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

The Kyklops of the East and West 313

Huge, lurking there alone 'neath his fell brow,
Like to some Argive shield or torch Phoebean1.

This last line draws from Servius the just remark that the one
simile refers to the size (and shape), the other to the glow, of
Polyphemos' eye: the 'Argive shield' was circular, and the 'torch
Phoebean' must be either the moon or the sun2. Parmenides in
one of his fragments mentions ' the round-eyed (literally kyklops)
moon3.' But it is more probable that Virgil is comparing the eye
of the Kyklops with the sun. Ovid does so expressly in the
Metamorphoses] where Polyphemos defends his claim to good looks
in the following lines :

One only eye my midmost forehead bears,

But like a mighty shield. Yea, all these things

Yon sun beholds, and with one only orb4.

Of course no simile or collection of similes can prove that the
Kyklops' eye stands for the sun in heaven. But we have seen
that according to one version, which can be traced back to Hesiod,
the Kyklopes were known as ' children of the Sky5'; that, in the
words of Hellanikos, they ' derived their name from one Kyklops,
whose father was the SkyG'; and that the Greeks regarded the sun
as the eye of the animate sky7. A presumption is thus raised that
we are on the right track in investigating the story of the Kyklops
as though it were a nature-myth and in identifying the round eye,
from which he took his name, with the shining orb of the sun8.

The distinction that I have drawn between the many-armed
Kyklopes of the east and the one-eyed Kyklopes of the west

1 Verg. Aen. 3. 636 f. v

2 Serv. in Verg. Aen. 3. 637.

3 Parm. frag. 10, 4 Diels £pya re kijkXwttos ir&jari irep'upoiTa creXrjpyjs.

4 Ov. met. 13. 851 ff.

5 Supra p. 303. 6 Supra p. 302. 7 Stipra p. 196f.

8 L. Frobenius Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes Berlin 1904!. 367—412, after a wide
survey of analogous myths all the world over, comes to the conclusion that the man-
eating ogre (or ogress), who lives in a cave and is a famous builder, must be regarded as a
star if he has one eye, as a constellation if he has many heads and arms: he is attacked
by the solar hero or sun-god, who wrests from him the means of making fire. On this
showing Odysseus would be the sun-god and Polyphemos a star ! W. Schwartz
Indogermanischer Volksglaube Berlin 1885 p. 169 ff. argues that one-eyed beings such
as the Kyklopes are storm-powers, their fiery eye denoting the lightning (see infra ch. ii
§ 3 (b)). W. H. Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 1689, 59 ff. suggests that the one eye of the
Kyklops refers to the crater of Mt. Aitne, and V. Berard Les Phdniciens et FOdyssee
Paris 1903 ii. 130 has given a similar volcanic explanation: cp. R. Browning Paracelsus
sc. 5 'groups I Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like, | Staring together with their
eyes on flame.' I follow W. Grimm 'Die Sage von Polyphem' in the Abh. d. berl.
Akad. 1857 Phil.-hist. Classe p. 27 and A. Kuhn Die Herabkttnft des Fetters und des
Gottertranks'1 Gutersloh 1886 p. 63.