Odyssey 5.100 · Book 5, lines 100–102
No one crosses this sea by choice
Read the full text in our reader
τίς δʼ ἂν ἑκὼν τοσσόνδε διαδράμοι ἁλμυρὸν ὕδωρ ἄσπετον; οὐδέ τις ἄγχι βροτῶν πόλις, οἵ τε θεοῖσιν ἱερά τε ῥέζουσι καὶ ἐξαίτους ἑκατόμβας.
And who would willingly race across so much briny water, unspeakable? Nor is any city of mortals near, who offer to the gods sacrifices and choice hecatombs.
Word by word
The setting
Hermes explains his reluctance: Ogygia lies in a vast emptiness of salt water, with no human city near to honor a passing god with sacrifice.
A note on this passage
The complaint turns concrete. No god would choose to cross this immensity of salt water, and — worse for a visiting god — there is no city of men anywhere near to make the trip worth it. Gods travel toward sacrifice; here there is none to collect.
The undercurrent is how the divine economy works. A god's presence follows honor: earlier Poseidon lingered among the Aethiopians precisely for their hecatombs. Ogygia offers no such payment, which is exactly why it is Calypso's private world and Odysseus's prison. He is held at the one place on the map where the gods have no reason to come — and that isolation is the point of his captivity.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 5.100 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 5.100 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/5.100/