Ogygia

Hermes orders Calypso to release Odysseus

Ogygia is a phantom island mentioned in Homer's Odyssey as the home of the nymph Calypso, the daughter of the Titan Atlas, where she entertained Odysseus for seven years. Calypso would not let Odysseus return home to 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.

Strabo proposed that Ogygia and Skhería were located in the Atlantic Ocean:

For Homer says also: "Now after the ship had left the river-stream of Oceanus"; and "In the island of Ogygia, where is the navel of the sea," going on to say that the daughter of Atlas lives there; and again, regarding the Phaeacians, "Far apart we live in the wash of the waves, the farthermost of men, and no other mortals are conversant with us." Now all these incidents are clearly indicated as being placed in fancy in the Atlantic Ocean. (Strabo, Geography, Book I, 2, 18)

Plutarch also gives an account on the location of Ogygia, in his work Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon, chap. 26.

''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.

The "great number of currents" can also be identified as the Gulf Stream currents. The description of the "great continent surrounded by sea" could possibly refer to America, which accordingly should be approximately 5.000 stadia or 900 kilometers from Ogygia.

Later interpretations sometimes identify Ogygia and Phaeacia with sunken Atlantis. Roderic O'Flaherty used the name as a synonym for Ireland in the title of his 1685 Irish history. Some Maltese patriots, seeking to present the Maltese archipelago as the residue of Atlantis, identify Ogygia with the island of Gozo, the second largest island in the archipelago.

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