ace his connection with the great Trojan
experience, which, as already set forth, has begotten a negative
tendency in its participators. The war at Troy, like all war
long-continued, has bred men to be anti-social; they have to destroy
State, Family, Commerce, Agriculture, till destruction becomes habit,
yea principle, and takes possession of their intellect. The Cyclops was
generated at Ilium, and is a colossal phantasm of the spirit which
prompted the attack on the Ciconians.

It should be stated here that the Cyclops of Homer are different from
those of Hesiod and of other mythographers, inasmuch as the latter were
represented as the demons who forged the thunderbolts of Zeus, and were
connected with the volcanic agencies chiefly in Sicily and Italy. Mount
AEtna belching forth its lava streams may have suggested to the Greek
imagination the sick giant Polyphemus in its caverns, drunk on the red
destructive wine of Ulysses.

First is a small island, "stretching outside the harbor" of the land of
the Cyclops, woody, full of wild goats; there the ships of Ulysses drew
to the shore. It was bare of human dwellers, the Cyclops had no boats
to reach it; a good place for stopping, therefore, quite out of reach
of the savages. Nor is the fountain forgotten, "sparkling water flowing
from a hollow rock down to the harbor"--an adjunct still necessary to
every Greek village or encampment. "Some God led us through the dark
night" without our seeing the island till the boats struck it--surely a
providential intervention on our behalf.

Leaving behind the other ships at this point, Ulysses takes only his
own and its crew, and goes forth to "test these people, whether just or
unjust, hospitable or godless." He cannot rest in ignorance, he must
have the experience and know the unknown. He soon sees "a cave high up
the mountain, not far from the sea, overarched with laurel shrubs;" he
observes also "an enclosure, made of stones set in the earth;" these
stones are not hewn (as some translators say), since the so-called
Cyclopean walls so common in Greece were not built by this kind of
Cyclops. In the enclosure were resting "many herds of sheep and
goats"--just such a scene as can be witnessed in the rural parts of
Greece to-day. This is the environment of "the man-monster," who is now
to be the theme of song.

II. Polyphemus is a Cyclops but he has characteristics of his own. He
has no family in his cave, he lives wholly for himself