Odyssey 5.63 · Book 5, lines 63–64
The wood around the cave
Read the full text in our reader
ὕλη δὲ σπέος ἀμφὶ πεφύκει τηλεθόωσα, κλήθρη τʼ αἴγειρός τε καὶ εὐώδης κυπάρισσος.
And flourishing wood had grown around the cave — alder and black poplar and fragrant cypress.
Word by word
The setting
The description of Calypso's cave and island opens out — the paradise Hermes has come to. First the trees that ring the cave.
A note on this passage
The scene widens from the loom to the woodland that encloses it. A thick, thriving stand of trees has grown up all around the cave, and Homer names three: alder, black poplar, fragrant cypress. The effect is of shelter and abundance, a green wall around the goddess's home.
The list is doing quiet work. These are not random trees but ones prized for shade, scent, and timber — the cypress especially, whose fragrance joins the burning cedar and juniper of the hearth. Everything here delights the senses. Homer is building, detail by pleasant detail, the case that this is a place worth staying — which is exactly the trap the whole book must spring Odysseus from.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 5.63 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 5.63 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/5.63/