Book IX of the Odyssey is one of the most often read and discussed sections of Homeric poetry. It contains Odysseus' narrative of his encounter with Polyphemus the Cyclops, which not only typifies him as the trickster-hero that he is, but also resonates thematically with later parts of the narrative. This edition provides solid support in reading, understanding, and enjoying this essential episode. The Introduction offers a particularly full guide to Homeric meter, language and dialect as well as discussing in detail the place which the Cyclops episode occupies both in the Odyssey as a whole and in Greek mythology and culture as an expression of the colonial imagination.