Ogygia

Ogygia was the remote island of the nymph Calypso in Homer’s Odyssey, the place where Odysseus was held for seven years after the loss of his ship and all his companions. It lies “far off in the sea” and is described as the “navel of the sea”; Zeus finally ordered his release through the messenger god Hermes (Odyssey 7.244–266; 1.48–59).

Odysseus stayed on Ogygia for seven years. Calypso loved him and promised to make him immortal and ageless if he would stay with her, but he longed to return home. He left only after the gods decided that his homecoming should no longer be delayed.

What Was Ogygia?

The Island of Calypso

Ogygia was the island home of Calypso, the daughter of Atlas, who detained Odysseus on his long journey home from the Trojan War. Homer calls it a wooded island, “the navel of the sea”, and describes Calypso as a dread goddess who has dealings with neither gods nor mortals (Odyssey 1.50–54, 7.244–247). Odysseus himself says that a god brought him there alone, after Zeus had shattered his ship with a thunderbolt (Odyssey 7.248–254).

A Place of Beauty and Captivity

Homer describes Ogygia as a place of natural beauty. Calypso lives in a great cave, where a fire burns and the scent of cedar and thuya drifts across the island while she sings and weaves at her loom. Around the cave grow alder, poplar and cypress, where long-winged birds roost, and a vine heavy with grapes spreads over the entrance. Four springs flow close together and soft meadows of violets and parsley lie around them; even an immortal who came there, Homer says, would marvel and be glad (Odyssey 5.55–75). Yet the island is also a prison. Odysseus is not held in chains, but Calypso herself says that she has no ships with oars and no companions to send him across the sea (Odyssey 5.141–142; compare 4.555–560).

The Meaning of Ogygia

Homer does not explain the name. The same adjective, “Ogygian”, is used in Greek poetry for Thebes. Pausanias says that the first people of the land of Thebes were the Ectenes, whose king was Ogygus, a native of the soil, and that “Ogygian” as an epithet of Thebes derives from his name (Pausanias 9.5.1). Strabo adds that Boeotia was once called Ogygia (Geography 9.2.18). Homer does not connect Calypso’s island with King Ogygus; the two simply share the word.

Ogygia in the Odyssey

Odysseus After Thrinacia

Odysseus reached Ogygia after the disaster on Thrinacia. His men had killed and eaten the cattle of Helios, even though both Tiresias and Circe had warned them not to touch them. As punishment Zeus struck their ship with a thunderbolt in mid-ocean. All of Odysseus’ companions drowned and he alone survived (Odyssey 12.260–402, 12.403–419).

The Shipwrecked Hero

Clinging to the keel and mast of the broken ship, Odysseus drifted for nine days and on the tenth night the gods brought him to Ogygia, where Calypso took him in and cared for him (Odyssey 7.248–256, 12.426–450). The island is therefore the lowest point of his wanderings: he arrives with no fleet, no crew and no way home.

Seven Years on the Island

Odysseus tells the Phaeacians that he stayed on Ogygia seven years without a break and soaked the immortal clothes Calypso gave him with his tears; in the eighth year she told him to go, at the command of Zeus (Odyssey 7.259–263). The poem opens with him there: Calypso keeps him in her hollow caves, longing for him to be her husband, while every other Greek who escaped destruction is already home (Odyssey 1.11–15). Later writers changed the details: Apollodorus says that Odysseus stayed with Calypso five years and that she bore him a son, Latinus (Apollodorus, Epitome 7.24), and the end of Hesiod’s Theogony names two sons of Odysseus and Calypso, Nausithous and Nausinous (Theogony 1017–1018). He is not forgotten by the gods, however. Athena says in the first book that Calypso is trying with soft and flattering words to make him forget Ithaca, while Odysseus longs only to see the smoke rising from his own land and would rather die (Odyssey 1.55–59).

Calypso and Ogygia

Calypso’s Cave

Calypso lived in a cave on Ogygia, which Hermes found when he arrived there. He stood and admired the island, and then went into the wide cave; Calypso knew him at once, since gods are not strangers to one another even when they live far apart (Odyssey 5.75–80). Odysseus, however, was not in the cave: he was sitting on the shore, as he did every day, weeping and looking out over the barren sea (Odyssey 5.81–84).

Calypso’s Love for Odysseus

Calypso says that she saved Odysseus when he came alone on the keel of his ship, after Zeus had destroyed the rest of it, and that she loved and fed him (Odyssey 5.129–135). She did not treat him as an enemy. But Odysseus did not want to remain: Homer says that the nymph no longer pleased him, that he slept beside her in the cave at night only because he had no choice, and that he spent his days on the shore (Odyssey 5.153–158).

The Offer of Immortality

Calypso promised to make Odysseus immortal and ageless for all his days (Odyssey 5.135–136, 7.256–257). When he is about to leave she tells him that if he knew how many sorrows still awaited him before he reached his own land, he would stay with her and be immortal, however much he longed to see his wife (Odyssey 5.203–210). Odysseus answers courteously that he knows Penelope is less tall and less beautiful than the goddess, since she is mortal and Calypso is immortal and ageless, but that he still wants every day to go home and see the day of his return (Odyssey 5.214–220). In the last book of the poem the story of the offer is told again, with the remark that she could never persuade his heart (Odyssey 23.333–337).

The Gods and Ogygia

Athena Speaks for Odysseus

At the beginning of the Odyssey Athena pleads with Zeus in the assembly of the gods for Odysseus, who is suffering on an island that is the navel of the sea, kept there by Atlas’ daughter (Odyssey 1.44–62). Zeus answers that he has not forgotten Odysseus, but that Poseidon is angry with him for blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus, and he proposes that the gods plan his return together (Odyssey 1.63–79). Athena then suggests sending Hermes to the Ogygian island to tell Calypso (Odyssey 1.80–87).

Zeus Sends Hermes

In the fifth book the gods meet again, and Zeus tells Hermes to give the nymph his firm decision: Odysseus is to return, with neither gods nor mortals to escort him, and after twenty days on a well-bound raft he will reach Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians, who will honour him like a god and send him on to his own country with bronze, gold and clothing (Odyssey 5.28–42). Hermes crosses the sea and finds Calypso in her cave (Odyssey 5.43–80).

Calypso Obeys the Command

Calypso shudders at the message and answers that the gods are cruel and jealous. They begrudge goddesses who sleep openly with mortal men, she says, and she names Eos and Orion, whom Artemis killed, and Demeter and Iasion, whom Zeus struck with a thunderbolt (Odyssey 5.116–128). Even so she gives way: since she cannot oppose Zeus, Odysseus may go, though she herself has no ships or companions to send him, and she will advise him freely so that he reaches his country unharmed (Odyssey 5.137–144). She swears by the water of the Styx that she is not plotting any further trouble for him (Odyssey 5.177–191). Hermes warns her to respect the anger of Zeus (Odyssey 5.146–147).

Odysseus Leaves Ogygia

Building the Raft

Because Odysseus has no ship, he builds a raft himself. Calypso gives him a large bronze axe and a polished adze and leads him to the far end of the island, where tall alders, poplars and firs stand, long dry and well seasoned. She also brings him augers. He cuts twenty trunks, trims them with the bronze and fits them together with pegs and joints. He sets up a deck, a mast with a yard, and a steering oar, fences the raft with willow withies as a protection against waves and heaps brushwood on it. Calypso brings cloth for the sail, and he rigs it with ropes and braces. The whole work takes four days (Odyssey 5.228–262).

Supplies for the Journey

On the fifth day Calypso sends him off after bathing him and dressing him in fragrant clothes. She puts on board a skin of dark wine, a larger skin of water and a bag of food, and she sends a warm, gentle wind (Odyssey 5.263–268). She tells him to keep the Great Bear on his left hand as he sails, and he steers by the Pleiades, Boötes and the Bear (Odyssey 5.269–277).

The Storm After Ogygia

Odysseus sails for seventeen days and on the eighteenth the shadowy mountains of the Phaeacian land appear. Then Poseidon, returning from the Ethiopians, sees him from the mountains of the Solymi. Furious that the gods have changed their plans for Odysseus while he was away, he stirs up the sea with his trident and raises a storm from all the winds (Odyssey 5.278–296). The raft is broken apart. Odysseus is saved by Leucothea, who was once a mortal woman, Ino, daughter of Cadmus, and who gives him her veil (Odyssey 5.333–353), and after two days and nights in the water he reaches the land of the Phaeacians, who later take him to Ithaca.

Ogygia and Ithaca

The Island That Delays the Return

Ogygia stands between Odysseus and Ithaca. Menelaus had heard from Proteus that Odysseus was on an island, shedding tears in the halls of the nymph Calypso, who kept him there by force and left him unable to reach his native land because he had no ships or companions (Odyssey 4.555–560). Meanwhile in Ithaca no one knows what has become of him: Telemachus says that the Harpies have carried his father away, unseen and unheard of (Odyssey 1.241–243).

Immortality Against Home

The choice between Ogygia and Ithaca is stated plainly in the poem. Ogygia offers a life without death; Ithaca offers his wife and his home. Odysseus tells Calypso that he longs every day to reach home, and that if some god wrecks him again on the sea he will endure it, since he has already suffered much in waves and war (Odyssey 5.219–224).

Penelope and Calypso

Calypso and Penelope are set side by side in Odysseus’ reply: Calypso is a goddess, taller and more beautiful, and Penelope is mortal; he still wants to go home (Odyssey 5.211–220). Elsewhere Homer says that Calypso kept him in her caves, wanting him to be her husband (Odyssey 1.14–15, 23.333–337).

Possible Location of Ogygia

A Mythical Island

Homer gives no map reference for Ogygia. Odysseus says only that it “lies far off in the sea”, and that it took nine days of drifting, after he escaped Charybdis on the wreckage of his ship, to reach it (Odyssey 7.244, 12.447–448). Athena calls it the navel of the sea (Odyssey 1.50). Odysseus later needs seventeen days of sailing from it to sight the land of the Phaeacians, a distance that cannot be turned into a place on a map (Odyssey 5.278–280).

Ancient and Later Theories

Ancient writers tried to place the island. Strabo reports that the poet Callimachus identified Calypso’s island with Gaudus, and that the grammarian Apollodorus criticized this because Homer puts the wanderings in the outer ocean (Strabo 1.2.37, 7.3.6). Pliny the Elder names an Island of Calypso near the promontory of Lacinium, which he says Homer is thought to have meant by Ogygia (Natural History, Book 3). Plutarch, in a different spirit, uses the name for an island in the ocean five days’ sail west of Britain, in the myth told in On the Face in the Moon (941A–B). None of these claims is certain.

Why the Unclear Location Matters

The uncertain location fits the island’s role in the poem. Ogygia is not a stop on a route but a place apart: Calypso lives alone there, and no god or mortal has anything to do with her (Odyssey 7.246–247).

Ogygia’s Role and Symbolism

A Hidden Place

Ogygia is the place where Odysseus disappears from the world. While he is there, his wife waits, his son grows up, and the suitors consume his house; those in Ithaca know only that he has vanished, perhaps carried off by the Harpies (Odyssey 1.241–243).

A Test of Identity

On Ogygia Odysseus has no ship, no men and no kingdom. What he keeps is his purpose: even with an immortal goddess offering him her bed and a life without old age, he sits on the shore each day and weeps for home (Odyssey 5.82–84, 5.151–158).

The Danger of Forgetting

Homer himself names the danger of Ogygia: Calypso tries to make Odysseus forget Ithaca by means of “soft and flattering words” (Odyssey 1.56–57). He does not forget.

Misconceptions and Lesser-Known Facts

Ogygia Was Not Circe’s Island

Ogygia should not be confused with Aeaea. Ogygia was the island of Calypso, while Aeaea was the island of Circe. Odysseus stayed with Circe for a year (Odyssey 10.467–469), but with Calypso for seven (Odyssey 7.259).

Ogygia Was Not Odysseus’ Final Stop

Ogygia was not the last place Odysseus visited before Ithaca. After leaving Calypso he was caught in Poseidon’s storm and came ashore among the Phaeacians, who later carried him home to Ithaca (Odyssey 5.282–296; 13.70–125).

Odysseus Was Not Happy There

Although Ogygia was beautiful, Odysseus was not content there. He spent his days on the shore, weeping and looking out over the sea (Odyssey 5.82–84, 5.151–158).

Calypso Did Not Release Odysseus on Her Own at First

Calypso helped Odysseus leave, but only after Zeus ordered it through Hermes. Odysseus himself says that she told him to go at the message of Zeus, or because her mind had changed (Odyssey 7.262–263; Hermes’ message 5.97–115).

Ogygia Sources

The main source for Ogygia is Homer’s Odyssey: Book 1 (11–15, 44–62, 76–87, 241–243), Book 4 (555–560), Book 5 (the whole book, especially 28–42, 55–84, 97–158, 177–296, 333–353), Book 7 (241–266), Book 10 (467–469), Book 12 (260–450) and Book 23 (333–337). For later variants, Apollodorus, Epitome 7.24, and Hesiod, Theogony 1017–1018. For the name and its other uses, Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.5.1, and Strabo, Geography 9.2.18; for the location, Strabo 1.2.37 and 7.3.6, Pliny, Natural History Book 3, and Plutarch, On the Face in the Moon 26 (941A–B).

See Also: Calypso, Odysseus, Penelope, Hermes, Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Leucothea, Phaeacians, Ithaca