THE CYCLOPS
as a "glib sharper" and "son of Sisyphus/7 Now, whatever
Odysseus may be in Homer, he is never merely a "glib
sharper/7 and his father is Laertes, not Sisyphus, To an audi-
ence bred on Homer the distinction is revealing: at one blow
Euripides deprives Odysseus of his Homeric paternity in order
to attach him to Sisyphus, the proverbial type of cheat and
thief, and thereby warns his audience of what they may ex-
pect. Odysseus is in fact the familiar depraved politician
of the Hecuba, the Trojan Women, and the Iphigeneia at
AuKs; he stands, as he almost always does in tragedy, for that
refinement of intellect and eloquence which makes civilized
brutality so much more terrible than mere savagery. In the
Cyclops, however, he is on the defensive, and there is irony
in the reversal of roles as the man who refused mercy and
nomos to Hecuba must now himself plead for it. If we sym-
pathize with Odysseus at first, this initial sympathy is nonthe-
less quickly alienated by the sheer, otiose brutality of his
revenge and by Polyphemus' transformation into a drunken,
almost lovable, buffoon. The gory description of the Cyclops7
cannibalism may perhaps justify Odysseus' revenge, but it
does not thereby -redeem its barbaric cruelty. Just as the full
action of the Hecuba consists in reducing both Hecuba and
the barbarian Polymnestor to a common subhuman cruelty, so
the Cyclops shows, not the distinction, but the identity, 'be-
tween Odysseus and Polyphemus.
Odysseus' -speech for nomos and mercy is the crux of the
play. As Silenus recognizes, the speech is pure sophistry, but
the sophistry has important consequences that we need io
examine. The difficulty lies in the thoroughness of the anach-
ronization and the allusions to the sanctions and background
of the Pelopormesian War.
It opens with a disclaimer of responsibility for the Trojan
War: "A god was responsible; don't blame men." Such -dis-
claimers in Euripides normally operate to damn those w&o
make them, as, for instance, Helen's .disavowal of responsibil-
ity in the Tro/<m Women. The Jiext argument sounds very
strange indeed. The Greeks, Odysseus argues, have preserved
the temples of Poseidon (father of Cyclops) and saved Hellas;
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