In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew sailed to the island of Sicily, where they met Polyphemus, a ruthless and dim-witted Cyclops. Odysseus brought some men with him, and some excellent wine to offer too. Polyphemus responded by drinking the wine and slaying two of Odysseus' men with his bare hands, ripping their arms off, cooking them, and eating them. As you can imagine, Odysseus was not pleased at all by this. He devised a scheme. He and his men found a long stick, smoothed it, cooked the end with fire so that it was covered with charcoal, and hid it in goat dung (Polyphemus was a shepherd, and had many huge goats.) Again, Odysseus brought the excellent wine to Polyphemus, but a lot more than last time. In exchange for the wine, Polyphemus told Odysseus that he would give him a reward, but in his drunken state he told Odysseus that the reward he was going to give him was that Odysseus would be eaten last. So Odysseus and his men got the stake they made (not to be confused with steak that is edible) and stabbed Polyphemus’ single eye with it (All cyclops have a single eye near their forehead instead of two near the nose). They then made their escape, leaving Polyphemus behind in his agonizing pain.
While they were sailing away, Odysseus did something stupid: He shouted behind him, gloating at Polyphemus and leaving scorching insults. Polyphemus responded by bellowing in rage and hurling enormous boulders at the ship. One landed in front of the ship, causing waves that pushed his ship all the way back to the shore. Once Odysseus' ship got a little farther, he continued gloating, even with his men surrounding him and gently telling him how stupid he was being. This time, Polyphemus hurled a boulder that landed behind them, creating a small tsunami that pushed his boat all the way back out to sea. But Odysseus’s gloating came at great cost. Polyphemus placed a curse on Odysseus’ ship that caused Odysseus to go home with every one of his sailors slain. Thus came the price of Odysseus gloating to a cyclops. This shows that even though you were clever about something you did, it is never a good idea to gloat about it- bad sportsmanship has karma, too.
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