Polyphemus

Long after he was first described in Homer’s Odyssey, the giant cyclops shepherd got a back story and an impressive musical talent thanks to Philoxenus of Cythera‘s Cyclops or Galatea (between 406 and 388 BC). In the dithyramb (a hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus), Polyphemus plays a kithara, a seven-string lyre.

External Links

• "The Cyclops of Philoxenus," J. H. Hordern, The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 2 (1999), pp. 445-455