Ancient Greek Mythology
Homer's Odyssey: the goddess Calypso
8th century BC, Ancient Greek.
Calypso is a daughter of the Titan god Atlas and she lives alone on an island, in a cave in which she spends her days weaving.
After defeating the Trojans in battle, the victorious Achaeans sail for home. But instead of making his way across the Aegean sea back to Greece, Odysseus finds himself in an enchanted ocean. Perhaps a surprise and murderous attack by his enemies and then a life-threatening storm battering his fleet out at sea have had something to do with this. Odysseus and his ships visit an island of lotus-eaters, two islands on which giants live and, his fleet now drastically reduced, to the abode of the goddess Circe, who turns his men into animals. He visits lands of strange and mythical monsters; he sails into the realm of Hades, the underworld, the land of the dead, and at last, with his entire flotilla lost and all his men perished, he is washed up, clinging to the last remaining piece of his last remaining ship, onto the island of the goddess Calypso.
Here Odysseus spends many years, making love to this goddess at night but craving the island on which he was born during the day. She is a daughter of Atlas, one of the giants who warred with the Olympian gods. Calypso lives alone on this island, in a cave in which she spends her days weaving, and from which four springs emerge, each flowing away in different directions. If these recall the four rivers that flow from the Garden of Eden, then it should be added that if Odysseus were to have agreed to become Calypso’s husband, Homer tells us, she would have offered him immortality and eternal youth.
Story fragments recounted from: Shewring, Walter, with an introduction by Kirk, G. S., 1980, reprinted 2008. Homer: The Odyssey. Translated from ancient Greek with an introduction. Oxford University Press.
references
Homer – Wikipedia
Odysseus – Wikipedia
Calypso – Wikipedia
Homer: The Odyssey – English translation, Internet Classics Archive
