The Cyclopes

There are two entirely separate groups of Cyclopes, and they have almost nothing in common but the eye. Hesiod's are elder beings, sons of Ouranos and Gaia, named Brontes, Steropes and Arges — thunder, lightning, brightness. Imprisoned by their own father and later freed by Zeus, they repaid him by forging the thunderbolt, the weapon that decided the war against the Titans. In that tradition they are craftsmen of the first rank, working alongside Hephaestus.

Homer's are something else: a race of lawless one-eyed herdsmen on a distant island, who plant nothing, build nothing, and answer to no one. The Odyssey's Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon, traps Odysseus and his crew in his cave and begins eating them.

Odysseus escapes by trickery rather than strength. He tells the giant his name is Nobody, gets him drunk, and drives a sharpened, fire-hardened stake into his single eye. When Polyphemus roars for help, the other Cyclopes hear him shouting that Nobody is hurting him and go back to bed. The crew escape tied beneath the bellies of his sheep.

Then Odysseus makes his mistake. Safely at sea, he cannot resist shouting his real name back at the shore, and Polyphemus prays to his father. Poseidon's answer to that prayer is the next ten years of the Odyssey.

The single eye may have a mundane origin. Smiths working at a forge often wore a patch over one eye to preserve their vision from sparks, and a guild of one-eyed metalworkers is a short step from a race of one-eyed giants who forge thunderbolts. It is a guess, but it fits the tradition where the Cyclopes are craftsmen rather than cannibals.