Odyssey 9.511 · Book 9, lines 511–516
The runt who blinded a giant
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Polyphemus — ὅς μοι ἔφη τάδε πάντα τελευτήσεσθαι ὀπίσσω, χειρῶν ἐξ Ὀδυσῆος ἁμαρτήσεσθαι ὀπωπῆς. ἀλλʼ αἰεί τινα φῶτα μέγαν καὶ καλὸν ἐδέγμην ἐνθάδʼ ἐλεύσεσθαι, μεγάλην ἐπιειμένον ἀλκήν· νῦν δέ μʼ ἐὼν ὀλίγος τε καὶ οὐτιδανὸς καὶ ἄκικυς ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀλάωσεν, ἐπεί μʼ ἐδαμάσσατο οἴνῳ.
who told me all this would be brought to pass hereafter — that I would lose my sight at Odysseus's hands. But I always expected some man, tall and handsome, to come here, clothed in great strength; but now he, being small and worthless and feeble, has blinded me of my eye, after he overpowered me with wine.
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The setting
Polyphemus, blinded, is still speaking. Long ago the seer Telemus foretold that a man named Odysseus would rob him of his sight — but the Cyclops had pictured a towering hero, not the small man who has just outwitted him.
A note on this passage
Polyphemus finishes his lament. The prophet Telemus had named the danger exactly — a man called Odysseus would take his eye — but the Cyclops had always imagined a giant, some tall and handsome hero clothed in strength. What came instead was a small, feeble man who first had to drug him with wine. The size of the enemy insults him almost more than the wound.
Under the complaint runs the poem's own creed. Odysseus does not win by being the biggest or the strongest; he wins by mind, and the wine was the first move of that mind. The Cyclops measured the world by bulk and never watched for cunning, and the gap between the hero he expected and the one who blinded him is the whole difference between force and mētis.
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