Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

312 The Kyklops of the East and West

Kyklopes of Sicily and Italy had originally one large circular eye
in the middle of the forehead1 (fig. 249)1 This is throughout the
prevailing type of the Kyklops in Greek and Latin literature.
But with vase-paintings, wall-paintings, engraved gems, bas-reliefs
and sculpture in the round the case was different. Here a growing
sense of artistic fitness prescribed, first that the Kyklops should
have his normal eyes, whether shut or open, as well as his abnormal
eye3, and last that his abnormal eye should dwindle away into
nothing, leaving him two-eyed like other folk4. Thus it comes
about that Servius in the fourth century A.D. can write : ' Many say
that Polyphemos had one eye, others that he had two, others

Fig. 249.

again that he had three; but the whole tale is a make-belief5.'
Virgil, in the passage on which Servius was commenting, adheres
to the original conception of the western Kyklops and speaks of his
eye as—

1 In the case of Polyphemos this is implied by Od. 9. 333, 383, 387, 394, 397, 453,
503, 516, 525, and stated in Kratin. Odysses frag. 14 Meineke, Eur. Cycl. 77, Lyk. At.
659 f. with Tzetz. ad loc, Theokr. 6. 22, 36, n. 33, 53, Philostr. mai. imagg. 2. 18. 2,
Anth. Pal. 14. 132. 2, 7, Ov. met. 13. 772 f. The Homeric Kyklopes in general had one
eye, according to Strab. 21. The Kyklopes of Aitne are one-eyed in Eur. Cycl. 21Y.;
those of Lipara in Kallim. h. Artem. 52 f. ; Brontes, Steropes, and Arges in Hes. theog.
144 f. Eustath. in Od. pp. 1392, 36 ff., 1622, 39 ff. inclines to regard Polyphemos as
irepocpdaX/xop, not [xovbcpdakfxov; cp. Guido de Columna (1287 A.D.), who in his account
of the Trojan war gives Polyphemos two eyes and makes Odysseus pluck out one of them
(W. Grimm in the Abh. d. berl. Akad. 1837 Phil.-hist. Classe p. 27).

2 Mon. d. Inst, ix pi. 15, 7, W. Helbig in the Ann. d. Inst. 1870 xlii. 41 f., 74
a wall-painting in an Etruscan tomb at Corneto.

a Roscher Lex. Myth. i. 1588, ii. 1685, iii. 2703 ff., 2711 f.

4 Roscher id. ii. 1685, Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. i. 1695.

5 Serv. in Verg. Aen. 3. 636, Myth. Vat. 2. 174.