According to Apollodorus, the Cyclopes also provided Poseidon with his trident and Hades with his cap of invisibility, and the gods used these weapons to defeat the Titans. Although the primordial Cyclopes of the Theogony were presumably immortal (as were their brothers the Titans), the sixth-century BC Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, has them being killed by Apollo. Later sources tell us why: Apollos son Asclepius had been killed by Zeus thunderbolt, and Apollo killed the Cyclopes, the makers of the thunderbolt, in revenge. According to a scholiast on Euripides Alcestis, the fifth-century BC mythographer Pherecydes supplied the same motive, but said that Apollo, rather than killing the Cyclopes, killed their sons (one of whom he named Aortes) instead. No other source mentions any offspring of the Cyclopes. A Pindar fragment suggests that Zeus himself killed the Cyclopes to prevent them from making thunderbolts for anyone else.The Cyclopes prowess as craftsmen is stressed by Hesiod who says "strength and force and contrivances were in their works." Being such skilled craftsmen of great size and strength, later poets, beginning with the third-century BC poet Callimachus, imagine these Cyclopes, the primordial makers of Zeus thunderbolt, becoming the assistants of the smith-god Hephaestus, at his forge in Sicily, underneath Mount Etna, or perhaps the nearby Aeolian Islands. In his Hymn to Artemis, Callimachus has the Cyclopes on the Aeolian island of Lipari, working "at the anvils of Hephaestus", make the bows and arrows used by Apollo and Artemis.
According to a version of the story in the Iliad scholia (found nowhere else), when Zeus swallowed Metis, she was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes.Although described by Hesiod as "having very violent hearts" (ὑπέρβιον ἦτορ ἔχοντας), and while their extraordinary size and strength would have made them capable of great violence, there is no indication of the Hesiodic Cyclopes having behaved in any other way than as dutiful servants of the gods.Walter Burkert suggests that groups or societies of lesser gods, like the Hesiodic Cyclopes, "mirror real cult associations (thiasoi) ... It may be surmised that smith guilds lie behind Cabeiri, Idaian Dactyloi, Telchines, and Cyclopes." Homeric Cyclopes
In an episode of Homers Odyssey (c. 700 BC), the hero Odysseus encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, a one-eyed man-eating giant who lives with his fellow Cyclopes in a distant land. The relationship between these Cyclopes and Hesiods Cyclopes is unclear. Homer described a very different group of Cyclopes, than the skilled and subservient craftsman of Hesiod. Homers Cyclopes live in the "world of men" rather than among the gods, as they presumably do in the Theogony. The Homeric Cyclopes are presented as uncivilized shepherds, who live in caves, savages with no regard for Zeus. They have no knowledge of agriculture, ships or craft. They live apart and lack any laws.The fifth-century BC playwright Euripides also told the story of Odysseus encounter with Polyphemus in his satyr play Cyclops. Euripides Cyclopes, like Homers, are uncultured cave-dwelling shepherds.