Aeneas has just returned from visiting his father’s spirit in the underworld, with the Sibyl of Cumae as his guide. Ovid then uses two of Ulysses’ men to relate episodes from Homer’s Odyssey in flashback. The first is Achaemenides, who survived an encounter with Polyphemus.

Aeneas sails on from Cumae and lands on the coast at Caieta (Gaeta), midway between Naples and Rome. When they’re ashore, Achaemenides, whom Aeneas had rescued from Sicily, comes across Macareus, another survivor of Ulysses’ crew who had returned from the Trojan War. Their meeting prompts Achaemenides to give a brief account of the encounter between the Cyclops Polyphemus and Ulysses (Odysseus) and his men, a story familiar to the Roman reader from its fuller version in Homer’s Odyssey.

Polyphemus, a savage one-eyed man-eating giant, spent his days tending his flock of sheep. Polyphemus held Ulysses and his crew captive, then devoured several of them, so Ulysses got the Cyclops drunk in order to engineer their escape. Polyphemus asked Ulysses his name, and the latter replied Οὖτις (Outis, Greek for nobody). Once the giant had fallen into a stupor, Ulysses drove a hardened stake into the Cyclops’ one eye, blinding him.

The following morning, Ulysses and his men tied themselves to the undersides of the sheep in Polyphemus’ flock so that he couldn’t feel them escaping. Recognising he had lost his captives, Polyphemus called out for help from the other Cyclops, telling them that ‘Nobody’ had hurt him. The other Cyclops therefore didn’t come to his aid.

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg’s Ulysses Fleeing the Cave of Polyphemus (1812) shows Ulysses about to make his way out of the Cyclops’ cave, as his captor strokes one of his sheep. With Polyphemus’ face turned away from the viewer, it’s difficult to confirm that he has been blinded at this stage, though.

Jacob Jordaens pictures the crew fastening themselves to the underside of the sheep as they prepare to escape, in his Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus, probably painted in about 1650. Again, the Cyclops is facing away from the viewer, and it’s hard to be sure that this is taking place after his blinding.

Achaemenides became separated from the main group, who made their way down to the ship and sailed off into the dawn, deriding the blind Polyphemus as they went. Achaemenides was thus able to see Polyphemus fly into a rage, and hurl huge rocks at Ulysses in his ship.

Guido Reni’s account in his Polyphemus from 1639-40 is clearer. The Cyclopean eye socket is now empty, where Ulysses had poked its single eye out. In the distance, the hero and his crew are making their way out to their ships in two smaller boats, in their haste to depart.

Arnold Böcklin’s Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896) shows Ulysses’ crew rowing frantically out to sea, through large waves, as Polyphemus prepares to hurl a huge rock at them from the shore. The detailed realism and tight composition make this one of Böcklin’s most dramatic and active paintings, and a vivid account.

JMW Turner’s magnificent Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus is probably his finest narrative painting, and the product of a long gestation. He seems to have started work on rough sketches for this in a sketchbook thought to date to 1807, and this finished painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy over twenty years later, in 1829.

The massive figure of Polyphemus is wreathed in cloud above the wooded coast towards the upper left, as the rays of the rising sun light the whole scene from Apollo’s chariot.

The entire crew is dressing the masts and rigging, and Ulysses brandishes two large flags, to deride the blinded giant. The orange flag on the mainmast bears the Greek letters Οὖτις (Outis), the name that Ulysses told Polyphemus was his. Below it is another flag showing the wooden horse of Troy, a reference to Virgil’s Aeneid. In front of the bows of the ship are ghostly white Nereids and sea creatures, presumably a reference to Neptune, Polyphemus’ father, whose curse results from this incident.

The Cyclops then strode the slopes of Mount Etna in his rage, cursing Greeks in general and Ulysses in particular. Achaemenides felt certain that Polyphemus would discover him, and that he would suffer the same fate as his colleagues who had been eaten alive. He hid himself and lived on grass and acorns until he spotted Aeneas’ ship, and he became a Greek rescued by a Trojan ship.