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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
A number of studies of the Cyclops episode of Odyssey ix have described modern folktales which resemble it to a varying degree. Most writers have concluded that few of the tales actually derive from the Odyssey; rather they are related to it as independent variations of the same tale. Hitherto there has been no basis for conjecture about the origin of the tale, and speculation has ranged widely but inconclusively.
Perhaps speculation is all we can ever hope for in such questions. But it may help if we can find possible references to a version of the tale earlier than Homer, and the purpose of this note is to draw attention to such a possibility.
One-eyed but otherwise human figures are found, though not often, on cylinder seals from Mesopotamia. Edith Porada describes and illustrates three examples. The earliest of these (Plate VIIIb) dates from around 3000 B.C., and shows the one-eyed figure nude, curly-haired and bearded, holding up two lions by the hind legs. The rest of the scene includes an enclosure of some sort, a grotesque man(?) apparently bending a stick(?), two creatures that look like sheep, and two lion-headed birds (the personified storm-cloud?).
1 One of the best and most recent is by Glenn, J., TAPA cii (1971) 133–82Google Scholar. Other interesting discussions are those by D. L. Page, The Homeric Odyssey ch. 1, and Kirk, G. S., Myth, its Meaning and Functions 162–71Google Scholar. Further references are given in Glenn's paper.
2 Glenn op. cit. 142.
3 ‘Sumerian Art in Miniature’, in The Legacy of Sumer, ed. Schmandt-Besserat, D. (Bibliotheca Mesoptamica iv: Malibu 1976) 107–18Google Scholar, esp. 112–13 and 115–16 and figs 14, 16, 18.
4 On this cylinder see also Porada, E., Mesopotamian Art in Cylinder Seals of the Pierpont Morgan Collection 161Google Scholar, and Goff, B. L., Symbols of Prehistoric Mesopotamia 69Google Scholar, 214 and fig. 283. I am grateful to the Pierpont Morgan Library for the photograph which appears as plate VIIIb and for permission to reproduce it.
5 Cyclinder Seals 62–7. Cf. also Goff op. cit. 241–52.
6 Mesopotamian Art in Cylinder Seals…16.
7 Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft xxi (1974) 147—53.
8 Glenn op. cit. 143–4.
9 Ibid. 154–5.
10 ‘Sumerian Art in Miniature (n. 3) 115–16. The cylinders she refers to date from the Early Dynastic period, in the first half of the 3rd millennium B.C. See Frankfort, Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient pl. 39A for a particularly clear example.
11 The three-eyed giants of modern Cretan folktales, however, are not a convincing parallel, since their third eye was apparently at the back of their head: Faure, , REG lxxviii (1965)Google Scholar xxvii–xxviii.
12 Glenn, op. cit. 152 and 167.
13 Ibid. 164–5.
14 See for example Schretter, M., Alter Orient und Hellas (Innsbruck 1974) 7—15Google Scholar; Hooker, J. T., Mycenaean Greece ch. 6, esp. 117—18Google Scholar.
15 Glenn, op. cit. 134–5.
