Calliope

The story of Polyphemus comes from the Odyssey, one of two epic poems written in the very distant past in ancient Greece by someone later generations would call Homer. Homer’s Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War, in which Odysseus fought, and its sequel the Odyssey tells of Odysseus’ long voyage home from the war.

These two poems were so influential that Greek critics (such as Aristotle) eventually decided they represented what an epic should be like. Essentially, Homer set the rules for...