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The Cyclopes were legendary giants with only one eye in the middle of their forehead, with an enormous force and their fame is mainly bound to the not friendly meeting of one of them (Polyphemus) with Ulysses.

The original and most ancient traditions, prior to that of the Odyssey, know only 3 Cyclopes, sons of Uranus and Gaea (or Gaia), respectively, the god of the sky ad the goddess of the Earth:

Arges (= brightener)
Brontes (= thunderer)
Steropes (= flasher)

Their father chained them to the Tartarus (where souls were punished in the underworld) fearing they could overthrow him as the lord of the Universe, but they were freed by their brother Cronus who again chained them in his turn for the same reason. Only Zeus, son of Cronus, definitively freed them and obtained their help to win in the Titanomachy, the long fight against the Titans.
They helped Zeus providing the thunderbolts, Hades giving him an helmet that made invisible and gave Poseidon his famous trident.

Since then, they remained at the services of the Gods, despite a legend about Apollo who wanted to get a revenge for his son Asclepius, killed by Zeus for having risen a person from death with his medical skill (he become the protector of all doctors, since then on). Not having chances to attack Zeus, Apollo killed the Cyclopes with his arrows, at least, to find an indirect revenge.
This cost to Apollo one year of slavery as a "cowboy" under Admetus, the king of Fere, in Thessalia, while the Cyclopes finished to be immortal, as divine beings and become mortal. By a legend, the ghosts of these first three Cyclopes were confined under Mt. Etna.

The first Cyclopes produced weapons for all the Gods and the legends placed their residence (underground) in the Aeolian Islands, off-shore from Sicily or under the Etna Volcano, always in Sicily. The roars, the lava flows and the eruptions of these volcanoes were explained with the continuous hits of their hammers and the fire of their ovens, while the earthquakes (so frequent in Sicily) were due to the rage of the other giants chained under that volcano.

Later, another tradition replaced the former ones with a second generation of Cyclopes, this time, imagined as a people of wild shepherds, cannibal and enemies of the Gods; they had no laws and lived in natural caves in the Campi Flegrei (the volcanic area near the modern Naples) and, again, along the wild flanks of Mt. Etna.
They ignored agriculture and also wine production and they had never seen a town. Just

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