Epic the Musical: The Cyclops Saga with Jorge Rivera-Herrans

Jorge Rivera-Herrans returns to discuss Epic the Musical: The Cyclops Saga! The second saga of Epic: The Musical is all about the encounter between Odysseus and the cyclops Polyphemus. The consequences of this saga will be far reaching as Odysseus makes some interesting choices that threaten the lives and safety of himself and his crew, and ensure that his journey home is a LONG one. Maybe don't mess with a son of Poseidon eh?

Once again we compare the source material of the Odyssey to Epic: The Musical and see where the similarities and differences are.

Thank you to Jorge for returning for this episode and the other sagas too (also for creating an outstanding musical). Here's a link to his socials:

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Sources:
Epic: The Musical by Jorge Rivera-Herrans
The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson
Great Courses Odyssey of Homer- Elizabeth Vandiver, Ph.D.

Transcript

Season 2 Episode 4

Hello and welcome to Greeks and Geeks, the podcast where I take us on persnickity but fun journey deep diving into the lore behind our favourite stories. I’m your host Sabrina and this is the fourth episode of a series long-deep dive into Epic: The Musical. Today we’re diving into the Cyclops saga and keep your eyes peeled until the end, as the creator Jorge Rivera-Herrans returns to discuss the saga with us!

Firstly, I should mention if you haven’t listened to the other episodes, give them a go first especially the interview I did with Jorge and the Epic 101 episode which explained and summarised the Odyssey. There are a few things I’m going to bring up especially from the 101 episode so bear that in mind.

Epic the Musical, as we’ve already established, is a musical loosely based on the stories surrounding the Greek hero Odysseus. This mainly focuses on the Odyssey but, as we saw from the Troy saga, other sources are borrowed from too. The Cyclops saga focuses on Odysseus encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus.

What sources are we relying on to tell this story? Well mainly the tale of Odysseus and the Cyclops is mentioned in book 9 of the Odyssey. As I mentioned in the 101 episode, the Odyssey is told in a bit of an odd way. There are 24 books in total and 4 of those are a flashback told in first person by Odysseus himself. They recount his adventures from after he left Troy with his whole crew, to how he ended up washed up on Calypso’s island, the sole survivor. These are the only books in the Odyssey which are told in this manner, from Odyssey’s complete point of view.

The Cyclops tale is one of the first stories Odysseus tells. You might also remember how I mentioned that Odysseus is described as a man of many turnings, how he has incredible skills of strategy and rhetoric. Remember he is recounting this story to the Phaeacians, whose island he has ended up on after escaping from seven years captivity on Calypso’s island. They are his last chance to get home. If they like him, they will help him. Ergo, he has to make himself look good, right? So how much of his recount is fact, how much is fiction, how much is a bit of both? Scholars have been debating it for centuries and I’m not here to tell you what to think, only to give you that knowledge so you can make your own decisions. Cause we teachers are cool like that.

But with Epic: The Musical, we don’t have the Phaeacians. The story is not being told as a recount or a flashback. We as the audience are there in real time, watching the events unfold. So we definitely have an Epic: The Musical version of the Cyclops encounter which we as an audience are witnessing unfold as opposed to being told what happened by the Reigning King of “Trust me Bro.” However, even that we can discuss and interpret in different ways. Jorge has certainly made it known to me that he prefers not to give a determinate answer. I think he likes all our theories guys!

Also the most common version of the plural of cyclops is cyclopes (cy-klop-eez) and I don’t like that. Personally I prefer Cyclopi. Which doesn’t make any sense linguistically, except it’s really funny. Cyclop-eye? Get it cause…righto.

I also wanted to point out that, whilst I’m going to be talking about some of the notable changes to the plot of the Odyssey I’m not going to summarise book 9 for you here as I did that already for the introductory episode and I don’t want to be too repetitive. So if you want to know in full detail about what happens in the Odyssey’s cyclops story, please refer back to that episode!

About time we got into the songs! The first being Polyphemus.

(MUSIC)

Polyphemus

Polyphemus is a cyclops, a giant creature with one eye. He is the son of Poseidon, which Odysseus is unaware of at the time but that’s information for the Ocean saga episode. Polyphemus is also a shepherd which, to us modern folk seems strange. We often think of cyclopes (cyclopi *snort* ok I’ll behave) as being these crazy destructive monsters. Picturing a cyclops tending his fluffy flock of sheep seems weird. But hey, just goes to show that sheep can be beloved no matter if you’re a monster or man! They’re so fluffy and silly. I remember one time I was on holiday at a farm in Yorkshire and there was one sheep determined to chew the plastic on our outside wood fired oven and another was able to stand up on the stone wall but struggled to understand how to get down. I love sheep.

And Polyphemus loves his sheep too. In the song Open Arms, the Lotus eaters sent Odysseus and his crew to the island of the cyclopes, where they knew food to be. Was this them being goofy or malevolent? Did they know that Polyphemus would end up harming the crew? Again, I think it’s open to interpretation, but I think it’s interesting that Polites’ ethos of “open arms” leads to the tragedy of this saga. On the other hand, if Odysseus had chosen the ruthless “strike first” method suggested by Eurylochus, would the crew have recognised the lotus plants in time? Would they have been trapped on that island for eternity? 

Regardless of which way you look at it, this is a big change from the Odyssey. In the Lotus eaters part of the original Epic, the men do go to the island and they do eat the lotus plans and get bewitched, but Odysseys simply whacks them out of it and drags them back on the ship. Then they happen to arrive at the cyclops island. Here, Epic relies on its themes of kindness and ruthlessness to form a narrative thread where there wasn’t one before. If Odysseus hadn’t listened to Polites’ kindness lesson in this instance, then perhaps they wouldn’t have discovered the cyclops island. Will this be something Odysseus thinks about throughout his character’s emotional journey, will it be a deciding factor in his choice between kindness and ruthlessness? Guess we’ll have to wait for the rest of the sagas hoo boy!

So in the first song of the Cyclops saga, Polyphemus, the crew stumble into the cave and kill some of the sheep, not knowing that Polyphemus owns the sheep and they’ve stumbled into his home. Odysseus questions it by saying “it’s almost too perfect, too good to be true.” However he still lets his men kill the sheep. The song starts quite positively until the sudden shift.

Polyphemus enters and things immediately get quiet, intense. The volume of the base grows along with a sense of unease. Also the way Polyphemus’ voice is done, so distorted and deep, shows that we’re dealing with a terrifying, otherworldly creature. As I mentioned during my chat with Jorge, I was actually driving when I heard it for the first time and whispered a quiet, despairing, “oh no.” at that part. Which is basically the British equivalent of screaming in terror just fyi what what.

He confronts the men for killing the sheep and vows revenge but Odysseus explains how there was a misunderstanding and offers him compensation via treasure and wine. This wine happens to be drugged although Polyphemus doesn’t know this. He tells the cyclops that his name is Nobody. This part of the song is beautiful, melodic and repetitive, because this is a moment of kleos for Odysseus. Like his moment of glory at Troy (see the Troy saga episode for this), this another moment of incredible intelligence and cunning from Odysseus. It is the start of one of his defining moments as a mythological hero, and we’ll discuss it in more detail during the rest of the saga.

At first it looks like Polyphemus is placated (ooh I love that bit of alliteration there hehe). But then Odysseus’ has to go and ruin it by saying “I’m so glad we see eye to eye.”

We see. EYE. TO. EYE.

Odysseus. Bro. My guy.

What’s hilarious to me is immediately after that Polyphemus is all like “you shall be the final man to die.”

There’s a part of me that likes to imagine that Polyphemus was actually telling the truth, that he was going to grant him mercy until Odysseus’ pun and then he was just like…. You know what? Actually… because it’s funny to think that. But in all seriousness, we’re going to talk about that more in the next song. Survive.

(Music)

Survive

Survive is such an interesting song to me for various different reasons, the first of which is Xenia. In the introductory episode I mentioned that xenia is a huge theme in the Odyssey. Xenia being the idea of “guest friendship” was incredibly important in ancient Greek society. It is the relationship between guest and host. In the Odyssey, Odysseus relies on Xenia a number of times and it is how he is treated by a host which either helps or hinders his journey home. Alternatively, the suitors staying in Odysseus’ home in Ithica are an example of when guests break Xenia, by overstaying their welcome and trying to force Penelope into marrying one of them.

In the Odyssey, the Cyclops story is a clear indicator of when a host breaks xenia. When they come across Polyphemus’ cave Odysseus has this to say:

“We went inside and looked at everything. We saw his crates weighed down with cheese, and pens crammed full of lambs divided up by age; the newborns, middlings and those just weaned. There were well-crafted bowls and pails for milking, all full of whey. My crew begged, ‘let us grab some cheese and quickly drive the kids and lambs out of their pens and down to our swift ships, and sail away across the salty water!’ That would have been the better choice. But I refused.”

When they meet Polyphemus he’s immediately rude and dismissive towards not just Odysseus and his crew, but to Zeus himself. Then he immediately grabs, kills and eats two of Odysseus’ men and traps the rest in his cave with a giant boulder, which only he is able to move. The fact that Polyphemus dismisses Zeus, when Xenia falls under the gods domain, and then proceeds to kill his guests, should be a clear indicator of breaking Xenia. Like I don’t think it’s a controversial opinion to suggest that if you eat your guests, you should get a bad review on Tripadvisor to say the least. Polyphemus is in the wrong here and Odysseus’ and his crew are the victims of a bad host. Now they did eat some cheese and make a sacrifice before being greeted by Polyphemus. However, it’s unclear as to whether the sacrifice comes from their own stock, or if they use an animal from Polyphemus’ pens of lambs. This was because Odysseus expected to be able to trade the wine and hoped Polyphemus would be an agreeable host. 

Let’s compare this to Epic: The Musical, where they seem to help themselves to as much as they want and it is definitely confirmed that they kill Polyphemus’ sheep. Polyphemus is deeply insulted by this, but does the punishment of death fit the crime? Odysseus explains that it’s a misunderstanding and tries to make it right. Who broke xenia first, was it Odysseus and his crew for killing sheep that didn’t belong to them, or was it the cyclops for accepting the gifts from Odysseus but then deciding to kill them all? Again, I think it’s completely up to interpretation.

Survive is a battle song, epic (sorry) in scope. Odysseus chooses to fight the cyclops and it’s interesting that he’s completely dedicated to killing Polyphemus. Ruthlessness wins here, though you can’t really blame him in this instance. He’s thinking that there’s no alternative. If they want to survive, then they HAVE to kill Polyphemus. It’s only towards the end of the song where Polyphemus traps them all in the cave so, at this point, killing Polyphemus won’t cause them to be trapped forever, eventually starving to death. 

Even more fascinating to me is that he orders his men to kill Polyphemus using the same melody that Zeus used to order Odysseus to kill Hector’s son all the way back in The Horse and the Infant. 

The line “600 lives at stake, it’s just one life to take.” Is a compelling comparison to the Horse and the Infant. Where in Survive, Odysseus feels the need to take the life of the cyclops to save his crew, in the Horse and the Infant, he is taking a life to save the lives of his wife, his child and himself. One life in exchange for many. The first time, he is following the will of the Gods, he is following Zeus’ orders. However this time, he is unwittingly acting AGAINST a god, by actively trying to kill Poseidon’s son. Odysseus takes the path of ruthlessness here and what happens?

Well at first the song seems triumphant, mighty and warlike in nature, very similar to the start of The Horse and the Infant. It seems like now will be yet a moment of kleos…

Until things take a turn. 

Polyphemus has enough. The music stops, Polites calls out to Odysseus and then.

The embodiment of mercy, of kindness and open arms is killed by the cyclops.

As I mentioned before, Polites has a much, much, MUCH bigger role in Epic: The Musical as opposed to the Odyssey. He’s only mentioned twice in the Odyssey and that was on Circe’s Island, which chronologically happens after the cyclops kerfuffle. So, in the Odyssey, Polites isn’t one of the men who die in Polyphemus’ cave. So, to have Polites in such a major role, and then kill him early on, is a huge difference between the Odyssey and Epic.

But thematically, losing the embodiment of mercy and open arms at this point makes a lot of sense for Odysseus and his journey, as well as his struggle between being a man and a monster. This moment will impact the rest of the musical moving forward. Right onto the very next song Remember them.
 
 (Music)

Remember Them

Remember them is such a complex song. As Jorge mentioned in our discussion during the first episode, it has to do SO MUCH by way of storytelling. It covers Odysseus escape from being trapped in Polyphemus’ cave and this part actually sticks very closely to the original Odyssey. Odysseus drugs wine, which causes Polyphemus to pass out. Then, with the help of his men, they take Polyphemus’ club and sharpen it into a spear in order to blind him. They couldn’t kill him because they’d be forever trapped in the cave. They needed to be able to blind him so that Polyphemus will move the boulder blocking the entrance and then they can sneak out.

Then when they blind Polyphemus he cries out in pain and the other Cyclopi (sorry last time I promise) Cyclopes ask who hurts him. This is the part where the Nobody moment from Polyphemus comes back. “Who hurts you?” “It was Nobody.” “If Nobody hurts you, be silent.” Odyssey’s clever thinking has meant that he’s saved his remaining men and the crew waiting for them. 

Throughout the first part of the song, there’s a triumphant electric guitar. The guitar is the instrument which represents Odysseus in Epic and the electric guitar especially is for moments where he’s at his most heroic and Epic-y for lack of a better phrase. Now most people tend to say that Odysseus’ most iconic moments are the trojan horse and the Nobody trick, so it makes sense that the music reflects this. 

Now the second half of the song, after Odysseus and his men escape the cave, is slightly different. Athena appears, at a moment where she doesn’t in the Odyssey, to remind Odysseus to finish the job and kill Polyphemus because “he’s still a threat until he’s dead.” Again, mirroring the Horse and the Infant, where Astyanax would have been a threat and murdered Odysseus’ family had he survived. 

And unlike in The Horse and the Infant where Zeus’ will is upheld, Odysseus decides not to follow Athena’s orders. Polites’ death has rocked him to his core and where before, Odysseus was willing to be ruthless and kill the cyclops, now he says “what good would killing do when mercy is a skill more of this world could learn to use?” Ruthlessness ended up killing his friend, and thinking back to Open Arms, where Polites says “I see on your face there is so much guilt inside your heart” we know that this Odysseus takes every loss deeply. He does actually care about his crew and his men. He takes a lot of pride that the 600 men he brought to war didn’t die. This is in contrast to the Odyssey, where it can be argued whether or not Odysseus is a good leader and whether or not he cares about his crew beyond how they can help him achieve his goal of nostros, homecoming. After all, when he is trapped on Calypso’s island for 7 years, he cries every day and mentions wanting to go home, but doesn’t seem to cry for the men he lost. The men he mainly cries over in the Odyssey are his equals, like *sigh* Agamemnon. I will try not to hold this against Odysseus too much, no matter how much I despise that daughter-killing king. 

In fact, as they escape the cyclops, Odysseus actually orders his surviving men to stop crying over the death of their fallen men and scowls at them! Hardly a sympathetic captain.

The end of the song has Odysseus escaping the cyclops island, and defiantly crying out to Polyphemus. This is in keeping with the Odyssey, however both interpretations come at it in different ways. In the Odyssey, this is what happens:

“When I had gone as far as shouts can carry, I jeered back ‘hey you, Cyclops! Idiot! The crew trapped in your cave did not belong to some poor weakling. Well, you had it coming! You had no shame at eating your own guests! So Zeus and other gods have paid you back!”

His crew beg him to stop taunting the cyclops but Odysseus doesn’t listen, claiming he was furious and shouts that “If any mortal asks you how your eye was mutilated and made blind, say that Odysseus, the city-sacker, Laertes son, who lives in Ithaca, destroyed your sight.”

Again, this passage has been debated over by scholars. Is this a moment of hubris for Odysseus? Is he blinded by his own success, his own kleos? Does his need to be remembered for his deeds outweigh his need for the safety of himself and his crew? If you remember from the introductory episode, Odysseus cries when he finds out that the bard is singing a song about the trojan horse, as he is now sure the world knows it’s his idea and his kleos, his glory, is secure. Hubris is a HUGE and reoccurring fatal flaw for most Greek heroes. Achilles, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Icarus, so many characters in Greek mythology suffer due to their own hubris, meaning excessive pride or excessive self-confidence. Is Odysseus a victim of hubris here? Or is it simply rage. He mentions that he was too angry to be subdued by his crew. And we know Odysseus has a temper which can result in some scary shows of violence, as is shown by what happens to the suitors. And blind anger is definitely seen as another fatal flaw for other heroes, such as Heracles. Regardless, he reveals his name and location for completely the wrong reasons, and the consequences for this are immediate. Poseidon straight away sends a storm.

Now Epic Odysseus comes across as angry and defiant. Despite Athena yelling “don’t” he ignores her to reveal his name. His focus is on how his comrades will not die in vain, and how the cyclops should remember Odysseus every time he choses “to dare not to spare.” His message to the cyclops is more along the lines of “you see what happens when you ignore peace and choose violence, to feed your inner beast? These are the consequences of your actions!” it’s a subtle difference, well actually I think calling the monster you blinded an idiot actually isn’t very subtle.

I also want to point out that Odysseus in Epic is deliberately going against Athena, the goddess of wisdom and strategy here. Athena is definitely on her own character growth journey in the Odyssey, as she’s someone who’s very much on the ruthlessness side of the equation. However I think it’s important to note that not heeding the advice of the Goddess of wisdom here leads to some terrible times ahead of Odysseus.

Which leads to another stark difference in the Odyssey versus Epic: The Musical in the form of the song:

My Goodbye

(MUSIC)

My goodbye is a breakup song through and through. Not a romantic sort of course, but a friendship breakup or a mentor/mentee type of breakup. Athena is furious at Odysseus for defying her, for being “reckless” and going against the warrior of the mind mentality. Odysseus on the other hand, is completely fed up of following Athena’s advice, and is still reeling from the loss of his friend. In Remember Them, he asks her “is this what it takes to be a warrior of the mind?” and in My Goodbye, claims that “every time someone dies, I’m left to deal with the strain.”

They go back and forth, throwing petty insults at each other in a mythological equivalent of “no, I’m done with YOU!” until Athena actually leaves.

The Odysseus and Athena relationship in the original Odyssey is much less turbulent. It’s almost teasing at times, when Odysseus is being crafty and Athena is being like “oh you!”

It’s at this point where I have to confess that I originally listened to the audiobook version of Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey, which was narrated by Claire Danes. I will admit Claire Danes Athena may have altered my brain chemistry a little bit because I was FLUSTERED. So that might have coloured my opinion on the Odyssey-Athena mentorship a little bit. But I promise since then I’ve re-read the Odyssey and my interpretation of them hasn’t changed much.

Odysseus is very much Athena’s favourite and remains so throughout the whole of the Odyssey, not once do they fall out. She often uses terms of endearment such as “you clever rascal!” to Odysseus, even when he’s lying to her when she’s in disguise. 

In book 13, when Odysseus is back on Ithica, she says to him “you always have such keen intelligence, and that is why I cannot leave you when you need my help.” She never once abandons him. The only time she’s unable to help him as much is, after the cyclops incident, and that is because he angered Poseidon and gods do tend to try an avoid out-and-out conflict with each other (the Trojan war being an exception to that).

Alternatively, whenever she orders Odysseus to do something, he always complies and always follows her advice, which never steers him wrong. 

However, in Epic, there seems to be this kind of push and pull, this imbalance as to how each of them views their relationship.

In Warrior of the Mind, Athena says “If you’re looking for a mentor I’ll make sure your time’s well spent.” And Odysseus replies “Goddess and man, bestest of friends.” They both seems to want different things from their relationship.

But in my goodbye Athena sings “you’re not looking for a mentor I’m not looking for a friend.”

They’re no longer working together, and this is clear in the music. In Warrior of the Mind, the sing together and harmonize perfectly. In My Goodbye, they no longer sing together or harmonise. Futhermore, Athena sings “warrior of the mind” using one note and Odysseus sings it using a (riff?) but at the end, Athena adopts Odysseus’ riff too. However, by the end of My Goodbye, Athena starts singing “my goodbye” using Odysseus’ riff, but the final “my goodbye” goes back to singing one note, showing that she’s moving away from Odysseus. 

I like to think of the Cyclops saga as the “actions” saga and the next saga, the Ocean saga is the “consequences” saga.

But we’ll talk about that more in the next episode. For now, let’s end the episode with a chat with Jorge!

(Music)

CHAT WITH JORGE

OUTRO:
 Thank you for listening to this episode of Greeks and Geeks. I hope you’ve had a lot of fun. If you have please do consider giving me a follow and rating as that really helps me out! Did you know that the number 1 way to grow a podcast is through word of mouth? So tell all your friends too! Stay tuned as next week I’ll be tackling Epic: The Ocean Saga. I’m your host Sabrina and I’m Geeking Out! See you next time! Bye!