Odyssey 7.251 · Book 7, lines 251–254
Nine days on the keel
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ἔνθʼ ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες ἀπέφθιθεν ἐσθλοὶ ἑταῖροι, αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ τρόπιν ἀγκὰς ἑλὼν νεὸς ἀμφιελίσσης ἐννῆμαρ φερόμην· δεκάτῃ δέ με νυκτὶ μελαίνῃ νῆσον ἐς Ὠγυγίην πέλασαν θεοί, ἔνθα Καλυψὼ
There all the other noble companions perished, but I, taking in my arms the keel of the curved ship, was borne for nine days; and on the tenth black night the gods brought me near to the island Ogygia, where Calypso
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The wreck and the drift. All his companions drowned; Odysseus alone survived by clinging to the ship's keel, carried nine days until, on the tenth night, the gods washed him ashore on Ogygia.
A note on this passage
The shipwreck told plainly: every one of his good companions died, and he alone lived by throwing his arms around the keel of the broken ship. For nine days the sea carried him; on the tenth black night the gods brought him to Ogygia.
The count of days is the heart of it — nine adrift, then a tenth night. Homer measures survival in bare numbers, and the loneliness is total: 'all the others perished,' and then 'but I.' The gods who wrecked him are the same who beach him; salvation and ruin come from one source, which is the theology the whole poem lives inside.
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