Odyssey 5.333 · Book 5, lines 333–335
Cadmus' daughter, once mortal, sees him
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τὸν δὲ ἴδεν Κάδμου θυγάτηρ, καλλίσφυρος Ἰνώ, Λευκοθέη, ἣ πρὶν μὲν ἔην βροτὸς αὐδήεσσα, νῦν δʼ ἁλὸς ἐν πελάγεσσι θεῶν ἒξ ἔμμορε τιμῆς.
Him the daughter of Cadmus saw, fair-ankled Ino, Leucothea, who before was a mortal of human speech, but now in the sea's deeps has won a share of honor from the gods.
Word by word
The setting
As Odysseus is flung about in the surf, a sea-goddess catches sight of him. The poem pauses to say who she is: Ino, daughter of Cadmus of Thebes, who lived and died a mortal woman and was afterward taken up among the powers of the sea as Leucothea, 'the White Goddess.'
A note on this passage
The rescue begins with a genealogy. Before she does anything, the poem fixes Ino in place: a Theban princess, Cadmus's child, who once walked the earth and spoke as humans speak, and who now holds rank among the sea-powers under a second name. Homer wants us to know that help is coming from someone who was once as mortal and as drowned as the man in the water.
The quiet weight is in one word, αὐδήεσσα, 'of human speech.' It marks the exact line she has crossed. The gods do not speak as mortals do; to have been αὐδήεσσα is to have been one of us. Her pity is not a god's remote favor but the recognition of a fellow-sufferer who remembers what the sea can do.
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