Calypso, Introduction

    The Fates, they say, have a cruel sense of humor when it comes to the punishments they distribute to gods and men alike.  Take as an example the sad destiny bestowed upon the demi-goddess Calypso.  The Calypso from Greek mythology, mind you, not the one played by Naomie Harris in the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  The poor woman's crime: fighting on the side of her parents, the Titans, against the usurpers who would become the Olympian Gods in the great war that would bring down the Titans' reign and end the so-called Golden Age.  Like the losers of most wars before and since, the Titans and all who fought on their side were punished for not having chosen the winning side.


   In all truthfulness, this entire saga of mythology is really quite tragic.  (It seems to be a theme with the Greeks of old.)  At its core, the war was an expanded and bloody family feud rather than a war between two entirely separate forces.  The Olympians were, whether they wanted to admit it or not, the children of the Titans themselves, specifically the offspring of the Titan Lord Kronos.  Calypso was their cousin, and had Kronos not feared a prophecy foretelling his rule being overthrown by his sons they might have grown up having family reunions in the park and backyard barbecues, just like any mortal family does now.  Kronos was afraid of losing his power, however, so instead of teaching his children how to ride a bike or the secrets of grilling that perfect steak like a good father, he instead decided it would be a good idea to devour his children as infants.


   It was not Calypso's fault that her cousin Zeus came from what can at best be described as a broken home.  It is hard, however, to stay neutral in wars involving family members.  Atlas, her father, was fighting on the side of Kronos.  Can any of us who have come from loving families say that we would not chose to fight for our parents in a war where lesser known cousins are trying to kill or overthrow them?  Most of us can identify with the desire to protect that which we love, and Calypso loved her family.  For that she would be punished.


   Perhaps the Olympians took all this into consideration when they handed down judgement to Calypso.  Compared to her father Atlas, who was forced to hold up the sky from the earth for all eternity, her punishment was rather light.  She was not even chained in the pit of Tartarus like so many of the others who fought on that side of the war.  (Dante transferred them from Tartarus to the lower circles of Hell in his Inferno, but I digress.)  The gods merely banished her to the island of Ogygia, where she would be forced to remain.  She was cared for by invisible servants, fed three meals a day, allowed to walk the beaches, stare at the ocean, sing, dance, tend a garden... so long as she did all those things there.  The Gods could come to visit her from time to time, but apart from that she was effectively alone.


   Enter the Fates and their cruelty.  It would have been too simple of a fate for her to be isolated for eternity, even with the occasional visits from her cousins.  While not just anyone would wash ashore on her island, from time to time a hero of old would wash up.  He would be beaten and bruised and broken from the long, strange trip that got him there.  Always it would be an unintended stop... no one ever had a quest to go find something on Ogygia, or attempted to reach it before they arrived there by accident.  She would find them lying on the sands and nurse them back to health.  She would care for their needs.  As time passed she would come to care for them, to love them even.  No one of them, however, could stay for long.  They all had destinies elsewhere: some quest to complete, a family to return to.


   Thus once they were better, they would eventually leave her.  The truly cruel part was that none of those heroes would ever find their way back to Ogygia once they left it.  It was part of the design of the island that it could not be reached by normal means without the aid of the Gods.  The Olympians did not seem to mind using her as a vacation spot/field hospital for their heros, especially since they knew the ones they sent there would always choose to go in time.  Thus poor Calypso's real punishment wasn't just to not be able to leave her island, but to not be able to ever have the illusion of a family become the real one that she so desperately wanted.