A grim loner, dead set in his own lawless ways.
Here was a piece of work, by god, a monster
built like no mortal who ever supped on bread,
no, like a shaggy peak, I’d say – a man-mountain
rearing head and shoulders over the world.
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 9, lines 210-214. Odysseus gives us a description of Polyphemus, as he spies the cavern of the one-eyed giant along the shore of the Cyclops’ island, with flocks of sheep and goats stalled there. A metaphor compares the Cyclops to a shaggy mountain. The passage portrays that he is huge and hairy, savage and and lives in solitude. He is also a monster and is lawless, foreshadowing the terrible events that are about to happen.