His heart sank as he saw the great fireplace and the enormous soup pot, for he realized that whoever lived in this cave was very, very big. He heard a rumbling sound and raced back to the door of the cave, only to find it blocked by a boulder. There was no way to get out.
The end of the cave was dark. Far above him he saw what looked like a huge red lantern, and then he heard a loud, grating voice. “Welcome. Welcome. You’re invited to dinner, all of you.” Something splayed out of the darkness toward him. Fingers! As big as baling hooks. He felt them clamp around his waist, felt himself rising toward the great lantern.
The lantern was a huge, bloodshot eye. Under it was a great, grinning mouth with yellow fangs. Ulysses shuddered in the stinking gale of the monster’s breath. But he never panicked. The greater the peril, the better his mind worked.
“Good evening, sir,” he said. “We are honored to accept your invitation.”
“Good. Good. You understand who will be the main course, don’t you?”
“I do,” said Ulysses. “But you know, my men and I have just finished ten years of war and faced death more times than I can count. So we are not easily frightened.”
“Glad to hear it, captain. Brave men taste better. Cowards don’t have much flavor.”
“All I ask, good sir, is that you put me down again. I will explain things to my men, and we shall prepare our souls for the journey to Hades.”
“You’re a tough old buzzard, aren’t you?” asked the Cyclops. “Too tough for roasting, probably. You’ll do for the soup pot, though. Meant to use the turnspit boy, but he has to go to work again. I’m starved! I need an appetizer.”
He stooped suddenly, snatched at the floor with his other hand, and hauled up a sailor. Ulysses watched, horrified, as the struggling man was lifted to the great wet mouth. He had to keep watching as the monster ate the man raw, clothes and all.
“Don’t really like ’em that way,” said the Cyclops. He belched and spat buttons. “Like ’em well seasoned and browned on all sides. Down you go, captain. Speak to your men. I’m going to pick herbs: rosemary and sage, garlic and thyme. We’ll do things right tonight, we will. And if you make your men cooperate—not try to hide and make me chase ’em all over the cave—why, I’ll be considerate, too. I’ll wring their necks nice and gentle first and not roast them alive, even though that improves the flavor.”
“I agree,” said Ulysses.
Polyphemus set him down, went to the cave door, slid the slab aside, then back, and Ulysses was alone with his men, who were on their knees, whimpering like frightened children.
“Up!” cried Ulysses. “Stand up like men or you’ll be devoured like chickens. Up now, up! He’ll be back soon. Get yourselves out of sight and stay hidden until I call.”
The men vanished into the shadows. Ulysses waited, thinking hard. Something nagged at his mind—a splinter of a tale heard long ago. He began to search the vast, cluttered attic of his memory. As a boy, he had devoured the legends of heroes, gods, and monsters. Ambushing every traveling minstrel who had come to his father’s castle at Ithaca, he had demanded more stories, and more, and more. No minstrel could resist the fox-faced, redheaded lad who seemed to listen with his eyes.
Like a tree fledging itself out of the mist, a tale began to take form—an old, old tale told by a green-clad bard—of a river nymph and her monstrous lover. He remembered! The old tale became a new idea, urgent, giving off light and heat as it turned into action. Swiftly shuffling options, he began to work out his plan.
Too soon, he heard the slab grating open and shut. The Cyclops appeared, carrying an armful of greenery. “Where’s that boy?” he roared. “C’mon, runt, start chopping.” He hurled the herbs at the lad. “Where are your men?” he said to Ulysses.
“Saying their prayers.”
“They’d better say ’em fast. Now you, captain—what’s your name, by the way?”
“I’m called … Nobody.”
“Well, Captain Nobody, why don’t you strip? You’re going into the soup pot.”
“I have something very important to tell you, Polyphemus. I am a surgeon.”
“What’s so important about that?”
“It’s what I can do for you.”
“For me?”
“I fix bodies. Cut off arms and legs when they go bad. Sew up wounds. Mend broken bones. Battlefield repairs, you know. Useful in a war. You have anything that needs fixing?”
“I have this feeling of hunger, doctor. But I know you have a cure for that.”
“Wait!”
“I’ve waited long enough. Hop into the pot.”
“In your own interest, my friend, you really ought to save me for later. Give me a chance to fix that eye of yours.”
The Cyclops’s bellow of rage blew the turnspit boy off his stool. Before he could rise, Polyphemus drew back his foot and swung his leg in a mighty kick, lifting the boy off the ground and sending him into the rock wall. He fell and lay still.
“What do you mean fix my eye?” roared the Cyclops. “Something wrong with it?”
Ulysses knew the monster might kill him on the spot if he answered directly. “Oh, well,” he thought. “I’d just as soon go quickly as be soupmeat.”
“I asked you a question.” growled Polyphemus. “Is something wrong with my eye?”
“Well, to start with, you have only half the usual number. And the one you have is in the wrong place.”
“Wrong place?”
“Haven’t you noticed?”
Ulysses saw the monster stalking toward him, opening and closing his huge hands; he tried to retreat but his back was against the wall.
“Wait! Wait!” he cried. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I can fix that eye.”
“Shut up!”
“Ever hear of Asclepius?”
“No.”
“You should have. He’s an important part of Cyclopes history.”
“I hate history.”
“Listen … listen. Asclepius was a son of Apollo, and the best doctor who ever lived. He was the one who brought the Cyclopes back to life after Apollo killed them.”
“What history does is make me hungry. And I was hungry to start with.”
He looked down at the sprawled body of the boy and turned it over with his foot. “Is he dead, doc? Don’t bother looking; he is. So I won’t be able to roast anybody because I have no one to turn the spit. Question is: am I hungry enough to eat you raw? Answer is: yes.”
“Wait!” shouted Ulysses. “Let me make my point. I am a cousin of Asclepius. Apollo’s half brother, Hermes, is my great-great-grandfather. And this is the point: I have inherited the great doctor’s skill. I can give you a new face.”
“Nobody can do that.”
“You’ll be absolutely gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous. Someone called me gorgeous once in the dark.”
“When I get through with you, they’ll say it by daylight or moonlight. No nymph in the world will be able to resist you.”
“Won’t they?”
“With your physique? Without that inflamed hole in the middle of your forehead? With two glowing, tragic eyes right where they should be? Naiads and dryads will swarm like flies.”
“What exactly can you do?”
“Divide that one gross eye in two and put them in the right place.”
“Will it hurt?”
“You’ll be asleep. You’ll feel no pain. I’ll fill you full of unwatered wine.”
“I’ve never drunk wine. We drink only ox blood and buttermilk here.”
“All the better. It’ll knock you out faster if you’re not used to it.”
Ulysses unslung a flask of wine from his belt and passed it to Polyphemus, who poured it down his gullet in one gulp. Ulysses watched him closely. He saw the great red eye misting over, as when a furnace is banked and gray ash sifts over the coals. But the eye did not close. The Cyclops was awake—blurred but awake.
“Tastes good,” he muttered. “Still
awake, though. Sure’d feel it if you started cutting.”
“You require stronger medication,” said Ulysses.
He stepped in back of the seated giant, grasped the haft of his great hammer and tried to lift it. It was too heavy. But his life was at stake, and the lives of his men. Calling up every ounce of his strength, the last tatter of his will, all his desire to get home, all his wish to live—and thinking, “Hermes, grandfather, help me now”—he lifted the mallet, raised it high above his head, and smashed it down on the Cyclops’s skull.
Polyphemus fell heavily.
Reports of what happened next in the Cyclops’s cave differ widely. Some say that Ulysses kept feeding the monster unwatered wine until he passed out, then heated his sword in the cook fire, took the red-hot blade and stabbed it into the monster’s eye.
Another tale says that Ulysses, convincing himself that he really was a surgeon, borrowed needle and thread from his sail-maker and sewed the eye shut as the Cyclops lay in a drunken sleep.
Still another story says that he did indeed practice surgery, that he took a knife and cut the eye out of the Cyclops’s head and tossed it into the soup pot.
Of all these tales, it is the sword version that seems most likely, for we have the exact words that Ulysses spoke to his crew: “Six of you stand at one ear, six of you at the other—and hold his head still so I can strike true. I shall try to stab right through his eye into his brain and finish him off. But if I don’t, if I only blind him, be aware that he’ll arise in agony and thresh about the cave trying to kill us all. If that happens, get yourselves among the goats as fast as you can.”
The men took up their positions at each ear. Ulysses pulled a rock to the giant’s head, climbed up on it, and looked down at the huge eye, which stared glassily up at him. Ulysses raised his sword in both hands and, murmuring “Hermes, give me strength,” stabbed down, driving the red-hot spike into the eye.
The great head rose from the floor as if it were a separate living thing, tearing its ears from the men’s grasp. They fell to the floor and scrambled away. Polyphemus was on his feet, screeching, bellowing, and clutching at the bloody hole that had been his eye. He began to stamp around the cave, trying to crush people under his feet. He slapped the walls with great blows of his hand, unfortunately for one man who had chosen to hide in a niche of rock. The fingers found him and tore him to pieces. Ulysses couldn’t even hear the sailor’s screams because the monster was bellowing so.
Ulysses crawled toward the goat pen at the far end of the cave, motioning his men to follow. They crawled after him and slid among the giant goats just in time, for the Cyclops had stopped bellowing and was listening. He would certainly have heard the men panting and the thumping of their hearts had not the snuffling of the goats hidden smaller sounds.
Then Ulysses saw him go to the door of the cave and swing the great slab aside. He realized what this meant. With the cave open the goats would rush out to crop the grass, leaving the area clear so that the monster could search it thoroughly.
“Quickly!” whispered Ulysses. “Swing under the bellies of the goats.”
The men swung themselves under the huge rams, clutching at their wiry wool. The herd moved toward the mouth of the cave and tried to crowd through. Ulysses was horrified to see an enormous hand descending upon his goat, but the hand only brushed over the animal’s back and did not search underneath. The herd passed through, still carrying the men.
The giant rushed to the back of the cave and began to stamp and scrabble around the goat pen, bellowing with fury when he found no one. The herd grazed on the slope. Ulysses was dismayed to see a big yellow moon floating in the sky. It was almost as bright as day.
“Stay low!” he whispered. He saw tall shadows moving toward the cave and knew the other Cyclopes must be coming to see what was happening.
“What happened?” they called to Polyphemus.
“I’m blind, blind.”
“Who did it?”
“Nobody.”
“Oh, an accident! How unlucky.”
“Hurry, catch him!” Polyphemus shouted.
“Catch who?”
“Nobody! Hurry!”
“He’s gone mad,” they told each other.
Polyphemus tried to push through them to catch the men, who he knew would be fleeing toward the sea. But the others packed around him, trying to help him, to stop him, because they thought he had been driven mad by pain.
“Now!” shouted Ulysses. “Follow me!”
They raced toward the beach. Looking back, Ulysses saw Polyphemus break through the crowd and come bounding toward them.
“Faster!” cried Ulysses. “He’s coming!”
The men had a head start, but the giant could cover twenty yards at a stride. The Cyclops, who had developed a nose like a wild beast, could smell fear and knew that he was coming nearer. He uttered a shattering roar.
“This way!” shouted Ulysses, as he angled off through a grove of trees. It wasn’t a straight line to the skiff, but he knew that Polyphemus would follow them wherever they ran. The plan worked. The Cyclops followed them through the grove; they could hear him crashing into trees and bellowing with fury. Even so, they were only a few yards ahead when they reached their skiff.
They pushed it into the surf, leaped in, and rowed with all their might. Polyphemus stood on the shore, listening. He heard the oars splashing and the men panting. He scooped up a large rock and hurled it after them. It struck just astern.
They reached the ship, which was riding at anchor—a beautiful sight on the moon-spangled water. They scrambled aboard. Ulysses turned and shouted: “Goodbye, monster, goodbye, fool—drunken, gluttonous fool! If anyone asks you again, it was not Nobody but Ulysses who put out your ugly eye.”
Artemis, riding in her swan chariot, heard this taunt. She saw that Polyphemus was hurling a last rock, and she guided it so that it landed amidships, smashing the deck and crushing five of the crew.
She dipped low and listened to Polyphemus, who had lifted his sightless face to the moon and was howling like a wolf.
“Poor brute,” she whispered. “I promise that Ulysses shall be punished for what he has done. He shall be visited with storm, shipwreck, and sorcery. And if he ever reaches home, it shall be as a beggar, a stranger, one man alone among enemies.”
Artemis, like all gods and goddesses, made more promises than she kept. But she kept this one—and made it all happen to Ulysses just that way.
As for the Cyclopes, there are those that believe that they still labor in the mountains and can be heard there to this day, rumbling and shaking the earth. What we do know is that the earth still quakes and mountains still explode in fire, and nobody really knows why.
THE DRAGON OF BOEOTIA
For my grandson
LUKE BURBANK
whose eyes, fathom-blue, draw us deep.
Characters
Monster
The Dragon of Boeotia
A self-made monster; also known as Abas the Abominable
Gods
Zeus
(ZOOS)
King of the Gods
Hermes
(HUR meez)
Zeus’s son; the Messenger God
Hades
(HAY deez)
God of the Underworld
Poseidon
(poh SY duhn)
God of the Sea
Demeter
(DEM it tuhr)
Goddess of the Harvest
Hephaestus
(hee FEHS tus)
The Smith God
Prometheus
(proh MEE thee uhs)
The Titan; born of the gods; a friend of mankind
Atropos
(AT roh pohs)
Eldest of the Fates; Lady of the Shears; she cuts the thread of life
Lachesis
(LAK ee sihs)
The second Fate; she measures the thread of life
Clotho
(KLOH thoh)
&
nbsp; Youngest of the Fates; she spins the thread of life
Ikelos
(IHK uh luhs)
Son of Hypnos, God of Sleep
Mortals
Celeus
(SEL ee uhs)
King of Eleusis
Abas
(AH buhs)
Celeus’s eldest son; crown prince of Eleusis
Triptolemus
(trihp TAHL uh muhs)
Abas’s younger brother
Agenor
(AG uh nor)
King of Phoenicia; father of Cyllix, Phoenix, Cadmus, and Europa
Cyllix
(SY lihx)
Agenor’s eldest son
Phoenix
(FEE nihx)
Agenor’s second son
Cadmus
(KAD muhs)
Agenor’s youngest son
Europa
(yoo ROH puh)
Agenor’s only daughter
Others
Arachne
(uh RAK nee)
Formerly a maid of Lydia; then the first spider
Two vultures
Employed by Zeus to torture Prometheus
The black goat
Foster sister of Zeus; companion of Cadmus
A brown heifer
Also helpful to Cadmus
The dragon-men
Born from the dragon’s buried teeth
Sileni
(sy LAY nee)
Minor gods of wood and glade
Contents
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One Page 31