ATLANTIC LAND OF THE CYCLOPES
(MADEIRA - FOGO - CAMEROON)
Odysseus' First Voyage, part 4
English translation of parts of Homeros Odyssee, De zwerftochten van Odysseus over de Atlantische Oceaan by Gerard.W.J.Janssen. Continuation of 'Atlantic Troy' Website Homer Odyssey
FROM SENEGAL TO FOGO, MADEIRA OR BIOKO
After Odysseus' story about his raid on the Kikones, we ended up with the Lotos-eaters in an environment of legends and fantasies. After the Lotos-eaters, Odysseus meets successively the giant Cyclopes, Aiolos, the god of the winds, the cannibalistic Laistrugones, the powerful goddess Kirke, the Seirens with their dangerous voices, the monsters Skulla and Charubdis and the cave nymph Kalypso. In addition, Homeros often indicates distances in sailing days, wind directions and course directions that, when transferred to the Mediterranean Sea, provide impossible routes and identifications, such as when the Faiakans are situated on Corfu. On the Atlantic, however, all Homeros' data can be easily integrated. Assuming the identification of Troy in England (Gog Magog), we can follow the route that Odysseus takes to get back to Ithaka (Jerez), until the moment that his ships by a northern storm are driven past Cape S. Vincent into the (far) south. From that moment on, the "route book" of Homeros' Odyssey is not as clear as Wilkens and Cailleux want us to believe. Many indications are unclear, distances are sometimes missing and location descriptions are open to multiple explanations. Nevertheless, any serious attempt to trace the routes of the old seafarers in the Atlantic is worth our attention.
Data about the Cyclopes In 7,199 ff., Alkinoös tells that the Faiakans are related to the gods, "just like the Cyclopes or just like the wild Giants." Cyclopes are mythical creatures. Poseidon, for example, had begotten a monstrous child of Thoösa, the one-eyed Cyclops Polufemos, with whom Odysseus is bound to fight in book 9. The father of Thoösa is Forkus, after whom the fork-shaped port of Ithaka (Cadiz) is named, where Odysseus is landed by the Faiakans (13.96). The Faiakans moved away from their earlier location in Hupereia because they were constantly harassed by Cyclopes. Of the Cyclopes that live near Polufemos, only Polufemos has one eye. He is also a huge giant, while the other Cyclopes are a primitive group of hominids with little social structure and rules:
Then we sailed on with feelings of depression and came to the land of the Cyclopes, lawless and arrogant people, who relying on the immortal gods never lift their hands to plant or plough. No, without sowing or plowing everything grows there, such as wheat, barley, and vines, which produce really good wine from beautiful bunches that do well thanks to the rain of Zeus. They do not know municipal councils and they have no code of law. No, they populate the mountain slopes and live in vaulted caves. They apply their own rules of life to women and children but do not interfere with each other. (9,105 ff.)
Their culture was in so far technical that they could make cheese. Polufemos had it well organized in his cave, everything neatly arranged, animals in age groups in boxes, curd in baskets of wickerwork. Possibly the name Cyclops is derived from kyklops, which means "circular or round-eyed" and denotes a black population, while the European Achaians are helikops, that is, "with clear or elongated eyes".1 That could indicate that for Hupereia, the land of the Cyclopes, we should look in Africa although the Cyclopes are nowherre referred to as "black" or "brown" by Homeros. They are not seafarers, cannot build ships (r.125) and therefore did not participate in the prosperity that other inhabitants of the Atlantic coasts had acquired from trade and shipping, as evidenced by the wealth at the courts of Menelaos, for example, or Nestor, Alkinoös and Odysseus. This announcement actually makes the placement of the Cyclopes on an island impossible. Despite this texts, Cailleux and Wilkens assume an island but have different ideas about the location of the Cyclops, who are placed by Cailleux on Madeira and by Wilkens on one of the Cape Verde Islands, Fogo.
Cameroon with the volcano Cameroon and the Isle of Bioko
(=Fernando Po), land of the Cyclopes?
