The story of the love of
Acis and the
sea-nymph Galatea appears in
Ovid's
Metamorphoses. There the jealous
Cyclops Polyphemus, who also loves Galatea, comes upon them embracing and crushes his rival with a boulder. His destructive passion comes to nothing when Galatea changes Acis into a river spirit as immortal as herself. The episode was made the subject of poems, operas, paintings and statues in the
Renaissance and after.