reminder about galatea and polyphemus romance
POLYPHEMUS: O Cyclops, Cyclops, where be your wits gone flying?
Up, fetch you loppings for your lambs, or go a withy-plying;
The wearier’s oft the wiser man, and that there’s no denying.
Milk the staying, leave the straying, chase not them that shy;
Mayhap you’ll find e’en sweeter Galateans by and by.
There’s many a jill says ‘Come an you will and play all night wi’ me,’
And he laugh I hear when I give ear is soft and sweet as can be;
E’en I, ‘tis plain, be somebody, ashore, if not ‘I the sea." -Theocritus
"Then Pan well soaked saw Galateia swimming under a neighbouring wavebeaten rock, and sang out: "Where are you going, Galateia? Have you given up sea for hills? Perhaps you are looking for the love-song of Cyclops? I pray you by the Paphian, and by your Polyphemos – you know the weight of desire, do not hide from me if you have noticed my mountainranging Echo swimming by you? Does she also sit on a dolphin of Aphrodite the sea-goddess, my own Echo navigating like Thetis unveiled? I fear the dangerous waves of the deep may have startled her! I fear the great flood may have covered her! How cruel for her, poor thing! She has left the hills and moves restless over the waves. Echo once the maid of the rocks will show herself as the maid of the waters. Come, leave your Polyphemos, the laggard! If you like, I will lift you upon my own back and save you. The roaring flood does not overwhelm me; if I like I can mount to the starry sky on my goatish feet!" "He spoke, and Galateia said in reply: "My dear Pan, carry your own Echo through the waves – she knows nothing of the sea. Don't waste your time in asking me why I am going here this day. I have another and higher voyage which Rainy Zeus has found me. Let be the song of Cyclops, though it is sweet. I seek no more the Sicilian sea; I am terrified at this tremendous flood, and I care nothing for Polyphemos." With these words, she passed away from the lair of waterfaring Pan."
"One alone was left behind from the war, Polyphemos, tall as the clouds, so mighty and so great, the Earthshaker's own son; he was kept in his place by another love, dearer than war, under the watery ways, for he had seen Galateia half-hidden, and made the neighbouring sea resound as he pouredc out his love for a maiden in the wooing tones of his pipes"
:and Thetis unveiled peeping up out of the sea, with her hands resting on Doris and Panopeia, turned a gladsome eye towards Dionysos with his thyrsus. Galatea too came from the depths and moved half visible through the bosom of the deep sea, wrinkling the calm surface, and looking upon the sea-affrighting battle of murderous Cyclops she was shaken, and her cheeks changed colour from fear, for she thought she saw Polyphemos fighting for Lyaios against Deriades in this Indian War; and in dismay she besought Aphrodite of the sea to protect the heroic son of Poseidon, and she prayed the loving father Seabluehair to defend his son Polyphemos in the battle."
"Make the best of it, and endure as Tethys did. Another sprung from the sea so great and not from a little fountain, Galateia, has desire for melodious Polyphemos; the deepsea maiden has a husband from the land, she migrates from sea to land, enchanted by the lute"
"The tribes of Nereids sounded for their sire the cry of battle-triumph: unshod, half hidden in the brine, the company rushed raging to combat over the sea. Restless Ino speeding unarmed into strife with the Satyrs, fell again into her old madness spitting white foam from her maddened lips. Terrible Panopeia also shot through the quiet water flogging the greeny back of a sealioness. Galateia too the sea-nymph lifting the club of her lovesick Polyphemos attacked a wild Bacchant. Eido rode unshaken, unwetted, over the water mounted on the back of a seabred pilot fish"
"And Galateia twangled a marriage dance and restlessly twirled in capering step, and she sang the marriage verses, for she had learnt well how to sing, being taught by Polyphemos with a shepherd's syrinx"-Nonnus
Appian, Illyrian Wars (App.Ill.)
§ 1.2 They say that the country received its name from Illyrius, the son of Polyphemus; for the Cyclops Polyphemus and his wife, Galatea, had three sons, Celtus, Illyrius, and Galas"
"Polyphemus son of Poseidon, the fiercest of them, lives here; he has a single eyebrow extending above his single eye and a broad nose astride his upper lip, and he feeds upon men after the manner of savage lions. But at the present time he abstains from such food that he may not appear gluttonous or disagreeable; for he loves Galatea, who is sporting here on the sea, and he watches her from the mountain-side. And though his shepherd's pipe is still under his arm and silent, yet he has a pastoral song to sing that tells how white she is and skittish and sweeter than unripe grapes, and how he is raising for Galatea fawns and bear-cubs. All this he sings beneath an evergreen oak, heeding not where his flocks are feeding nor their number nor even, any longer, where the earth is. He is painted a creature of the mountains, fearful to look at, tossing his hair, which stands erect and is as dense as the foliage of a pine tree, showing a set of jagged teeth in his voracious jaw, shaggy all over — breast and belly and limbs even to the nails. He thinks, because he is in love, that his glance is gentle, but it is wild and stealthy still, like that of wild beasts subdued under the force of necessity"-Philostratus, Imagines (Philostr.Im.)
"O Galatea, come: what fun can there be in the waves?
Here is rosy spring, here, by the streams, earth scatters
her varied flowers: here the white poplar leans above the cave,
and the clinging vines weave shadowy arbours:
Come: let the wild waves strike the shores."-vergil ecologues
DOR: A handsome lover, Galatea, this Sicilian shepherd who they say is so mad for you!
GAL: Don't be sarcastic, Doris; he is Poseidon's son, after all.
DOR: Well, and if he were Zeus's, and still such a wild shaggy creature, with only one eye (there is nothing uglier than to have only one eye), do you think his birth would improve his beauty?
GAL: Shagginess and wildness, as you call them, are not ugly in a man; and his eye looks very well in the middle of his forehead, and sees just as well as if it were two.
DOR: Why, my dear, from your raptures about him one would think it was you that were in love, not he.
GAL: Oh no, I am not in love; but it is too bad, your all running him down as you do. It is my belief you are jealous, Do you remember? we were playing on the shore at the foot of Etna, where the long strip of beach comes between the mountain and the sea; he was feeding his sheep, and spied us from above; yes, but he never so much as glanced at the rest of you; I was the pretty one; he was all eyes — eye, I mean — for me. That is what makes you spiteful, because it showed I was better than you, good enough to be loved, while you were taken no notice of.
DOR: Hoity-toity! jealous indeed! because a one-eyed shepherd thinks you pretty! Why, what could he see in you but your white skin? and he only cared for that because it reminded him of cheese and milk; he thinks everything pretty that is like them. If you want to know any more than that about your looks, sit on a rock when it is calm, and lean over the water; just a bit of white skin, that is all; and who cares for that, if it is not picked out with some red?
GAL: Well, if I am all white, I have got a lover of some sort; there is not a shepherd or a sailor or a boatman to care for any of you. Besides, Polyphemus is very musical.
DOR: Take care, dear; we heard him singing the other day when he serenaded you. Heavens! one would have taken him for an ass braying. And his lyre! what a thing! A stag's skull, with its horns for the uprights; he put a bar across, and fastened on the strings without any tuning-pegs! then came the performance, all harsh and out of tune; he shouted something himself, and the lyre played something else, and the love ditty sent us into fits of laughter. Why, Echo, chatterbox that she is, would not answer him; she was ashamed to be caught mimicking such a rough ridiculous song. Oh, and the pet that your beau brought you in his arms! — a bear cub nearly as shaggy as himself. Now then, Galatea, do you still think we envy you your lover?
GAL: Well, Doris, only show us your own; no doubt he is much handsomer, and sings and plays far better.
DOR: Oh, I have not got one; I do not set up to be lovely. But one like the Cyclops — faugh, he might be one of his own goats! — he eats raw meat, they say, and feeds on travellers — one like him, dear, you may keep; I wish you nothing worse than to return his love." -lucian diologue of sea mfs
"will you sing me some sweet Sicilian song, Lycidas-some
sweet and charming love song such as the Cyclops Polyphemus
ang to Galatea on the seashore?" -Bion, wedding of achilles and deidamia
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