Odyssey 5.458 · Book 5, lines 458–460
He revives and looses Ino's veil
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ἀλλʼ ὅτε δή ῥʼ ἄμπνυτο καὶ ἐς φρένα θυμὸς ἀγέρθη, καὶ τότε δὴ κρήδεμνον ἀπὸ ἕο λῦσε θεοῖο. καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐς ποταμὸν ἁλιμυρήεντα μεθῆκεν,
But when at last he got his breath, and his spirit gathered into his breast, then at last he loosed the veil of the goddess from himself, and let it go into the sea-mingling river.
Word by word
The setting
Earlier in his ordeal the sea-goddess Ino-Leucothea gave Odysseus her immortal veil to keep him afloat, telling him to cast it back into the sea the moment he reached shore. Now, recovering his senses, he obeys.
A note on this passage
Consciousness returns in the old epic way — breath first, then the θυμός, the life-spirit, 'gathering' back into the chest as if it had scattered. Only once he is himself again does he remember the veil Ino gave him and, as she ordered, unbind it and drop it back toward the water.
The undercurrent is obedience. Ino-Leucothea told him to fling the veil into the sea the instant he touched land and to turn his eyes away. A drowning man's first coherent act is to keep faith with the goddess who saved him. In a poem where Odysseus so often survives by cunning and mistrust — he doubted her oath when she first appeared — here he simply does as he was told, and trust, not trickery, closes the rescue.
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