Odyssey 5.336 · Book 5, lines 336–338
Like a gull she lights on the raft
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ἥ ῥʼ Ὀδυσῆʼ ἐλέησεν ἀλώμενον, ἄλγεʼ ἔχοντα, αἰθυίῃ δʼ ἐικυῖα ποτῇ ἀνεδύσετο λίμνης, ἷζε δʼ ἐπὶ σχεδίης πολυδέσμου εἶπέ τε μῦθον·
She pitied Odysseus as he wandered, bearing his griefs, and like a gull in flight she rose from the water, sat on the close-bound raft, and spoke a word:
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The setting
Leucothea, having caught sight of the drowning man, pities him and comes to him — rising from the water in the form of a seabird, settling on the battered raft to speak.
A note on this passage
The goddess's approach is all motion: she pities, she rises like a gull, she settles on the raft, she speaks. Homer gives her the shape of a seabird — the one creature at home in exactly the element that is killing Odysseus, riding the water he can only fight. She comes to him the way the sea itself would, if the sea meant him well.
The undercurrent runs under the word ἀλώμενον, 'wandering.' It is the poem's standing name for Odysseus's whole condition — the man driven off course, straying without a home. Even here, pinned to a raft in open water with nowhere to go, he is still 'the wanderer.' The epithet does not describe where he is; it describes what has been done to him.
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