»The statues of the Cyclops«: reconstructing a public monument from Aphrodisias in Caria

Two texts inscribed on a large statue base shaft from Aphrodisias in Caria record repairs made to »the statues of the Cyclops« that originally stood on top of the base. While the inscriptions themselves have been well studied, the missing Cyclops statue group has received rather less attention. In this article, the iconography and original display context of this group are investigated for the first time. A series of statue and statuette fragments from Aphrodisias are presented to support the hypothesis that the base once supported an arresting Hellenistic-style statue group depicting Polyphemos eviscerating a companion of Odysseus. It is argued that this statue group was originally set up in a public space in Aphrodisias, plausibly the large urban park known today as the South Agora. This contextualisation permits a consideration of the factors that led to Cyclops statue groups being erected as public monuments in the cities of Greece and Asia Minor during the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D