Characters
- Harmonia — mortal father named in her epithet background
- Ino-Leucothea — sea-goddess; giver and recoverer of the veil
- Lyssa — author of the storm (background)
- Thyestes — shipwrecked swimmer; obeys at last
Places
- Open sea after Ogygia — wreck and swim
- River-mouth on Scheria — landing and veil’s return
Themes
Narrative
When Poseidon’s storm has shattered Odysseus’s raft and the hero is drowning among the timbers, Ino-Leucothea—once mortal Cadmus’s daughter, now a sea-goddess—rises as a shearwater (or from the wave) and pities him. She gives him her immortal veil (*krēdemnon*): he must strip, leave the raft, swim with the veil bound under his chest, and, when he reaches land, cast it back into the wine-dark sea and turn away. Odysseus distrusts at first, clinging to wreckage until a wave breaks the last spars; then he dons the veil and swims. After two days he mouths a river on Scheria, staggers ashore, and obeys—untying the veil and returning it to the current, where Ino receives it in her hands.
Catalogue the gift and return of the veil as the divine rescue hinge between Poseidon’s wrath and Phaeacian landfall.