Cyclops

Content Warning: This section references jokes about sexual violence.

Silenus sees men disembarking from a ship nearby and tells the Chorus to be quiet. He pities the newcomers’ bad luck in coming to the island of the man-eating Cyclops. The leader of the newcomers addresses Silenus and the Chorus, introducing himself as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca and one of the Greek heroes who recently sacked Troy. In the ensuing interchange, Odysseus explains that he has been driven to Sicily by a storm while returning home from Troy, while Silenus describes the uncivilized nature of the Cyclopes. Odysseus asks Silenus for food, and Silenus is happy to trade Polyphemus’s sheep and cheese in exchange for some of the wine the Greeks have brought with them. Silenus tastes some of Odysseus’s wine with great relish before setting out to fetch the sheep and cheese for the trade.

The Chorus speaks to Odysseus, asking after the beautiful Helen, for whom the Trojan War was fought. The satyrs imagine the Greeks taking turns to “bang her” (180) after getting her back from the Trojans. Silenus soon returns with the sheep and cheese, but the Cyclops