Odysseus and the Cyclops

Part One · The Cave

The cave smelled like a thousand wet socks that had been marinated in cheese, and any sensible sailor would have turned around at the entrance, but Odysseus was inquisitive by nature, and his curiosity had already cost him ten years of wandering since the war at Troy. A ferocious storm had carried his twelve ships far beyond every chart his navigators possessed, and on a steep green island dotted with goats he had noticed a thin column of smoke rising from a distant cavern. He left eleven ships anchored in a sheltered bay and chose twelve volunteers to come with him, carrying a goatskin of exceptionally dark wine as a gift for whoever lived there. His companions urged him to be cautious, but Odysseus insisted that Greek tradition obligated every host to treat travelers generously, which turned out to be the most catastrophic prediction of his life.

Inside, the cavern was enormous, and its walls were crowded with baskets of cheese, pens of bleating lambs, and wooden buckets of fresh milk, so the crew whispered that they should seize whatever they could carry and retreat to the ship immediately. Odysseus refused, convinced that the owner would reward their politeness with a feast. At sunset the ground began to tremble, and then to shake, and a gigantic shepherd the size of a small hill ducked through the entrance, driving an immense flock of sheep ahead of him. He was a Cyclops named Polyphemus, a son of the sea god Poseidon, and a single round eye the size of a dinner plate glared from the middle of his forehead. After the animals were safely inside he rolled a boulder across the doorway, a slab so massive that twenty wagons could not have budged it, and the last stripe of daylight vanished like a candle being pinched out.

Polyphemus kindled a fire, and its flickering glow revealed twelve Greek sailors huddled in the corner, trying to look like furniture. His voice resembled an avalanche tumbling down a staircase as he demanded to know who they were and why they had trespassed in his kitchen. Odysseus answered respectfully, explaining that they had been driven off course and pleading for the hospitality that Zeus himself commanded. The giant laughed so violently that dust rained from the ceiling. He declared that Cyclopes feared neither Zeus nor any other deity and intended to do precisely as they pleased. Then he reached down, scooped up two sailors in one enormous fist, and the cave went horribly quiet. When the monster had finished, he stretched out among his sheep and fell asleep, snoring so thunderously that the lambs shivered. Odysseus lay motionless, and his mind began to calculate.

At first Odysseus considered drawing his sword and stabbing the sleeping giant, but he quickly recognized, with a cold prickle down his neck, that such an attack would doom everyone, because nobody in the cave could possibly shift that boulder, and the survivors would slowly starve behind it. The monster would have to be outwitted rather than overpowered. In the morning the giant took two more of the crew, milked his ewes with a contented hum, and herded the flock toward the pastures, replacing the stone behind him as casually as a man closing a refrigerator door. All day the prisoners waited in the gloom while Odysseus examined every corner of the cavern, and he eventually noticed an enormous club of green olive wood, as long as the mast of a ship, which the giant had cut for a walking stick. He ordered his men to saw off a section, and together they sharpened one end into a deadly point.

Part Two · The Name

They concealed the sharpened pole beneath the straw and waited, and the waiting was the most agonizing part. That evening Polyphemus stomped inside, grabbed two more sailors, and licked his lips contentedly, and Odysseus stepped out of the shadows with the goatskin of wine, behaving as though nothing at all had happened. The Cyclops had never tasted anything so delicious. He drank one bowl, hiccupped, and demanded another, and then a third. Between hiccups he asked for the stranger's name, promising a generous gift in exchange. Odysseus smiled and answered calmly that his name was Nobody. The giant grinned, displaying teeth the color of old butter. His gift, he announced, would be to eat Nobody last, after all of Nobody's friends. It was the most terrible joke in the history of the world, and it was about to save their lives.

The wine did its work. Polyphemus swayed, giggled, and toppled over backward with a crash that bounced the sheep off the walls, and he began to snore with his enormous mouth hanging open. Odysseus did not hesitate; he and four of his strongest companions thrust the point of the olive pole into the embers until it glowed fiercely red, then hoisted it, sprinted across the cavern, and jabbed it at the giant's single eye. Polyphemus woke with a bellow that shook the mountain and set the entire flock stampeding in circles, while the men scattered into the shadows, and he flung the pole aside and groped blindly around the cave, roaring for assistance. Other Cyclopes lived among the surrounding hills, and they came thundering to the entrance and called through the stone to ask what the racket was. Was someone stealing his sheep? Was someone attempting to harm him by trickery or by force?

From inside the cavern, Polyphemus bellowed his reply at the top of his voice. Nobody was hurting him! Nobody was attacking him by treachery! Nobody, Nobody, NOBODY! The giants outside glanced at one another in bewilderment, and then they shrugged, reasoning that if nobody was harming him, he must simply be ill, and illness was a matter for the gods rather than for neighbors. They advised him to pray to his father Poseidon, and wandered back to their own beds. Down in the straw, Odysseus had to press both hands over his mouth to keep from howling with laughter; but the danger was far from over. The boulder still blocked the exit, and the furious giant rolled it aside himself and sat in the opening with his arms spread wide, certain that he would catch the prisoners the moment they attempted to sneak past him.

Part Three · The Flock

That night Odysseus lay awake again, thinking so hard that he nearly gave himself a headache, because the giant could not see but he could certainly feel, and he would seize anyone who tried to tiptoe through that doorway. Then Odysseus noticed the rams, the largest and woolliest animals in the flock, each of them thick enough to conceal a grown man. Working silently, he tied them together in groups of three with flexible willow twigs, and he fastened one sailor beneath the middle animal of each group, hanging on with fingers knotted deep in the fleece. For himself he selected the finest ram of all, a magnificent beast with wool like a thick winter blanket. He climbed underneath it and waited for the dawn, barely daring to breathe, while the sheep around him went baa-ing quietly in their sleep.

When morning arrived, the flock pushed toward the entrance as usual, and Polyphemus sat in the doorway and patted the back of every animal that passed. He felt the thick wool and the broad spines, and it never occurred to him to check underneath. One by one the rams carried the sailors out, with their feet dragging and their hearts pounding, and Odysseus came last, clinging to the biggest ram of all. That animal walked slowly, and the giant stopped it and rubbed its head with his enormous hand, speaking to it sorrowfully. Why, he asked, was it the last to leave when it was normally the first? Why it was the last to leave when it was normally the first. Could it sense his suffering? If only the ram could speak, it might reveal where Nobody was hiding. A single drop of sweat rolled off Odysseus's nose and landed on the floor, and then the giant released the animal, and Odysseus emerged into the dazzling sunshine.

Once they were safely away from the cave, Odysseus dropped to the ground and freed his companions, and together they gathered as many of the giant's sheep as they could drive down to the shore. The crew waiting on the ship cheered at the sight of them, and then wept for the six friends who had been lost. Odysseus told everyone there was no time for grief. They hauled the sheep aboard, dipped their oars, and pushed away from the island as rapidly as they could row, and everything had succeeded so magnificently that Odysseus was bursting with pride. He was so delighted with his own cleverness that he forgot the most important lesson of all, which is that a truly wise person knows when to remain silent.

When the ship was barely out of reach of the giant's arm, Odysseus stood up on the deck and shouted across the water, mocking the Cyclops for being deceived by a trick with a name. His crew begged him to stop, because they were still close enough for a hurled rock to shatter the vessel; Odysseus would not listen. Polyphemus, following the sound of that voice, tore the summit from a hill and flung it, and it crashed into the sea right in front of the prow. The enormous wave it created swept the ship straight back toward the shore. The sailors had to row with all their strength to escape. Even so, Odysseus was not satisfied. His arrogance had made him reckless, and he could not resist shouting one more time, though his men seized him and clapped their hands over his mouth.

Odysseus tore free and cupped his hands around his mouth, and he announced the entire truth. If anyone ever asked who had blinded him, the giant should say it was Odysseus, the sacker of cities, son of Laertes, and king of Ithaca. Polyphemus went very still. Then he turned his sightless face to the sky and called upon his father. He begged Poseidon to make sure that Odysseus never reached his home, or, if fate insisted that he must, to let him arrive late, alone, and aboard a stranger's ship, to find nothing but trouble waiting. Far below the waves, the sea god heard every word. From that moment on, every wave that Odysseus crossed seemed a little colder and every wind a little meaner, and the voyage that should have taken days would last ten more years. So much for Nobody.