Calypso

Homer's Odyssey opens with Calypso already holding its hero. Every other survivor of Troy is home, but the "queenly nymph Calypso" keeps Odysseus in her hollow caves, wanting him for her husband (Odyssey 1.13-15). Athena tells the gods that she is a daughter of Atlas, living on a wooded island at "the navel of the sea" (1.50-54). Odysseus later names the island Ogygia (7.244).

He reached her alone. Zeus had wrecked his last ship with a thunderbolt. Odysseus drifted on the keel for nine days, and on the tenth night the gods brought him to Ogygia (7.249-255). Calypso took him in, fed him and promised to make him immortal and ageless. In Odysseus's own words, she "could never persuade the heart in my breast" (7.255-258). Even the sea god Proteus, far away in Egypt, knows he is trapped there, weeping, with no ship or crew (4.555-560).

In Book 5, Athena raises his case again, and Zeus sends Hermes with the order to release him (5.1-42). Hermes finds Calypso singing at her loom, weaving with a golden shuttle, in a cave ringed by alder, poplar and cypress (5.55-75). She answers the order with a protest: the gods, she says, begrudge goddesses who take mortal lovers. She cites Eos, whose Orion was shot by Artemis, and Demeter, whose Iasion was struck down by Zeus (5.116-128).

She obeys all the same. She finds Odysseus weeping on the shore and tells him to build a raft, without mentioning Hermes. Suspicious, he makes her swear an oath by the Styx that she plans him no harm (5.160-191). Over a last meal she asks whether he would really leave, and offers again to make him immortal. Odysseus grants that Penelope cannot match a goddess in beauty, but says he still longs for home every day (5.203-224).

Calypso gives him a bronze axe and an adze, shows him where the seasoned trees grow, and brings augers and cloth for a sail (5.228-261). On the fifth day she bathes and dresses him, loads the raft with wine, water and food, and sends a gentle wind. She tells him to keep the Bear on his left as he sails. He sails for seventeen days and on the eighteenth sights the land of the Phaeacians (5.262-281). There Poseidon catches sight of him and raises the storm that breaks the raft. Ashore on Scheria, he meets the princess Nausicaa, who alone stands her ground (Odyssey 6.127-141).

Her parentage depends on the source. Homer twice makes her a daughter of Atlas (Odyssey 1.52, 7.245). Hyginus's Fabulae names Atlas and Pleione as her parents, which makes her a sister of Maia. Hesiod's Theogony instead lists a "charming Calypso" among the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys (Theogony 359). The Homeric Hymn to Demeter puts a Calypso among Persephone's companions in the same kind of list (422). Apollodorus's Library names a Calypso among the Nereids, daughters of Nereus and Doris (1.2.7). None of these catalogues says whether its Calypso is the nymph of Ogygia.

The length of the stay varies too. Homer gives seven years (Odyssey 7.259). Apollodorus's Epitome gives five, and Hyginus says she kept him "a whole year" (Fabulae 125). Hyginus also places her on Aeaea, the island that belongs to Circe in the Odyssey, rather than on Ogygia.

Homer gives Calypso no children. Hesiod's Theogony says she bore Odysseus two sons, Nausithous and Nausinous (1017-1018). Apollodorus names a single son, Latinus (Epitome 7.24). Homer also says nothing of her fate once the raft leaves. Hyginus lists her among women who killed themselves, "out of love for Ulysses" (Fabulae 243), although Homer's Odysseus calls her immortal and ageless (Odyssey 5.218).