Cyclops

It is impossible to portray satyrs—the entourage of Dionysus, the god of viticulture—without wine. Fittingly then, wine is a key element of Cyclops. In Greek culture and religious life, Dionysus was not only the god of wine; his domain also included the linked dangers of intoxication and madness. Thus, the different attitudes characters take towards wine reflect their respective attitudes towards Dionysus and the gods, while their ability to control themselves in the presence of wine reveals their inner character. In the first episode, Odysseus has no difficulty using the wine he and his men have brought with them (wine whose pedigree he describes with salesman aplomb) to tempt Silenus to trade away the Cyclops’ sheep and cheeses. The scene crystallizes the nature of both characters—Odysseus as the silver-tongued speaker and Silenus as the impulsive and dissipated sybarite. When the Cyclops tastes wine for the first time, he literally sings its praises, echoing the worship due to Dionysus; however, his intemperate drunkenness indeed leads to a kind of madness, as Polyphemus hallucinates that he is actually the god Zeus and Silenus the cupbearer and Zeus’s lover Ganymede. The Cyclops’ drunkenness gives Odysseus the opportunity to blind him. This warning about the power of wine is a fitting tribute to the god under whose aegis the play cycle featuring Cyclops would have been performed.