Odyssey 5.61 · Book 5, lines 61–62
Calypso singing at the loom
Read the full text in our reader
δαιομένων· ἡ δʼ ἔνδον ἀοιδιάουσʼ ὀπὶ καλῇ ἱστὸν ἐποιχομένη χρυσείῃ κερκίδʼ ὕφαινεν.
— burning; and within, singing with a lovely voice, she plied the loom and with a golden shuttle wove.
Word by word
The setting
Hermes has flown to Ogygia, Calypso's island. On the far side of the sea he reaches her cave; the cedar and juniper burning on the hearth send their fragrance across the isle. This is our first look inside.
A note on this passage
The camera moves indoors. The fragrant fire is still burning as we cross the threshold, and there is the goddess: not scheming, not grieving, but at her loom, weaving and singing to herself in a beautiful voice. It is a picture of contented, self-sufficient domesticity — a woman alone, at her work, happy.
Homer gives Calypso the two arts most bound up with the poem itself: song and weaving. She sings as the bard sings; she weaves as the plot is ‘woven.’ Before she has spoken a word we are told what she is — a maker of beautiful, enclosing things — and that is exactly what her island is to Odysseus: a lovely web he cannot leave.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 5.61 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 5.61 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/5.61/