Odyssey 5.181 · Book 5, lines 181–183
Calypso strokes his hand
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χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξεν ἔπος τʼ ἔφατʼ ἔκ τʼ ὀνόμαζεν·
Calypso — ἦ δὴ ἀλιτρός γʼ ἐσσὶ καὶ οὐκ ἀποφώλια εἰδώς, οἷον δὴ τὸν μῦθον ἐπεφράσθης ἀγορεῦσαι.
With her hand she stroked him, and spoke a word, and called him by name: Truly you are a rogue, and no fool, seeing what a speech you contrived to speak.
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The setting
Odysseus has just demanded that Calypso swear a great oath she means him no harm before he will trust her raft. Instead of anger, the goddess answers with a caress and a half-fond name.
A note on this passage
Ordered by Zeus to release him, Calypso does not rage. She strokes his hand, and calls him a rogue — half scolding, half admiring — for having thought to demand an oath of a goddess. The gesture is tender; the words concede that he has outmaneuvered her.
The undercurrent is the suspicion the caress answers. Odysseus trusts nothing, not even a goddess offering escape, and she knows it: ‘no fool,’ she says, ‘to devise saying such a thing.’ His cleverness is exactly what she loves and what is taking him from her. She meets a mortal's wariness with the one thing that might disarm it — a touch, before the binding oath he asked for.
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