Was Argus Panoptes a cyclops?

While reading about Greek mythology, I noticed something interesting. One of the elder cyclopes was named Arges. Another hundred-eyed giant was named Argus. Both of these names seemingly derive from an Ancient Greek root ἀργός meaning "bright, quick."

This leads me to suspect that these two may be multiplications of the same figure. Mythology, owing to its nature as orally-passed storytelling, grows and changes over time like kudzu. Multiplications of the same character or monster are just one example of the divergences that accumulate.

Previously I wrote posts speculating about the relationship between the cyclopean giants with variable numbers of eyes drawn from Greek mythology: monoclopes, biclopes, triclopes, megaclopes. (Of course, the naming scheme is nonsensical since cyclops itself is a combination of cycle and ops.) I find it highly amusing and ironic that mythology might have gotten the same idea millennia before me.

Research links

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἀργός#Ancient_Greek
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Κύκλωψ#Ancient_Greek
• https://www.theoi.com/Gigante/GiganteArgosPanoptes.html
• https://www.theoi.com/Titan/Kyklopes.html

Ecology of the Cyclops

The cyclops in fantasy gaming is fairly boring. It is just another giant monster that is out to kill you. This is in contrast to their place in Greek mythology, in which they were the allies of Zeus who forged his lightning bolt and helped him overthrow Cronus.

Ecology of the Argusoïd

Argus Pantopes was a hundred-eyed giant from Greek myth. As far I could determine his name translates to "bright/shining all-eyes," which is less a name and more a literal description of his appearance.