CYCLOPES (KUKXW9rer, the

See also:

• ROUND (O. Fr. rond, Lat. rotundus, the Fr. is the source also of Du. rond; Ger., Swed., Dan. and Nor. rond)

round-eyed, plural of Cyclops)  , a type of beings variously described in Greek mythology . In Homer they are gigantic cave-dwellers, cannibals having only one eye, living a pastoral life in the far west (Sicily), ignorant of law and order, fearing neither gods nor men . The most prominent among them was Polyphemus . In Hesiod ( Theogony, 264) they are the three sons of Uranus and Gaea—Brontes, Steropes and Arges, —storm-gods belonging to the family of the Titans, who furnished Zeus with thunder and lightning out of gratitude for his having released them from Tartarus . They were slain by Apollo for having forged the thunderbolt with which Zeus slew Asclepius . Later legend transferred their abode to Mt Aetna, the Lipari islands or Lemnos, where they assisted Hephaestus at his forge . A third class of Cyclopes are the builders of the so-called " Cyclopean " walls of Mycenae and Tiryns, giants with arms in their belly, who were said to have been brought by Proetus from Lycia to Argos, his original home (Pausanias ii . 16 . 5; 25 . 8) . Like the Curetes and Telchines they are mythical types of pre-historic workmen and architects, and as such the objects of worship . The standard work on these and similar mythological characters is M .

Mayer, Die Giganten and Titanen (1887); see also A . Boltz, Die Kyklopen (1885), who endeavours to show that they were an historical people; W . Mannhardt, Wald- and Feldkulte (1904); J . E . Harrison, Myths of the Odyssey (1882); and article in Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie (bibliography) .