Odyssey 5.55 · Book 5, lines 55–58
Landfall, and the nymph's cave
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ἀλλʼ ὅτε δὴ τὴν νῆσον ἀφίκετο τηλόθʼ ἐοῦσαν, ἔνθʼ ἐκ πόντου βὰς ἰοειδέος ἤπειρόνδε ἤιεν, ὄφρα μέγα σπέος ἵκετο, τῷ ἔνι νύμφη ναῖεν ἐυπλόκαμος· τὴν δʼ ἔνδοθι τέτμεν ἐοῦσαν.
But when at last he reached that island lying far off, there, stepping from the sea violet-dark, onto the mainland, he went on until he reached the great cave, in which the fair-tressed nymph dwelt within; and he found her inside, being there.
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The setting
Hermes completes the crossing to Ogygia. He steps from the sea onto the shore, walks inland to the great cave where the fair-haired nymph Calypso lives, and finds her at home within.
A note on this passage
The journey ends. Hermes reaches the far island, steps from the violet water onto dry land, and walks up to the great cave where the fair-haired nymph lives; and he finds her at home.
After the speed of the flight the verse decelerates into arrival — reached, stepped, went, reached, found — the plain sequence of a traveller closing the last distance on foot. The epithet ἐυπλόκαμος, ‘fair-tressed,’ arrives before Calypso is even named, and the poem lets us come to her the way Hermes does: an island at the edge of the world, a cave, a beautiful woman at home in it — and somewhere nearby, still unseen, the man she will not let go.
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