338 MURAL ARCHITECTURE 
what were these Cyclopes? Were they a race 
wholly fabulous, and was the term Cyclopian, 
merely an epithet of grandeur, and not the state- 
ment of a fact; or were they a people of great 
mechanical skill, to whom the magnitude-of their 
achievements, and the remoteness of their age, 
procured the reputation of gigantic stature, and 
superhuman strength ?” 
The latter supposition seems to me the most 
probable. The poets and historians of Greece, 
finding these stupendous fortifications, which far 
surpassed the skill and strength of their own 
times, and learning that tradition assigned them 
to a foreign race, called the Cyclopes, set their 
imaginations at work to conceive the attributes 
which ought to belong to the authors of such 
massive constructions, and invented the monstrous 
fables respecting them, which have descended to 
our days. Certain it is, that almost all the state- 
ments which exist concerning the Cyclopes, bear 
marks of pure fiction. To say nothing of the 
extraordinary description in the ninth book of 
the Odyssey, Homer speaks of them in more than 
one place as Giants.* Pawsanias has a precisely 
similar expression.| Hwripides describes them 
* Nome Kuxawres te xo ovyere Dude Tiyavrwr. 
T Qormreg Kuxrwmras xo to yryavtwy eDy0s. 
