What is the summary of the cyclops?

Answer 1

The cyclopes are a race of Giants. The cyclopes each had a single eye. The earliest cyclopes were Titans, the sons of Uranus and Gaia written about by Hesiod. Brontes, Steropes and Arges were associated, respectively, with thunder, lightning and brightness. These three giants are credited with lending these qualities to Zeus' thunderbolt when they forged it at their master Hephaestus's forge. They are also credited with Artemis' bow and arrows, Poseidon's trident and other weapons of the Greek gods. Though they are ill-tempered, Zeus values them for the loyalty they showed him when he overthrew his father and their brother Cronus as well as for their skill at the forge. In Greek myth, they are usually said to live on Lemnos with Hephaestos; in later Greek and in Roman traditions, they are said to live on Sicily with Hephaestos or Vulcan. The original cyclopes (or in some mythologies, Poseidon) gave birth to a race of sons -- no daughters, for some reason -- who were also cyclopes, but of lesser stature and power. These cyclopes lived with and served Hephaestus at his forge but were of far lesser skill than their fathers. Later legends had them losing all forging and other technological skills and instead living a life as primitive shepherds. Sometimes associated with the shepherd-cyclopes, Polyphemus is the only named cyclops besides the original three Titans. He is first discussed by Homer in "The Odyssey" when he imprisons Odysseus and several of his companions in a cave and starts to eat them. Odysseus alone escapes by first putting out Polyphemus's single eye, then masquerading as a sheep to escape. Later, the Alexandrian poet Theocritus wrote about Polyphemus's unrequited love for the nymph Galatea, who loves the youth Acis. According to Ovid in the even-later "Metamorphoses," Polyphemus murders Acis in a fit of rage. The Thracian cyclopes are much older than the Greek or Roman cyclopes and much stranger in appearance. In addition to the single eye, they were said to have hands growing out of their chests and were often referred to as the "hundred-handed." In some legends, they were born to Gaia and Uranus and thus were Titans. Here there are three only, Briareus, Cottus and Gyges, and they each have fifty heads as well as a hundred hands. In other Thracian legends, they are simply cyclopes with a hundred hands each and are credited with building the cyclopean walls found in Mycenaean ruins throughout Greece. These walls are amazing engineering feats, made of rough gigantic stone blocks lifted into place and then shaped slightly to fit in with adjacent stones using no masonry. Many of them still stand today. Cyclopes were not always giants nor were they always Greek. The Arimaspoi of Scythia were a race of one-eyed humans reputed to live in what is now Carpathia. The Hitotsume-kozo, or "one-eyed boys," were Japanese goblins about the size of a 10-year-old boy with a single central eye.