Wrath of the Gods Page #14

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stone so huge that even a full crew of heroes could not stir

it—he promptly snatched up the nearest two of Odysseus’s

men, bashed out their brains on the floor, and popped them

into his mouth. Then with a belch he curled up in a corner

and drifted happily to sleep. Odysseus naturally was beside

himself with concern. What had he led his men into?

There was nothing for it, though, but to wait out the night

in terror, for the boulder blocked the door. In the morning

the Cyclops rolled the massive stone aside, called his goats

together, and let them out, some to pasture and others to

the pen in the yard. Then he sealed the entrance again. That

night he had more Greeks for dinner.

Desperate, Odysseus conceived a plan. To begin with, he

offered the Cyclops wine. This was especially potent wine,

which he and his men had brought ashore in skins. The

Greeks customarily mixed water with their wine to dilute

its strength. But the Cyclops had never drunk wine before,

diluted or not, and it went straight to his head. Before he

conked out, he asked Odysseus his name.

“Nobody,” replied the hero.

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“Well, Mr. Nobody, I like you,” said the Cyclops drowsily.

“In fact, I like you so much that I’m going to do you a favor.

I’ll eat you last.

With these encouraging words he fell fast asleep. Odysseus

jumped up and put his men to work. They put a sharp point

on the end of a pole and hardened it in the fire. Then, with a

mighty “heave-ho,” they rammed it into the Cyclops’s eye.

In agony Polyphemus groped about blindly for his

tormentors, but the Greeks dodged him all night long.

“Help, come quickly!” he shouted at one point, and his

fellow Cyclopes came running.

“What’s the matter?” they called in at the mouth of the cave.

“I’m blinded and in agony,” roared Polyphemus.

“Whose fault is it?” they shouted back.

“Nobody’s,” said Polyphemus.

“Well, in that case,” responded the Cyclopes as they

departed, “you’ve got a lot of nerve bothering us.”

In the morning, as usual, Polyphemus called his flock

together and rolled the boulder aside to let them out. He

planted himself in the door to bar the Greeks’ escape.

Muttering at great length to his ram, he sought sympathy for

his affliction. “Whatever you do,” he told the beast, “don’t

trust Greeks.”

So saying, he stroked the animal’s woolly back and sent him

from the cave. Little did he know that Odysseus himself

clung to the ram’s belly. And, in a similar fashion, his

shipmates had already escaped beneath the rest of the flock.

When Polyphemus realized the deception he rushed to the

seaside, where Odysseus and his men were rowing hard for

safety. The hero could not resist a taunt.

“Just to set the record straight, the name’s Odysseus,” he

called across the water. “But you have Nobody to thank for

your troubles—nobody but yourself, that is.”

With a mighty curse Polyphemus threw a boulder which

almost swamped the ship. But the rowers redoubled their

efforts. They left the blinded Cyclops raging impotently on

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the shore.

If you click on the Cyclops who confronts you, or on the

road trying to get past him, he turns and eyes you hungrily.

CYCLOPS:

Oh boy! Me Cyclops. You dinner!

If you poke the Cyclops with your sword:

CYCLOPS:

Hee, hee, dat tickles.

If you show him the eye chart from the Market (page 112),

he covers his ears. The trick is to offer him wine from the

Taverna (page 62) or the Market (page 112).

CYCLOPS:

Tank you. Because you so nice me won’t eat you

‘til me finished drinking.

He guzzles the wine and passes out.

Hades Portal 3

CAVE ENTRANCE. This scene offers a choice of routes, one

of which leads into a cave which turns out to be a portal into

Hades (HAY-deez).

There were two ways to get to the Underworld. The first and

simplest was to die. All mortals traveled to the kingdom of

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the god Hades after death. The other way was only open to

gods or heroes, who could proceed with caution to Hades’

realm via certain natural chasms and caves. The most

popular of these seems to have been Taenarum (TEE-nuh-rum)

in Laconia (luh-KOH-nee-uh). This is where Heracles (HUR-akleez)

descended in fulfilment of his Labor to bring back the

hellhound Cerberus (SUR-bur-us) to the land of the living.

And this was the portal chosen by Theseus (THEE-see-us) and

his companion Peirithoüs (pye-RITH-oh-us) on their ill-fated

venture to abduct Hades’ queen Persephone (per-SEF-uh-nee).

And some say that it was via Taenarum that Orpheus (OREfee-

us) pursued his wife Euridice (yoo-RID-i-see) when, bitten

by a snake, she shared the common fate in journeying to the

afterlife below. But others maintain that Orpheus’s entrance

was Aornum (a-ORE-num) in Thesprotis (thes-PROH-tis). Before

becoming a fully fledged member of the godly council on

Mount Olympus, the wine-god Dionysus (dye-oh-NYE-sus)

brought his mother up from Hades. She was the heroine

Semele (SEM-uh-lee), who had been consumed by lightning

when she asked Zeus (ZOOS) to reveal to her his true

nature as storm god. To retrieve her from the Underworld,

Dionysus went to Lerna (LUR-nuh) and dove into the

Alcyonian (al-see-OH-nee-an) Lake, which has no bottom.

Hades Crossroads

CATACOMB. If you enter this catacomb for the first time

through Hades Portal 3 (page 72), there’s only one way to

proceed—towards the Elysian Fields (next page). But eventually

other passages open up and this becomes a crossroads.

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SURREALLY BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPE. On his epic return

from the Trojan War, the hero Odysseus (oh-DISS-ee-us) made

a side trip to hell. He had been advised by a witch that only

the blind prophet Teiresias (tye-REE-see-us) could tell him how

to find his way home at last. And Teiresias happened to be

dead. So Odysseus sailed west until he reached the stream

of Ocean, the broad river that encircles the earth (or so the

ancient Greeks conceived their geography). And here he

found the frontier of Hades (HAY-deez). At the confluence of

the infernal rivers Styx (STIKS) and Acheron (ACK-uh-ron),

Odysseus dug a pit and poured sacrificial blood into it. At

which the ghosts of the dead thronged up, eager to drink the

vital liquid and regain their living strength.

Odysseus held them all at bay until he had talked to

Teiresias, and then he decided to speak to various other

deceased celebrities. Among these was the great hero

Achilles (a-KILL-eez). Achilles had been the best fighter of the

Greeks besieging Troy. He had slain the Trojan hero Hector

in single combat and was only brought down himself by the

connivance of the god Apollo (uh-POL-oh). Now he lived in

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