The Metamorphosis of Polyphemus

The Cyclops Polyphemus from the Antonine period 2nd - 3rd century CE photographed at the Capitoline Museum in Rome, Italy.

Depictions of the Cyclops Polyphemus have differed radically, depending on the literary genres in which he has appeared, and have given him an individual existence independent of the Homeric herdsman encountered by Odysseus. In the epic he was a man-eating monster dwelling in an unspecified land.

Some centuries later, a dithyramb by Philoxenus of Cythera, followed by several episodes by the Greek pastoral poets, created of him a comedic and generally unsuccessful lover of the water nymph Galatea. In the course of these he woos his love to the accompaniment of either a cithara or the pan-pipes. Such episodes take place on the island of Sicily, and it was here that the Latin poet Ovid also set the tragic love story of Polyphemus and Galatea recounted in the Metamorphoses.

Still later tradition made him the eventually successful husband of Galatea. According to some accounts, the Celts (Galati in Latin) were descended from their son Galatos, while Appian credited them with three children, Celtus, Illyrius and Galas, from whom descended the Celts, the Illyrians and the Gauls.  That their conjunction was fruitful is also implied in a later Greek epic from the turn of the 5th century CE. In the course of his Dionysiaca, Nonnus gives an account of the wedding of Poseidon and Beroe, at which the Nereid "Galatea twangled a marriage dance and restlessly twirled in capering step, and she sang the marriage verses, for she had learnt well how to sing, being taught by Polyphemos with a shepherd’s syrinx."

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The Blinding of Polyphemus at the Villa of Tiberius

Yesterday while researching the Pasquino group, I came across a picture of the sculptures depicting the blinding of Polyphemus, the cyclops, that was found in a grotto connected to the Villa of Tiberius.  According to Tacitus and Suetonius, the roof of the grotto collapsed while Tiberius was dining, and Sejanus rushed to save Tiberius, for which Tiberius in gratitude promoted him, launching his rise to power. Tiberius moved to Capri after 26 CE.

Some of the sculptures are now housed in the museum in Sperlonga and include the assault of Scylla on Odysseus' ship, the blinding of Polyphemus, the theft of the Palladium and Odysseus lifting Achilles's corpse. The works have been attributed to Rhodian sculptors Agesander, Athenedoros and Polydoros, and are thought to be the same authors of the group of "Laocoön and His Sons" (as attributed by Pliny the Elder). Yet whether the very same artists are responsible is questionable. Some scholars believe them to be related, but not the same people, apart from Athenedoros (II) who was the last to be credited as an artist on the Laocoon group, but first to be credited with the Scylla series – suggesting that he was the youngest during the creation of the Laocoon group, but eldest artist who worked on the Scylla group. Furthermore, the differentiation in 'classicism' between the two sets of works implies that one preceded the other with separation, and thus not all artists are the same people, but descendants.

Image: A cast of one of the so-called Sperlonga group, the legendary blinding of Polyphemus, at the Sperlonga Museum courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor steveilott.

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