Polyphemus in the context of "Acis and Galatea"

Poseidon (/pəˈsaɪdən, pɒ-, poʊ-/; Ancient Greek: Ποσειδῶν, romanised: Poseidôn) is one of the twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and mythology, presiding over the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses. He was the protector of seafarers and the guardian of many Hellenic cities and colonies. In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, Poseidon was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes, with the cult title "earth shaker"; in the myths of isolated Arcadia, he is related to Demeter and Persephone and was venerated as a horse, and as a god of the waters. Poseidon maintained both associations among most Greeks: he was regarded as the tamer or father of horses, who, with a strike of his trident, created springs (the terms for horses and springs are related in the Greek language). His Roman equivalent is Neptune.

Homer and Hesiod suggest that Poseidon became lord of the sea when, following the overthrow of his father Cronus, the world was divided by lot among Cronus' three sons; Zeus was given the sky, Hades the underworld, and Poseidon the sea, with the Earth and Mount Olympus belonging to all three. In Plato's Timaeus and Critias, the legendary island of Atlantis was Poseidon's domain. In Homer's Iliad, Poseidon supports the Greeks against the Trojans during the Trojan War. In the Odyssey, during the sea-voyage from Troy back home to Ithaca, the Greek hero Odysseus provokes Poseidon's fury by blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, resulting in Poseidon punishing him with storms, causing the complete loss of his ship and numerous of his companions, and delaying his return by ten years.

Lampione (Italian: [lamˈpjoːne]; Sicilian: Lampiuni [lamˈbjuːnɪ]; Arabic: جزيرة الكتاب, romanized: Jazīrat al-Kitāb, lit. 'Island of the Book') is a small rocky island located in the Mediterranean Sea, which belongs geographically to the Pelagie Islands and administratively to the comune of Lampedusa e Linosa, Province of Agrigento, region of Sicily, Italy. It is about 200 metres (656 feet) long and 180 metres (591 feet) across, and has an area of 4 hectares (9.9 acres) and a highest elevation of 36 metres (118 feet).

The islet is uninhabited, the only building being a lighthouse. According to the legend, the island was a rock that had fallen from the hands of the cyclops Polyphemus.

In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, the Cyclopes (/saɪˈkloʊpiːz/ sy-KLOH-peez; Greek: Κύκλωπες, Kýklōpes, "Circle-eyes" or "Round-eyes"; singular Cyclops /ˈsaɪklɒps/ SY-klops; Κύκλωψ, Kýklōps) are giant one-eyed creatures. Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished. In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are the three brothers, Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who made Zeus's weapon, the thunderbolt. In Homer's Odyssey, they are an uncivilized group of shepherds, the brethren of Polyphemus encountered by Odysseus. A third group of Cyclopes reputedly built the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns.

In Cyclops, the fifth-century BC play by Euripides, a chorus of satyrs offers comic relief based on the encounter of Odysseus and Polyphemus. The third-century BC poet Callimachus makes the Hesiodic Cyclopes the assistants of smith-god Hephaestus, as does Virgil in the Latin epic Aeneid, where he seems to equate the Hesiodic and Homeric Cyclopes.

In Greek mythology, Galatea (/ˌɡæləˈtiːə/; Ancient Greek: Γαλάτεια; "she who is milk-white") was the name of the following figures:

• Galatea, a Nereid who loved the shepherd Acis, and was loved by the cyclops Polyphemus.
• Galatea, the post-antiquity name given to the statue of a woman created by Pygmalion and brought to life by Aphrodite.
• Galatea, daughter of Eurytius, son of Sparton. She married a man of good family but poor, Lamprus. When she became pregnant, Lamprus wished to have a son and told her to expose the child if it turned out to be a girl. Galatea gave birth to a girl while Lamprus was away, so she—with the advice of seers and her own dreams—told Lamprus that the baby was male, and named her Leucippus. As Leucippus grew older, her true sex became harder and harder to conceal, so Galatea went to the sanctuary of Leto and prayed to the goddess to change her daughter into a man. Leto took pity on mother and daughter and made Leucippus an actual man.

In Greek mythology, Thoosa (/θoʊˈoʊsə/, Ancient Greek: Θόωσα, romanized: Thóōsa), also spelled Thoösa, was, according to Homer, the sea nymph daughter of the primordial sea god Phorcys, and the mother, by Poseidon, of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

Numen (plural numina) is a Latin term for "divinity", "divine presence", or "divine will". The Latin authors defined it as follows: Cicero writes of a "divine mind" (divina mens), a god "whose numen everything obeys", and a "divine power" (vis divina) "which pervades the lives of men". It causes the motions and cries of birds during augury. In Virgil's recounting of the blinding of the one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, from the Odyssey, in his Aeneid, he has Odysseus and his men first "ask for the assistance of the great numina" (magna precati numina). Reviewing public opinion of Augustus on the day of his funeral, the historian Tacitus reports that some thought "no honor was left to the gods" when he "established the cult of himself" (se ... coli vellet) "with temples and the effigies of numina" (effigie numinum). Pliny the Younger in a letter to Paternus raves about the "power", the "dignity", and "the majesty"; in short, the "numen of history". Lucretius uses the expression numen mentis, or "bidding of the mind", where "bidding" is numen, not, however, the divine numen, unless the mind is to be considered divine, but as simply human will.

Since the early 20th century, numen has sometimes been treated in the history of religion as a pre-animistic phase; that is, a belief system inherited from an earlier time. Numen is also used by sociologists to refer to the idea of magical power residing in an object, particularly when writing about ideas in the Western tradition.

The Rider Painter was a Laconian vase painter active between 560 and 530 BC. He is considered one of the five great vase painters of Sparta.

His name is unknown, but he is called the Rider Painter after the horseman depicted on his name vase at the British Museum. He painted various shapes, including lebetes, a rare shape in Sparta, but predominantly kylikes. He primarily produced for export, as indicated by the fact that one of his works has so far been discovered in Laconia. His workshop cannot be located, but was perhaps in a perioikic settlement. Since identifiable painting styles and peculiarities in vase shapes tend to be consistent, it is assumed that the Rider Painter, like other Laconian vase painters, was both potter and painter. He is considered somewhat inferior in talent to the other four great Laconian vase painters. He mainly depicted scenes from Greek mythology, such as the blinding of Polyphemus, Kadmos or Herakles. Other motifs include scenes from everyday life, such komasts or the eponymous rider.