and asks, "Who are you?" Ulysses replies, stating that they
are returning from Troy, but have been driven out of their way by
adverse winds; then he makes his human and religious appeal: We come as
suppliants, receive us; "revere the Gods," specially Zeus the protector
of suppliants. But the Cyclops scoffs at Zeus and the rest of the Gods:
"we are their betters." Thus is witnessed in the monster the denial of
the Greek religion, and an atheistic turn of mind.

Next follows in logical sequence his supreme negative act, he is a
man-eater. "He seized two of my companions and hurled them against the
ground as if they were dogs, then he devoured them piecemeal,
swallowing all--entrails and flesh and marrowy bones." Surely Ulysses
is getting some experience on the line of that Trojan deed.

Now we catch the entire sweep of this particular Cyclops. He has shown
himself as the representative of three mighty negations: of civilized
life, of religious life, and of human life. He destroys man, feeds on
him; so negation, war, revolution, must do in the end. The horrid
phantasm is the true image of the destroyer of the race. Nor does he
belong to the old Greek world and to the Trojan time only; he is among
us, and he can be translated into modern terms quite familiar.
Polyphemus is an anarchist, an atheist, and a cannibal; the ancient
poet wraps the three together in one mighty monstrosity. In the morning
the Cyclops devoured two more companions for his breakfast, then drove
his flocks afield, leaving the rest of the strangers shut up in the
cave with the big stone in the opening.

During the day the "man of many shifts" has an opportunity for
reflection in that dark recess. He dares not kill the giant outright,
"with my sharp sword stubbing him where the midriff holds the liver,"
for how could they then get out? No, the man of nature must be saved
and utilized; with all his might he is to be overborne by the man of
intelligence, and made to remove the big stone.

2. The plan of Ulysses with its successful execution is the subject of
the next phase of the conflict. By this plan three things must be done
in order to counteract the giant and to negative his power. He must be
deprived of physical vision, which becomes the more easily possible
from the fact that he has but one eye; if he had two eyes like the
ordinary man, he could still see though one be put out. That this
purpose be accomplished, he must somehow be shorn of his ph