Odyssey 5.371 · Book 5, lines 371–374
Astride a single plank
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ἀμφʼ ἑνὶ δούρατι βαῖνε, κέληθʼ ὡς ἵππον ἐλαύνων, εἵματα δʼ ἐξαπέδυνε, τά οἱ πόρε δῖα Καλυψώ. αὐτίκα δὲ κρήδεμνον ὑπὸ στέρνοιο τάνυσσεν, αὐτὸς δὲ πρηνὴς ἁλὶ κάππεσε, χεῖρε πετάσσας,
mounted astride one beam, riding it like a courser, as one drives a horse; and he stripped off the clothes that shining Calypso had given him. At once he bound the veil beneath his breast, and he himself fell headlong into the sea, spreading out his arms,
Word by word
The setting
The raft is gone. Just before this, the sea-goddess Ino-Leucothea rose from the water and gave Odysseus her immortal veil (κρήδεμνον), telling him to bind it beneath his chest and swim, then cast it back once he reached land. Here he strips for the swim and takes the plunge.
A note on this passage
Everything here is action pared to the essential. Odysseus rides one surviving plank the way a man rides a single horse, throws off the heavy clothes that would drown him, ties Ino's veil under his chest as she instructed, and dives. Four verbs, no hesitation: the sea-craft the poem admires in him, shown rather than praised.
The quiet note is what he takes off. The clothes are Calypso's gift, the last thing tying him to seven years on her island and her offer of immortality; he sheds them to save his mortal life, trading a goddess's keeping for a mortal's chance in the water. The horseman simile is domestic and land-bound, oddly gentle in the middle of drowning — a flash of the ordinary world he is fighting to return to.
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