Odyssey 5.271 · Book 5, lines 271–275
Sleepless at the steering-oar, he reads the stars
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ἥμενος, οὐδέ οἱ ὕπνος ἐπὶ βλεφάροισιν ἔπιπτεν Πληιάδας τʼ ἐσορῶντι καὶ ὀψὲ δύοντα Βοώτην Ἄρκτον θʼ, ἣν καὶ ἄμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσιν, ἥ τʼ αὐτοῦ στρέφεται καί τʼ Ὠρίωνα δοκεύει, οἴη δʼ ἄμμορός ἐστι λοετρῶν Ὠκεανοῖο·
There he sat, nor did sleep fall upon his eyelids, as he watched the Pleiades and Boötes that sets late, and the Bear — which men also call by the name of the Wain — which turns there in place and watches Orion, and alone has no share in the baths of Ocean.
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The setting
Calypso has at last released Odysseus; he has built his raft and pushed off from Ogygia alone. These lines catch him on the open sea at night, holding course by the constellations.
A note on this passage
Odysseus is at the steering-oar, awake through the night, holding his raft on course by the stars. Homer names them the way a sailor would: the Pleiades, late-setting Boötes, the Bear that wheels in place and never dips below the sea's rim. This is seamanship, not decoration — the fixed northern circle is the one landmark the open water offers.
The single held image is the Bear that alone has no share in Ocean's baths: the constellation that never sets, and so never rests. It hangs over a man who cannot sleep, denied the ordinary relief the other stars are granted. His wakefulness and the star's are quietly the same solitude — the one thing on the sea that keeps its place, watched by the one man who must.
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