Odyssey 5.346 · Book 5, lines 346–347
The immortal veil against her breast
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τῆ δέ, τόδε κρήδεμνον ὑπὸ στέρνοιο τανύσσαι ἄμβροτον· οὐδέ τί τοι παθέειν δέος οὐδʼ ἀπολέσθαι.
Here, take this: stretch this immortal veil beneath your breast, and you need have no dread at all of suffering or of perishing.
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The setting
Leucothea now hands over her gift: an undying veil, a band to bind beneath his chest as he swims. So long as he wears it, she promises, he cannot drown or come to harm.
A note on this passage
The gift is a single object with a single rule. The veil is ἄμβροτον, 'immortal,' and worn against the chest it makes drowning impossible; the goddess states the guarantee flatly, no fear of suffering and none of death. For a man who has spent the scene as the plaything of the water, it is the first thing offered that the water cannot take.
The undercurrent is what kind of protection this is. It is not a weapon or a boat but a woman's headband — the κρήδεμνον, the veil a wife draws across her face. The thing that will keep Odysseus alive is an intimate garment given skin-to-skin, and the same word will later name the walls of a city and the veil of Penelope. Rescue here is not force but covering: something wrapped close around the body.
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