Polyphemus the Cyclops is usually remembered as the brute who trapped Odysseus and his men in a cave and ate them two at a time. This episode traces the surprisingly contested biography of the one-eyed son of Poseidon and the sea nymph Thoosa, whose name in ancient Greek means many-voiced or very famous, following him from his role as the ultimate violator of Greek hospitality law to his reinvention as a diplomat, a philosopher, a lovesick musician, and a founding patriarch of European peoples.

Along the way the discussion unpacks the linguistic trick behind the name Nobody in Homer's Odyssey, the revisionist accounts of writers like Dictys Cretensis who recast the giant as a Sicilian king defending his daughter, and Euripides' satirical portrayal of him as a fast-talking sophist. It also examines how the poet Philoxenus invented the romanc ...