Odyssey 5.351 · Book 5, lines 351–353
She dives, and the dark wave hides her
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ὣς ἄρα φωνήσασα θεὰ κρήδεμνον ἔδωκεν, αὐτὴ δʼ ἂψ ἐς πόντον ἐδύσετο κυμαίνοντα αἰθυίῃ ἐικυῖα· μέλαν δέ ἑ κῦμα κάλυψεν.
So speaking, the goddess gave the veil, and she herself plunged back into the surging sea, like a gull, and the dark wave covered her.
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The setting
Her instructions given, the goddess hands over the veil and vanishes the way she came — diving back into the heaving sea in her seabird shape, swallowed at once by the water.
A note on this passage
The scene closes as neatly as it opened. She spoke, she gave, she dove — the same seabird motion run in reverse — and the sea takes her back without a ripple of comment. The gift has changed hands; the goddess is already gone.
The last image is the dark wave closing over her, μέλαν κῦμα. The same swell that is battering Odysseus simply folds shut above the goddess as if nothing had happened. She belongs to it now; he does not. The water that is her home is still his enemy, and the veil in his hands is all that has changed.
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