Inside Polyphemus's cave, trapped, with no way to win by force, Odysseus does the strangest thing a Greek hero can do: he gives up his own name. He says he is called Nobody. In Homer's world, being someone depends on four things (name, lineage, land, and past), and Odysseus lets go of the first of them on purpose, just to have a chance of getting the other three back later.
Why he does not attack the Cyclops
Polyphemus is the son of Poseidon, lives alone in a cave sealed by an enormous boulder, and starts eating Odysseus's men, two at each meal. The obvious move would be to attack while he sleeps. Odysseus considers it and thinks better of it, because he sees the next problem: only Polyphemus himself is strong enough to move that boulder. Kill the giant, and no one else gets out alive.
It is the poem's first lesson in métis, the kind of intelligence that solves a problem in the middle of it, with whatever is at hand, not with strength that is not there. Before any plan, that much had to be understood.
The wine, the stake, and an answer already prepared
With the problem laid out, Odysseus sets up three moves in sequence. He gives the giant wine. He and his men sharpen a wooden stake. And he keeps ready the answer to the one question still coming: what is your name.
When Polyphemus asks, the answer comes down to us like this, translated here from the Portuguese edition the house uses to cite the poem:
"Nobody is my name; Nobody is what my mother, my father, and all my companions call me." (Odyssey, Book IX; translated here from the Portuguese edition of Christian Werner, Cosac Naify, 2014)
Oûtis, in Greek.
The pun hidden inside the false name
There is a layer worth knowing. In Greek, the word Odysseus uses for "nobody" sounds almost identical to mêtis, the very cunning that solved the boulder problem in the first place. The name he invents to hide carries, hidden inside it, the virtue that saves him.
And the trick works twice. Blinded, Polyphemus screams for help, and the other Cyclopes ask who is attacking him. He answers that it is Nobody, by cunning and not by force, and the neighbors conclude he is raving and go away. Odysseus escapes tied under a ram. The narrator himself records the taste of the trap: his heart laughed, because his name had fooled them all.
The shout he did not need to make
Except Odysseus is already safe, aboard ship, the blinded enemy behind him, when he does what no strategist would do: he turns and shouts back at the shore. And what he shouts is not loose provocation, it is a complete identification, exactly the way a Greek introduces himself: it was Odysseus, sacker of cities, son of Laertes, who lives in Ithaca, who blinded him. Name, lineage, and land, the first three pieces, handed back all at once.
The poem describes his mood in that instant with a precise word, kótos, the grudge one keeps, different from the rage that boils over in the Iliad. It is not blind fury taking over the scene. It is something else, quieter and more human: the wish that someone, somewhere in the world, should know who did that. A man who has spent hours being Nobody cannot stand to go on being Nobody.
The price: ten years
Polyphemus hears the full name, and it is all he needed. He prays to his own father, Poseidon, asking that the man never make it home, or that he arrive late, alone, and find disaster waiting in his own house. And it works. Odysseus gets his name, his lineage, and his land back in a single shouted sentence, and it is because of that sentence that he loses the way home for ten years.
The one telling this story is Odysseus himself
It is worth remembering where this whole episode comes from. It is not Homer narrating from outside: it is Odysseus himself, sitting at the table of the king of the Phaeacians, telling strangers about the years he spent away, before they decide whether to pay for his passage home. A man who lost his name inside a cave is sitting there, months later, rebuilding his own story with words, the only currency he had left after the shipwreck.
If this scene struck you, it is only one of the four pieces of identity that the Odyssey takes away and gives back over the course of the poem. The class "Odisseia, de Homero" covers the other three.
Readings from Nous
Read the classics in depth
Our list of more than 230 recommended books, commented and organized by theme, so you don't read in the dark.
See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
Why does Odysseus tell the Cyclops that his name is Nobody?
Because killing Polyphemus would solve nothing: only the giant can move the boulder sealing the cave, and with him gone, dead or alive, no one would get out. Odysseus chooses to deceive instead of attack, and the first thing the lie costs him is his own name.
What does Oûtis, the name Odysseus uses in the cave, mean?
Oûtis means "nobody" in Greek, and the poem plays on the sound: the word is almost identical to mêtis, the very cunning intelligence that lets Odysseus come up with the plan. The false name already carries, hidden inside it, the virtue that saves him.
Why does Odysseus shout his real name at Polyphemus once he is already safe?
Because a man who has spent hours being Nobody cannot stand to go on being Nobody: he needs someone, somewhere, to know who did it. The price comes immediately, when Polyphemus asks his father, Poseidon, to make the return costly, and it works: ten more years at sea.
Continue: The Odyssey, by Homer: summary and analysis · Métis, the intelligence of Odysseus · Which Portuguese translation of the Odyssey to read · What is Fides et Ratio
Source class: Odisseia, de Homero