops,” and his relationship to the other Cyclopes, remains a mystery.^[13]

The “Hand-to-Mouth” Cyclopes were usually said to come from somewhere in the East. Strabo claimed that they were from Lycia in southern Anatolia.^[14] Others said that they were originally from the region of Thrace, just northeast of Greece.^[15] Still others insisted that the hero Perseus first brought them to Greece from the island of Seriphos, where he grew up.^[16]

Wherever they came from, the Cyclopes made a name for themselves by building some of the great cities and fortifications of mythical Greece. The walls of cities such as Mycenae,^[17] Tiryns,^[18] and Argos,^[19] for example, were attributed to them. 

These great fortifications—which can still be seen today—were built of large, unworked boulders fitted closely together without mortar. The style of the workmanship, which would have entailed moving extraordinarily heavy boulders, seems to have sparked the imagination of the ancient Greeks, who concluded that only a creature as large and strong as a Cyclops would have been up to the task. To this day, such architecture is referred to as “Cyclopean Masonry.”

These Cyclopes were also credited with other works, among them certain labyrinths built into the caves of Nauplia (a coastal town in the eastern Peloponnese)^[20] and a stone sculpture of Medusa’s head.^[21] They were also sometimes dubbed the inventors of fortification towers, bronze working, and iron working.^[22]