5.262-312

τῷ δ᾽ ἄρα πέμπτῳ πέμπ᾽ ἀπὸ νήσου δῖα Καλυψώ,
εἵματά τ᾽ ἀμφιέσασα θυώδεα καὶ λούσασα.
ἐν δέ οἱ ἀσκὸν ἔθηκε θεὰ μέλανος οἴνοιο
τὸν ἕτερον, ἕτερον δ᾽ ὕδατος μέγαν, ἐν δὲ καὶ ᾖα
κωρύκῳ· ἐν δέ οἱ ὄψα τίθει μενοεικέα πολλά·
οὖρον δὲ προέηκεν ἀπήμονά τε λιαρόν τε.

On the fifth day divine Calypso sent him from the island,
bathing him and wrapping him in fragrant clothing.
The goddess put two skins on board, one of dark wine,
while the other held water, and in a bag was food,
the sort of provisions to put strength in a man;
and she sent a following breeze, warm and gentle.

Odyssey 5.263–68

With these last gifts, we may sense that Calypso’s resignation to Odysseus’s destiny may not be absolute. She bathes him, a seemingly tender gesture, and yet being bathed by a woman can make a man vulnerable in the Odyssey. Water itself is feminine in the gendered division of the world as the Greeks saw it, amorphous, flowing across the clean boundaries that define things masculine. We hear from Helen that she got Odysseus to reveal his plans to her after bathing and dressing him (4.252–56). Later, he has a near miss when his old nurse washes his feet and recognizes him from his scar (19.467–90). When Nausicaa offers Odysseus a bath and clean clothes after he washes up on shore, he politely refuses on the grounds that it would be improper for young girls to see him naked. But we note that Athena chooses to enhance Odysseus’s appearance right after the bath, making him look younger and stronger, something the goddess does only there and once more in the poem, when Odysseus has been bathed after the slaughter of the suitors (6.232–35 = 23.159–62). In both cases, the goddess senses that her hero might need a little extra leverage after being bathed. Likewise, to be “wrapped” (ἀμφιέσασα) in anything by Calypso could be trouble, and especially when the clothes are “fragrant” (θυώδεα), perhaps carrying a scent the feminine power of which lingers. The import of these seemingly harmless gestures will soon be clear.

Odysseus sails happily away, continuing his mastery of the natural world, skillfully (τεχνηέντως) steering his boat through the waves, plotting his course by the stars. On the eighteenth day out, with the Phaeacians’ island in sight, comes a reckoning, as Poseidon, returning from a sojourn with the Ethiopians, spies Odysseus from afar. We know he is angry at Odysseus for blinding his son Polyphemus the Cyclops (1.68–71) and now there will be payback, as the god sends a storm to rip the boat apart, using the power of the elements to attack human order with chaos:

ὣς εἰπὼν σύναγεν νεφέλας, ἐτάραξε δὲ πόντον
χερσὶ τρίαιναν ἑλών· πάσας δ᾽ ὀρόθυνεν ἀέλλας
παντοίων ἀνέμων, σὺν δὲ νεφέεσσι κάλυψε
γαῖαν ὁμοῦ καὶ πόντον· ὀρώρει δ᾽ οὐρανόθεν νύξ.
σὺν δ᾽ Εὖρός τε Νότος τ᾽ ἔπεσον Ζέφυρός τε δυσαὴς
καὶ Βορέης αἰθρηγενέτης, μέγα κῦμα κυλίνδων.

So saying, he slammed the clouds together and stirred up
the sea, grabbing the trident with both hands and rousing gales
from all the winds at once; he smothered the earth and sea
with clouds, and black night rushed down from heaven.
East Wind and South Wind crashed together, and the raging West Wind
and the North Wind born from bright air rolled up a great wave.

Odyssey 5.291–96

Poseidon’s appearance here is consistent with the usual function of the gods in the Odyssey. In the Iliad, where the narrative urges us always toward recognizing the fact of human mortality as the ultimate source of meaning in the cosmos, the easy life of the gods frequently serves as a foil for the tragic nature of human existence. The Odyssey’s dominant rhetoric, by contrast, asks us to accept the return to right order, disturbed by Odysseus’s absence at Troy, as the ultimate goal of the narrative. The gods serve this imperative, helping or hindering the hero’s progress. In this sense, the most important deities in the poem are Athena and Poseidon, with Zeus refereeing between them.

The promising turn back toward human civilization symbolized by building the boat seems to have been wiped out by the god’s pique. Odysseus ruefully concludes that Calypso’s warning to him was right: much pain lies between him and Ithaka (5.206–10). In his despair, he wistfully regrets not having had a heroic death at Troy:

"τρὶς μάκαρες Δαναοὶ καὶ τετράκις, οἳ τότ᾽ ὄλοντο
Τροίῃ ἐν εὐρείῃ χάριν Ἀτρεΐδῃσι φέροντες.
ὡς δὴ ἐγώ γ᾽ ὄφελον θανέειν καὶ πότμον ἐπισπεῖν
ἤματι τῷ ὅτε μοι πλεῖστοι χαλκήρεα δοῦρα
Τρῶες ἐπέρριψαν περὶ Πηλεΐωνι θανόντι.
τῷ κ᾽ ἔλαχον κτερέων, καί μευ κλέος ἦγον Ἀχαιοί·
νῦν δέ με λευγαλέῳ θανάτῳ εἵμαρτο ἁλῶναι."

"Three and four times blessed were those Danaans who died
in wide Troy bringing favor to the sons of Atreus.
Oh that I had died and met my destiny
on that day when so many of the Trojans flung
their bronze-tipped spears at me as I stood over the dead son of Peleus.
I would have had my rites and the Achaeans would have given me glory.
Now I will receive as my lot to be taken by a dismal death."

Odyssey 5.306–12

Yearning for glory as a hedge against the anonymous death he seems to be facing, Odysseus steps back into his warrior persona from the Iliad. There, surrounded by Trojans, he contemplates the choice between fighting on against heavy odds or saving himself:

"ὤ μοι ἐγὼ τί πάθω; μέγα μὲν κακὸν αἴ κε φέβωμαι
πληθὺν ταρβήσας: τὸ δὲ ῥίγιον αἴ κεν ἁλώω
μοῦνος: τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους Δαναοὺς ἐφόβησε Κρονίων.
ἀλλὰ τί ἤ μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός;
οἶδα γὰρ ὅττι κακοὶ μὲν ἀποίχονται πολέμοιο,
ὃς δέ κ᾽ ἀριστεύῃσι μάχῃ ἔνι τὸν δὲ μάλα χρεὼ
ἑστάμεναι κρατερῶς, ἤ τ᾽ ἔβλητ᾽ ἤ τ᾽ ἔβαλ᾽ ἄλλον."

"Alas, what will happen to me? It will be a great evil if I run,
fearing their numbers, but deadlier still if I am taken
alone, since the son of Kronos has driven the rest of the Greeks to flight.
But why does my heart within me debate these things?
For I know that it is the cowards who run from battle,
and he who would win honor in battle must
stand firm, whether he be struck or strike down another."

Iliad 11.404–10

Through the tragic lens of the Iliad, the choice Odysseus faces there seems plain: ignominious survival or glorious death. In the event, he chooses to stand fast and is wounded but lives on to become the most famous survivor in western literature. His speech here, in the wake of Poseidon’s attack, is part of the definitive chain of events that begins in his delicate conversation with Calypso. He is presented there with another stark choice: unending but anonymous comfort or the perilous pursuit of his limited existence in time. His response is the first of many in the story, all aimed at avoiding the threat of being made into nothing, either through literal death or the existential erasure that constantly looms before him. That Homer shines such a bright light on this choice tells us it is definitive for our understanding of Odysseus.

As is so often the case, looking back from Virgil’s response to a passage from Homeric epic widens the context for our understanding of the source. In the midst of a storm arranged by his nemesis Juno, Aeneas channels Odysseus:

Extemplō Aenēae solvuntur frīgore membra;
ingemit et duplicēs tendēns ad sīdera palmās
tālia vōce refert: "Ō terque quaterque beātī,
quīs ante ōra patrum Trōiae sub moenibus altīs
contigit oppetere! ō Danaüm fortissime gentis
Tӯdīdē! Mēne Īliacīs occumbere campīs
nōn potuisse tuāque animam hanc effundere dextrā,
saevus ubi Aeacidae tēlō iacet Hector, ubi ingēns
Sarpēdōn, ubi tot Simois correpta sub undīs
scūta virum galeāsque et fortia corpora volvit!"

Suddenly Aeneas’s body is limp with fear;
he groans, and stretching both hands toward the sky,
he speaks these words: “O three- and four-times blessed,
those who met their deaths under Troy’s high walls,
before the faces of their parents. O son of Tydeus,
strongest of the Greek race! Was I not to able to die
on Ilion’s fields, to expend my soul by your right hand,
when fierce Hector and huge Sarpedon fell by the spear of Achilles,
when shields and helmets and strong bodies of men
rolled under the waves of the river Simois?”

Aeneid 1.92–101

Aeneas is by any measure a reluctant hero, dutifully but not avidly shouldering his fated task of leading the Trojan exiles to a new home. He too will decline an offer from a woman he has been wintering with, the Carthaginian queen Dido, in favor of pressing on for “home,” in this case a new one he knows nothing about. But it seems clear that Aeneas, unlike his Homeric model, would rather stay with this woman, at least in preference to soldiering on toward the unknown. Jupiter orders him to leave Dido, a message that makes his hair stand on end in fear. He then tells his lover (in a speech that establishes him as at least tone-deaf if not a cad) that if he had his way, he would have stayed and died at Troy (Aen. 4.331–61).

Aeneas would have preferred to die in Troy less because he is hungry for glory than because he yearns for the connection to his family and friends. For Odysseus in this moment, we sense—though he is certainly determined to get back home—the balance tips the other way. The Calypso episode is all about the threat of losing his heroic identity in an endless, anonymous existence.

Further Reading

Austin, N. 1975. Archery at the Dark of the Moon, 139. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Carson, A. 1990. “Putting Her in Her Place: Women, Dirt, and Desire.” In Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient World, D. Halperin, J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin (eds), 135–169. Princeton: Princeton University Press.