Odyssey

And now, as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonos - harbinger of light alike to mortals and immortals - the gods met in council and with them, Zeus the lord of thunder, who is their king. Thereon Athena began to tell them of the many sufferings of Odysseus, for she pitied him away there in the house of the nymph Calypso.

"Father Zeus," said she, "and all you other gods that live in everlasting bliss, I hope there may never be such a thing as a kind and well-disposed ruler any more, nor one who will govern equitably. I hope they will be all henceforth cruel and unjust, for there is not one of his subjects who has not forgotten Odysseus, who ruled them as though he were their father. There he is, lying in great pain in an island where dwells the nymph Calypso, who will not let him go; and he cannot get back to his own country, for he can find neither ships nor sailors to take him over the sea. Furthermore, wicked people are now trying to murder his only son Telemakhos, who is coming home from Pylos and Lacedaemon, where he has been to see if he can get news of his father."

"What, my dear, are you talking about?" replied her father. "Did you not send him there yourself, because you thought [noos] it would help Odysseus to get home and punish the suitors? Besides, you are perfectly able to protect Telemakhos, and to see him safely home again, while the suitors have to come hurrying back without having killed him."

When he had thus spoken, he said to his son Hermes, "Hermes, you are our messenger, go therefore and tell Calypso we have decreed that poor Odysseus is to return home [nostos]. He is to be convoyed neither by gods nor men, but after a perilous voyage of twenty days upon a raft he is to reach fertile Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians, who are near of kin to the gods, and will honor him as though he were one of ourselves. They will send him in a ship to his own country, and will give him more bronze and gold and raiment than he would have brought back from Troy, if he had had all his prize wealth and had got home without disaster. This is how we have settled that he shall return to his country and his friends."