hubris that was to cause problems for him later. Polyphemus prays to his father, Poseidon, for revenge and casts huge rocks towards the ship, which Odysseus barely escapes. The story reappears in later Classical literature. In Cyclops, the 5th-century BC play by Euripides, a chorus of satyrs offers comic relief from the grisly story of how Polyphemus is punished for his impious behaviour in not respecting the rites of hospitality. In this play, Polyphemus claims to be a pederast, revealing to Odysseus that he takes more pleasure in boys than in women, and tries to take the satyr Silenus, who he kept together with his sons as slaves on Mount Etna in Sicily, calling him "my Ganymede". The scene is infused with low comedy, specifically from the chorus, and Polyphemus is made to look silly: he is drunk when he explains his sexual desire, Silenus is too old to play the part of the young lover, and he himself will be subjected to penetration—with the wooden spike. In his Latin epic, Virgil describes how Aeneas observes blind Polyphemus as he leads his flocks down to the sea. They have encountered Achaemenides, who re-tells the story of how Odysseus and his men escaped, leaving him behind. The giant is described as descending to the shore, using a "lopped pine tree" as a walking staff. Once Polyphemus reaches the sea, he washes his oozing, bloody eye socket and groans painfully. Achaemenides is taken aboard Aeneas’ vessel and they cast off with Polyphemus in chase. His great roar of frustration brings the rest of the Cyclopes down to the shore as Aeneas draws away in fear. Artistic representations During the seventh century, the potters gave preference to scenes from both epics, The Odyssey and the Iliad, almost half being that of the blinding of the Cyclops and the ruse by which Odysseus and his men escape. One such episode, on a vase featuring the hero carried beneath a sheep, was used on a 27 drachma Greek postage stamp in 1983. This was a steep drop (to the point of being "insignificant") from the volume of pan-Hellenic pottery discovered from the fifth and sixth centuries, which largely depicted ancient Greek mythology: scenes from the Trojan War or deeds from Heracles or Perseus. The blinding was depicted in life-size sculpture, including a giant Polyphemus, in the Sperlonga sculptures probably made for the Emperor Tiberius. This