Odyssey 1.11 · Book 1, lines 11–15
All the others were home — he alone was not
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ἔνθʼ ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες, ὅσοι φύγον αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον, οἴκοι ἔσαν, πόλεμόν τε πεφευγότες ἠδὲ θάλασσαν· τὸν δʼ οἶον νόστου κεχρημένον ἠδὲ γυναικὸς νύμφη πότνιʼ ἔρυκε Καλυψὼ δῖα θεάων ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι, λιλαιομένη πόσιν εἶναι.
There all the others, as many as had escaped sheer destruction, were at home, having fled both war and sea; but him alone, longing for his homecoming and his wife, the queenly nymph Calypso, bright among goddesses, kept holding back in her hollow caves, yearning that he be her husband.
Word by word
The setting
The narrative proper begins. The Muse starts not with adventures but with an absence: every other Greek who survived Troy is safely home. One man alone is missing, held on a far island by the nymph Calypso, who wants him for her husband.
A note on this passage
The story begins with an accounting. Everyone else who lived through Troy has made it home; the sentence lists their survival almost as bookkeeping — war fled, sea fled, home reached — so that the single exception lands with full weight. τὸν δʼ οἶον: ‘but him alone.’ The whole poem hangs on that one word.
The undercurrent is that his prison is beautiful. He is held not in a dungeon but in a nymph's hollow caves, by a goddess who wants him for a husband — offered ease, love, even immortality. And he spends it ‘longing for his homecoming and his wife.’ The Odyssey's deepest claim is here in miniature: that a mortal home and a mortal marriage can outweigh a goddess and her island. What holds him back is desire; what pulls him on is a stronger one.
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