Who are ullyses and polyphemus?

Ulysses (also called Odysseus), the man of many turns, was the craftiest

of all the Greeks who fought at Troy. After the destruction of Troy,

it took Ulysses ten years to get back home to Ithaca. He had many adventures

on his journey. One of the very earliest was his encounter with the cyclops

(one eyed giant) Polyphemus, who kept Ulysses and several of his men prisoner

in his cave for a few days, using some of them as food. Ulysses came up with an escape plan: he got the cyclops drunk and when he had fallen asleep,

Ulysses and his surviving men put out his single eye with a sharpened

wooden pole. Mad with pain but robbed of his sight, the cyclops was unable

to capture and crush them, so he finally had to give up.

During the night, Ulysses tied some of the cyclops' sheep together

side by side in groups of three. In the morning, when Polyphemus

rolled away the giant boulder that blocked the exit from his cave

to lead his flock out to pasture, Ulysses and his men were able to escape

by holding on to the belly of the middle sheep in each group, since

the cyclops, thinking they might use the sheep to get away,

only felt the animals' backs. After the small group had finally made

it back to the ship, however, Ulysses could not resist mocking

the cyclops and telling him who had blinded him thus.

Polyphemus then called upon his father Poseidon to lay a curse

on Ulysses, which was the cause of all the subsequent disasters

that befell the hero.