When he read in the Cyclops of Euripides, "Stranger, I laugh to scorn Zeus's thunderbolts," he grew for a moment thoughtful.

Let them contend, pray, tremble, trouble themselves that will, for their parts, they fear neither God nor devil; but with that Cyclops in Euripides, "Haud ulla numina expavescunt caelitum, Sed victimas uni deorum maximo, Ventri offerunt, deos ignorant caeteros.

It is indeed very probable that this volcano which vomited forth rocks and stones in a very remote age, gave rise to the Fable of the war between Jupiter and the Giants; just as the volcanos in Sicily and Stromboli gave rise to the story of the Cyclops with one eye (the crater) in their forehead.

It is equally possible to regard the Cyclops as emblematic merely of the rough neatherd flouted by the more delicate shepherd-maidenthe contrast is of constant occurrence in later worksfor, alike in one of his own fragments and in Moschus' lament, Bion is represented as courting this same Galatea after she has rid herself of the suit of Polyphemus.

'Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge.'

Except the love-song of the Cyclops to his Sea Nymph in Theocritusthe Lamentation of Venus for Adonis in Moschusand the more recent Legend of Apuleius, we scarcely recollect a passage in all the writings of antiquity in which the passions of an immortal are fairly disclosed to the scrutiny and observation of men.