Dictionary
GALATEA	100.00%
A sea-nymph, daughter of Nereus and Doris. According to a Sicilian story, which the poets Philoxenus and Theocritus have made famous, she was pursued by the uncouth monster Polyphemus, being herself in love with the beautiful Acis. The jealous giant crushes Acis with a rock, and the nymph changes her beloved into the Sicilian river which bears his name.
POLYPHEMUS	59.34%
Son of Poseidon and the Nymph Thoosa; the one-eyed Cyclops, who held Odysseus prisoner in his cave and ate several of the companions, until the hero made him drunk and blinded him. Later legends made him the lover of the beautiful Nymph Galatea.
PHILOXENUS	31.19%
A famous Greek dithyrambic poet, of Cythera. He came as a prisoner of war into the possession of the Athenian musician Melanippides, by whom he was educated and set free. He lived long at Syracuse, at the court of the tyrant Dionysius I, who threw him into the stone-quarries for outspoken criticism on his bad poems. On his escape from Sicily he revenged himself on the tyrant, who was short-sighted or perhaps blind of one eye, by witty raillery in the most famous of is twenty-four dithyrambs, the Cyclops, which describes the love of the one-eyed Polyphemus for the beautiful Nymph Galatea. He died 380 B.C. at Ephesus, after visiting various places in Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor for the public performance of his compositions. These were celebrated among the ancients for originality of expression and rich variety of melody. We have only some considerable fragments of a lyric poem entitled The Banquet, in which the burlesque subject affords a comic contrast to the dignified Doric rhythm.
NEREUS	28.74%
The eldest son of Pontus and Gaea, husband of Doris, daughter of Oceanus, father of 50 (according to a later account, 200) beautiful Sea-nymphs, the Nereids. He is described as a venerable old man, of a kindly disposition towards mortals, and as dwelling in a resplendent cave in the depths of the Aegean. Like all gods of water, he has the gift of prophecy and of transforming himself into any shape he chooses to assume. He is represented as an old man with the leaves of seaweed or hair and a sceptre or trident. His daughters are likewise benevolent beings, well disposed to mortals. They live with their father in the depths, but rise to the surface in order to amuse themselves with every kind of pastime and to assist sailors in distress. They were especially worshipped on the islands, on the coasts, and at the mouths of rivers, and were depicted in works of art as charming maidens, sometimes lightly clothed, sometimes naked, often riding on dolphins and Tritons (see cut). The Nereids most often mentioned in mythology are Amphitrite and Thetis, with Galatea.
CYCLOPES	16.87%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In Greek mythology, the round-eyed ones. According to Hesiod the Cyclopes are the gigantic sons of Uranus and Gaea, named Argos, Steropes, and Brontes. For the rest, they resemble the gods, except that they have only a single eye in their forehead. Their father threw them into Tart1rus, and they assisted Cronus to the sovereignty. Cronus, however, put them again in prison, where they remained until Zeus set them free. For this they gave him the thunder, and forged him the lightning. Apollo slew them when Zeus struck his son Asclepius by lightning. In Homer the Cyclopes, like the giants and the Phaeacians, are the kinsfolk of the gods; but in other respects they have nothing in common with the Cyclopes of Hesiod but their gigantic size and strength. They live a pastoral life in the far West, without knowledge of agriculture, law, morals, or social order. Each dwells separately with his family in caverns at the mountain tops, without troubling himself about the gods, to whom, indeed, the Cyclopes deem themselves easily superior in strength. The Phaeacians used to live in their neighbourhood, but were driven by their violent dealing to emigrate. The figure of Polyphemus, well known from his encounter with Odysseus, gives a typical notion of their rudeness and savagery. (See also GALATEA). The Homeric Cyclopes were in a later age localized in Sicily, and came to be identified with the Cyclopes of Hesiod. They were imagined as assistants of Hephaestus, and as helping him to forge lightnings for Zeus and arms for heroes in the bowels of Aetna or on the Aeolian islands. A third variety of Cyclopes were the giants with arms to their belly as well as to their shoulders, whom Proetus was supposed to have brought from Lycia to. Argos. It was they who were supposed to have built the so-called Cyclopean walls at Mycenae and Tiryns (see ARCHITECTURE). In works of art the Cyclopes are represented as giants with one eye in their forehead, though there is, generally an indication of a pair of eyes in the usual place.