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Ogygia

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Odysseus and Calypso in the caves of Ogygia. Painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568 - 1625)

Ogygia (Greek: Ὠγυγίη or Ὠγυγία), is an island mentioned in Homer's Odyssey book V as the home of the nymph Calypso, the daughter of the Titan Atlas, also known as Atlantis (Ατλαντίς[1]) in ancient Greek. On Ogygia, Calypso detained Odysseus for seven years, keeping him from returning to his home of Ithaca. Athena complained to Zeus, who sent the messenger Hermes to Ogygia to order Calypso to release Odysseus. Calypso then allowed Odysseus to build a small raft and leave.

Description of Ogygia

The Odyssey describes Ogygia as follows:

...and he (Hermes) found her within. A great fire was burning in the hearth, and from afar over the isle there was a fragrance of cleft cedar and juniper as they burned. But she within was singing with a sweet voice as she went to and fro before the loom, weaving with a golden shuttle. Round about the cave grew a luxuriant wood, alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress, wherein birds long of wing were wont to nest, owls and falcons and sea-crows with chattering tongues, who ply their business on the sea. And right there about the hollow cave ran trailing a garden vine, in pride of its prime, richly laden with clusters. And fountains four in a row were flowing with bright water hard by one another, turned one this way, one that. And round about soft meadows of violets and parsley were blooming... [2]

Location of Ogygia

Main article: Geography of the Odyssey

Many ancient and modern interpreters believe that Ogygia was located in the Ionian Sea or in the Mediterranean Sea. Later interpretations sometimes identify Ogygia and Phaeacia with sunken Atlantis. A long standing native tradition, endorsed by some Maltese patriots, identify Ogygia with the island of Gozo, the second largest island in the archipelago.

Some scholars, having examined the work and the geography of Homer, have suggested that Ogygia and Scheria were located in the Atlantic Ocean. Among them were Strabo and Plutarch. Modern scholars, however, are reluctant to place Ogygia or indeed any of the locations Homer describes in any existing geography and the literary tale is acknowledged as a work of fictional, mythical intent.

Geographical account by Strabo

Approximately eight centuries after Homer, Strabo, the geographer criticized Polybius on the Geography of the Odyssey. Strabo proposed that Schería and Ogygia were located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

At another instance he (Polybius) suppresses statements. For Homer says also:
"Now after the ship had left the river-stream of Oceanus"[3]
and
"In the island of Ogygia, where is the navel of the sea,"[4]
where the daughter of Atlas lives; and again, regarding the Phaiakians,
"Far apart we live in the wash of the waves, the farthermost of men, and no other mortals are conversant with us."[5]
All these (incidents) clearly suggest that he (Homer) composed them to take place in the Atlantic Ocean.[6]
Strabo, The Geography, 1.2.18

Geographical account by Plutarch

Plutarch also gives an account on the location of Ogygia:

First I will tell you the author of the piece, if there is no objection, who begins after Homer’s fashion with, an isle Ogygian lies far out at sea, distant five days’ sail from Britain, going westwards, and three others equally distant from it, and from each other, are more opposite to the summer visits of the sun; in one of which the barbarians fable that Cronus is imprisoned by Zeus, whilst his son lies by his side, as though keeping guard over those islands and the sea, which they call ‘the Sea of Cronus. The great continent by which the great sea is surrounded on all sides, they say, lies less distant from the others, but about five thousand stadia from Ogygia, for one sailing in a rowing-galley; for the sea is difficult of passage and muddy through the great number of currents, and these currents issue out of the great land, and shoals are formed by them, and the sea becomes clogged and full of earth, by which it has the appearance of being solid.[7]
Plutarch, Moralia, Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon

The above passage of Plutarch has created a lot of controversy. Hamilton in 1934 indicated the similarities of Plutarch's account on "the great continent" and Plato's location of Atlantis.[8] Kepler [9] in his “Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia” estimated that “the great continent” was America and attempted to locate Ogygia and the surrounding islands. Roderic O'Flaherty used the name as a synonym for Ireland in the title of his 1685 Irish history. Wilhelm von Christ was convinced that the continent was America and states that during 100 AD sailors travelling through Iceland, Greenland, and the Baffin Region reached the North American coast. G. Mair[10] in 1909 suggested that the knowledge of America came from Carthaginian sailors who had reached the Gulf of Mexico. Henriette Mertz, an American archaeologist, proposed in her book The Wine Dark Sea: Homer's Heroic Epic of the North Atlantic (1964) that Ogygia was one of the Azores.

Other people and places relevant to Ogygia

The island of Ogygia is associated with the Ogygian deluge and with the mythological figure Ogyges, in the sense that the word Ogygian means "primeval," "primal," and "at earliest dawn," [11] which would suggest that Ogygia was a primeval island. However, Ogyges was regarded as a primeval, aboriginal ruler of Boeotia, [12] who founded Thebes there, naming it Ogygia at the time. [13] In another version of the story, Ogyges brought his people to the area first known as Acte. That land was subsequently called Ogygia in his honor but ultimately known as Attica.

Notes

  1. ^ "Atlantis" means the daughter of Atlas. See entry Ατλαντίς in Liddell & Scott. See also Hesiod, Theogony, 938.
  2. ^ Odyssey V.58-74
  3. ^ Odyssey, XII, 1
  4. ^ Odyssey, I, 50
  5. ^ Odyssey, VI, 204
  6. ^ The original text of this passage by Strabo is: ταῦτα γὰρ πάντα φανερῶς ἐν τῷ Ἀτλαντικῷ πελάγει πλαττόμενα δηλοῦται.
  7. ^ Plutarch, Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon, chap. 26.
  8. ^ Timaeus, 24E - 25A
  9. ^ Introductory notes at the Loeb Classical Library on pages 21, 22 and 23.
  10. ^ G. Mair, Pytheas' Tanais und die Insel des Kronos in Plutarchs Schrift Das Gesicht im Monde
  11. ^ Entry Ωγύγιος at Liddell & Scott
  12. ^ Entry "Ogygus" in N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Second Edition, Oxford University Press: 1970.
  13. ^ Entry "Ogyges" in E. H. Blakeney, Smith's Smaller Classical Dictionary, Everyman's Library, London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1937.
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