Who Are the The Cyclopes (Brontes, Steropes, Arges) (Cyclops)?
One-eyed brothers who made the thunderbolt
The Cyclopes
The Cyclopes are three one-eyed brothers in Greek mythology born of Gaia and Ouranos: Brontes (Thunder), Steropes (Lightning), and Arges (Flash). Each has a single round eye in the middle of his forehead, which is said to be the origin of their name ("round eye").
As soon as they were born, their father Ouranos pushed them deep into the earth. Later, when Zeus freed the uncles whom Ouranos had bound, they thanked him with the gifts of thunder, the thunderbolt, and lightning, giving Zeus the power to become king of the gods. The usual reading is that the uncles in this scene are the Cyclopes.
They are often considered a different race from the one-eyed giants of Homer's Odyssey, such as Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, even though they share the same name. A single one of them is called a Cyclops.
Episodes featuring this character3
NEWEpisode 2
Mother Forged a Blade. Who Will Take It?Cronus and Uranus
Ouranos, the starry Sky, has shoved his children deep inside the Earth. Their mother Gaia, groaning under the weight, forges a great gray sickle of adamant from her own body and asks which of them will take it up. The older brothers and sisters stay silent. Only the youngest and slightest of them, Cronus, steps forward.
19 pages
NEWEpisode 6
The King of Gods Was Saved by a StoneThe Birth of Zeus and the Stone of Kronos
On a misty mountain, the Muses sing a hungry shepherd the tale of "the night a mother told her only lie." To save her youngest, Zeus, from Cronus, the boy-king who swallows his children, Rhea hands him a stone wrapped in swaddling cloth. Raised in a cave deep within the earth, Zeus overthrows his father with his grandmother Gaia's cunning and his own strength. He frees his five siblings from the light, reunites with his mother, and receives thunder from the uncles he unchains.
20 pages
NEWEpisode 9
The Day Zeus Stopped Holding BackTitanomachy
Cronus feared his children would take his throne. Zeus, the youngest, was the only one who escaped him, and he has fought his father for ten years. This is the war's last day. Zeus finally stops holding back and hurls lightning hot enough to set the world on fire. The three Hundred-Handers bury the sky under three hundred boulders. Together they drive the old gods down into Tartarus, which lies as far below the earth as heaven lies above it.
19 pages