Odyssey 5.211 · Book 5, lines 211–213
No worse than a mortal in form
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Calypso — οὐ μέν θην κείνης γε χερείων εὔχομαι εἶναι, οὐ δέμας οὐδὲ φυήν, ἐπεὶ οὔ πως οὐδὲ ἔοικεν θνητὰς ἀθανάτῃσι δέμας καὶ εἶδος ἐρίζειν.
Surely I claim to be no worse than her — not in body nor in stature, since in no way is it even seemly for mortal women to vie with immortals in body and form.
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The setting
Calypso finishes her plea. She has offered Odysseus immortality if he stays, and she now presses the comparison she cannot help making: she is a goddess, Penelope only a mortal wife. These are the last words of her speech before Odysseus answers.
A note on this passage
Calypso ends her offer by weighing herself against the wife waiting in Ithaca. She does not quite say she is more beautiful than Penelope; she says, more carefully, that she is not worse — and adds the theological rule that settles it, that mortal women cannot compete with goddesses in body and form. The claim is true and beside the point.
The undercurrent is what she leaves out. Beauty is the one field where she wins, so it is the field she chooses. But Odysseus is not weighing looks; he is weighing a home against a cave, a life that ends against one that does not. The goddess argues the case she can win while the real contest is one she has already lost.
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