(fab. hist.), a celebrated Cyclops, and king of all the Cyclops in Sicily, was the son of Neptune and Thoosa the daughter of Phorcys. He is said to have been a monster of great strength, very tall, and with one eye in the middle of the forehead. He ate human flesh, and kept his flocks on the coasts of Sicily, when Ulysses, at his return from the Trojan war, was driven there. Ulysses, together with 12 of his companions, visited the coast, and with them was seized by the Cyclops, who confined them in his cave, and daily devoured two of them. Ulysses would have shared the fate of the rest, had he not intoxicated the Cyclops, and put out his eye with a firebrand when he was asleep. Polyphemus was awakened by the sudden pain, and stopped the entrance of his cave; but Ulysses escaped, by creeping between the legs of the rams of the Cyclops, as they were led out to feed on the mountains. Polyphemus became enamoured of Galatea; but his addresses were disregarded, and the nymph thinned his presence. The Cyclops was still more earnest; and when he saw Galatea surrender herself to the pleasures of Acis, he crushed his rival with a piece of a broken rock.