Odyssey 7.248 · Book 7, lines 248–250
Zeus's thunderbolt
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ἀλλʼ ἐμὲ τὸν δύστηνον ἐφέστιον ἤγαγε δαίμων οἶον, ἐπεί μοι νῆα θοὴν ἀργῆτι κεραυνῷ Ζεὺς ἔλσας ἐκέασσε μέσῳ ἐνὶ οἴνοπι πόντῳ.
But me, the wretched one, a daimon led to her hearth alone, since Zeus with a blazing thunderbolt had struck and shattered my swift ship in the midst of the wine-dark sea.
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The setting
How Odysseus came to Calypso's lonely island: driven there by a god, alone, after Zeus smashed his ship with a thunderbolt in the open sea.
A note on this passage
Now the cause: a daimon brought him to that lonely hearth, and brought him alone. The reason is the thunderbolt — Zeus struck and split his ship in the middle of the wine-dark sea, and only Odysseus was carried on to Calypso.
He names the disaster flatly, without self-pity. The formula 'wine-dark sea' sits under a scene of total loss, its fixed beauty indifferent to the wreck inside it. Odysseus lays the blame on the god's bolt, not on himself — the same careful shaping of the story that keeps his own missteps out of the queen's hearing.
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