he left me there, the heart inside me brooding on revenge:
how could I pay him back? would Athena give me glory?
Here was the plan that struck my mind as best…
the Cyclops’ great club: there it lay by the pens,
olivewood, full of sap. He’d lopped it off to brandish
once it dried. Looking it over, we judged it big enough
to be the mast of a pitch-black ship with her twenty oars,
a freighter broad in the beam that plows through miles of sea –
so long, so thick it bulked before our eyes.
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 9, lines 354-362. The Cyclops all use huge clubs for weapons and Odysseus sees the Polyphemus’ one lying in his cave. An epic simile describes it as looking big enough to be the mast of an enormous ship. A plan forms in the Greek hero’s mind. He cuts off a length of the club and orders his men to plane it into a sharp stake and char it in a fire. This will be used to blind Polyphemus.