e there is no tempest, such as arose after leaving the
Ciconians, in order to reach the land of the Cyclops; that collapse of
the will seems to have pictured itself in the quiet deep. But who are
the Cyclops? A race "without law, addicted to violent deeds;" they have
no agriculture, "they plant not, neither do they plow;" they get their
products, "trusting to the Gods," that is, trusting to nature, since
the Cyclops have small regard for the higher Gods, as we shall soon
see. Another mere formula this, showing that the Homeric deity was
getting crystallized even for Homer. "They hold no councils" in common,
are not associated together, but "they dwell in vaulted caves on
mountain heights," such as the famous Corycian cavern which is near the
top of a mountain on Parnassus. There "each man rules his wives and
children," evidently a herding polygamous condition of the family; "nor
do they (the Cyclops) care for one another." Still further, "they have
no ships with crimson prows," no navigation, no commerce which seeks
"the cities of men" and binds them together in the bond of society and
humanity. Yet there is an excellent harbor and a good soil, "with
copious showers from Zeus;" nature has surely done her part, and is
calling loudly for the enterprising colonist to come and plant here his
civilized order. This passage must have stirred the Greek emigrant to
leave his stony Hellas and seek in the West, a new home; it suggests
the great Hellenic movement for the colonization of Italy and Sicily
from the 6th to the 9th century B.C. The poet has plainly been with
the frontiersman, and seen the latter's giants.

The main thing to be noticed in the present account is the
extraordinary number of negatives. No laws, no assemblies, no
association; no plows, no ships, no intercourse with other cities; the
whole civilized life of man is negated, and man himself is thrown back
into a state of nature. It is worth while to search for the purpose of
this negative procedure on the part of the poet. He might have given a
positive description of nature, telling what it is, and telling what
the Cyclops is, not emphasizing so much what he is not. But thus the
meaning would not come out so plainly; the Cyclops is just the negation
of the whole civilized world of Greece, which fact must be expressly
imaged in the very words used in the poem. He is not so much a simple
being of nature as a being antithetic to society.

At this point we can tr