The Cyclops of the Odyssey? “It exists, it’s Monte Leano in Terracina”

The Cyclops? It really exists and is still among us. The “discovery” was made by a researcher from Latina, Emiliano Ciotti, who developed a study to trace the places of Ulysses in Lazio. In the essay “The Odyssey and the Pontine Plain”, Ciotti, who has worked extensively in the past on the history of the twentieth century and is the president of the Association of victims of the Marocchinate, reconstructs the wanderings of Ulysses from the landing on the island of the sorceress Circe until the encounter with the Cyclops: “He was a giant monster; and he did not resemble a bread-eating man, but a forested peak of lofty mountains, appearing isolated from the others”, yes reads in Calzecchi Onesti’s translation of the Odyssey. And, in fact, this is precisely Ciotti’s theory: the Cyclops would be Mount Leano, a mountain with a height of about 500 meters and a length of a couple of kilometers, “with the features of a real Cyclops” .

In support of his theory, Ciotti retraces the passages of Book In particular, the researcher starts from the meeting with the sorceress Circe and the identification of the “cave caves” where the crew hides tools and cargo from the beached ship. Those caves, thanks to an in-depth investigation project supported by the Circeo National Park, have been identified with a dizzying karst fissure of the Grotta Spaccata di Torre Paola, in Circeo. According to the researchers, the complex carved into the rock matches perfectly with the description and geographical references of the Homeric narrative. As proof there is also a map of Monte Circeo and the surrounding areas of S. Felice, created by Giovanni Battista Cipriani in 1830, where the fissure is described as “two caves one above the other” and it is specified that “in the one at sea the ships enter”.

There is also various evidence that has identified the home of the Sorceress Circe in Monte Circeo, where, in distant times, the Romans built a temple dedicated to Circe. “Inhabited since the times of Neanderthal man, on the slopes of Mount Circeo, which juts out into the Tyrrhenian Sea and rises up to 541 m in height, the remains of an acropolis and megalithic walls have been found – underlines Ciotti – Here, in Roman times, Circei was founded, probably on the same site where, in the Middle Ages, the CastrumSancti Felici, the current San Felice Circeo, was built”. The distance between the cave where Ulysses landed and the cyclopean walls of the supposed home of the sorceress Circe is about 4 km.

Ciotti then reports the hypotheses that identify the city of Lamo in Terracina, also called Lestrigonia or Lamia (from Lamo, its founder at the time of the Trojan War of the 12th century BC), another stage of Homer’s journey. According to legend, the Laestrygonians are a people of anthropophagous giants who destroyed Ulysses’ entire fleet, with the only exception of the hero’s ship. Already in 1852 the Papal archaeologist D. Pietro Matragna stated in his book entitled “The city of Lamo established in Terracina” that the Acropolis of Terracina could be the place where Ulysses saw the city inhabited by giants, precisely Lamo. About 300 meters from the (presumed) Lestrigoni village, however, in the spring of 1969, as many as fifty terracotta sarcophagi were discovered by chance, with as many human skeletons, all very tall (the stature was between 1.83 and 2.13 meters, which excludes the possibility that they were ancient Romans, who did not exceed much more than one and a half metres).

“Ulysses will remain on the island of Eea, guest of Circe, for an entire year, then, begged by his companions to remember their distant homeland, he will set sail again. During the period of his stay on Eea or during the exploration of the land of the giants ( Lamo), Ulysses’ crew certainly came across the vision of the Cyclops – this is Ciotti’s theory – But where is the Giant located, 15 km from the Circeo promontory and 5 km from Lamo? It has a height of about 500 meters and a length of a couple of kilometers… We are talking about ‘Monte Leano’, a mountain with the features of a real cyclops”. The researcher, in support of his thesis, also recalls that a fresco depicting a mountain with the face of a Giant was found in the Domus in via Graziosa sull’Esquilino.

“There has been a debate that has lasted for centuries on the identification of the places of the Odyssey and the hypothesis of southern Lazio is not new – the archaeologist and philologist Gianluca Mandatori explains to Adnkronos – But what is certainly possible, and on which Ciotti’s study places emphasis on, is the frequentation of Pontine Lazio by the Mycenaeans first and then by the Greeks, a frequentation which has various archaeological proofs by the Greeks settled in Campania Cuma, in Pithecusa, on the island of Ischia, going up the coast, they came from our area. And from this point of view it is not unlikely that Pontine Lazio also contributed in an important way to the formation of the founding narrative nucleus of the Odyssey. A stratified narrative that crystallizes, as we know it, not before the age of Pisistratus, but which has its origins in the oral histories of at least 6 centuries before Monte Leano, as Ciotti says, can give life to the figure of the Cyclops: it is a suggestion, but it is not unlikely that, as it is a suggestion for us, it may have been so for the man of the final bronze medal, who by crossing these places did precisely a wealth of images, which he then poured into his own heritage of mythological narratives”.