The gods meet again, and Athena repeats her complaint that Odysseus is held captive by Calypso while the suitors plot against his son. Zeus sends Hermes to Ogygia to tell the nymph that Odysseus must be released. He is to travel on a raft, alone, and after twenty days reach Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians, who will honor him like a god and send him home with gifts. Hermes speeds over the sea and finds Calypso in her cave, a beautiful place of alder, poplar, and cypress trees, grapevines, and four springs, where she sits weaving and singing. Even Hermes pauses to admire it.
Calypso is angry when she hears the message. She complains bitterly that the gods are jealous whenever a goddess takes a mortal lover, citing Dawn and Orion and Demeter and Iasion, whose lovers the gods destroyed. She saved Odysseus when his ship was wrecked and wanted to make him immortal. But no one can defy the will of Zeus, so she agrees to let him go, though she says she has no ship to give him. Odysseus is not in the cave. As usual he is sitting on the shore, weeping and gazing over the empty sea. For seven years he has shared the nymph's bed unwillingly by night, and his days are spent in grief.
Calypso tells him he can leave and promises to help him build a raft. Odysseus suspects a trick and makes her swear an oath by the river Styx that she is not plotting harm. That evening they eat together, and she makes one last effort to keep him. If he knew how much suffering lay ahead, she says, he would stay and become immortal. Surely she is more beautiful than his wife? Odysseus tactfully agrees that Penelope cannot compare to a goddess. Still, he longs for home every day, and if a god wrecks him again, he will endure it, as he has endured so much already. This choice of a mortal life, with his family, over endless life with a goddess is central to who he is.
Over four days Odysseus cuts trees and builds a sturdy raft with a mast, deck, rudder, and sail, using tools Calypso provides. On the fifth day she bathes him, gives him clothes and provisions, and sends a gentle wind. He sails for seventeen days, steering by the stars as she taught him, keeping the Great Bear on his left. On the eighteenth day the shadowy mountains of Scheria appear. But Poseidon, returning from the Ethiopians, sees him from far off and is furious that the gods have changed their minds in his absence. He gathers the clouds, stirs up every wind at once, and sends a storm that snaps the mast and hurls Odysseus into the sea. Odysseus wishes he had died gloriously at Troy instead of drowning unremembered.
The sea goddess Ino, also called Leucothea, once a mortal woman, takes pity on him. She gives him her immortal veil and tells him to strip off his heavy clothes, tie the veil around his chest, abandon the raft, and swim for land; once ashore he must throw the veil back into the sea. Odysseus distrusts her and clings to the raft until a great wave smashes it apart. Then he obeys. Athena calms the other winds, and for two nights and two days he swims through heavy seas. Nearly crushed against the rocky coast, he grabs a rock and is torn away, skin ripped from his hands, until he finds the mouth of a river. He prays to the river god, who stills his current and lets him in. Exhausted and swollen with seawater, Odysseus returns the veil, crawls into a thicket of two olive bushes, one wild and one cultivated, heaps leaves over himself, and Athena pours sleep over his eyes.
