Cyclops Watch

What better way to celebrate Rome's birthday (founded, according to legend on April 21, 753 BC) than to write a little more about the classical world around us? Felicissimum diem natalem Romae!

No need to be on the alert for Cyclopes. The advertising copy acknowledges that we all have cell phones, so who really needs a watch? Those of us who remain detached from our phones love watches, even if we are retired and no longer ruled by the clock. Some of us like analog watches, because we like to watch the hour and minute (and sometimes second) hands circle the clock face. The circular shape reminds us that though time is linear for us humans, much of time is cyclical. Hours renew themselves twice a day, full moons come and go, and seasons roll regularly, especially in places like New York state, where after a long winter the daffodils and forsythia announce that spring has come. 

In the mail recently a clipping from a midwestern newspaper arrived from which I learned about Mr Jones Cyclops watch. Always a fan of watches with classical names, I searched for an image of the Cyclops and was smitten by its simplicity and beauty. 

From Greek mythology a Cyclops was a giant human that had one eye on its face. The most famous literary Cyclops was Polyphemus from Homer’s Odyssey, the cannibal who imprisoned Odysseus and his crew in a cave and devoured some of the men until Odysseus plied him with wine, knocked him out, and blinded his one eye with a stake. In Greek kuklos (cyclos) means “circle” and ops means “face”; if you had one eye in the middle of your face, probably the first impression of you would be of a “circle-face.” 

The Cyclops watch is for those who appreciate less exactitude in keeping track of the circling hours, and it gives new meaning to a “circle-face.”

As I was writing the above paragraphs, I heard a news story about underwater tours to the wreck of the Titanic. And how exactly would one arrive two miles below the surface of the North Atlantic? Via Cyclops 2 submersible, of course.