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GREEK

A Cyclops was a one-eyed giant who lived in a cave and ate sheep.

According to Greek myth, the Cyclopes were huge, strong, and only had a single round eye in the middle of their foreheads.

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A Cyclops was a one-eyed giant who lived in a cave and ate sheep.
THE FULL STORY

In Greek mythology, a Cyclops was a giant with only one eye, set right in the middle of its forehead. The Cyclopes were said to live in caves on remote islands, herding sheep and goats. Some legends made them friendly craftsmen, while others made them dangerous monsters that ate any sailors who landed on their shores.

The most famous Cyclops story comes from the Odyssey. The hero Odysseus and his crew got trapped in the cave of a Cyclops named Polyphemus. The giant rolled a huge boulder over the entrance and started eating the sailors one by one. Odysseus had to think fast.

He got the Cyclops drunk, then poked out his single eye with a sharp wooden stake while he slept. The crew escaped by hiding under sheep as the blind Cyclops let his flock out the next morning. Some scientists think this whole legend might have started when ancient Greeks found ancient elephant skulls and mistook the trunk hole for an eye.

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