Calypso is the nymph of Ogygia in Homer's Odyssey who detained Odysseus for seven years, offering immortality if he would stay as her husband. Daughter of Atlas in the Homeric account, she released him only after Hermes brought Zeus's command. This atlas node is the Odyssey detainee — not Hesiod's Oceanid of the same name, nor the Nereid Calypso listed by Apollodorus.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Calypso (mythology)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Namesakes
This article follows the Homeric Calypso of Ogygia — the fair-tressed daughter of Atlas who holds Odysseus. Hesiod's Theogony and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter list a Calypso among the Oceanid daughters of Oceanus and Tethys; Apollodorus includes a Calypso among the Nereids. Those roll-call namesakes are not merged into this figure.
Tzetzes makes her a daughter of Helios and Perse (Circe's parents), perhaps from confusion with Circe as another island goddess who detains Odysseus. The Wikipedia disambiguation for other nymphs named Calypso, and modern uses (astronomy, music), lie outside this mythological node.
II.Family
Homer names her daughter of the Titan Atlas. Hyginus alone adds Pleione (mother of the Pleiades) as her mother. Homer mentions no children by Odysseus; later accounts give her Latinus (more often Circe's son), or the pair Nausithous and Nausinous. A Catalogue of Women fragment has Calypso bear the Cephalonians to Hermes.
III.The Odyssey
Calypso keeps Odysseus on Ogygia by force for seven years, enchanting him with her singing as she weaves with a golden shuttle and offering immortality and ageless youth if he will be her husband. By day he sits on the shore weeping for Ithaca and Penelope; by night he is compelled to share her cave.
Athena asks Zeus to free him; Zeus sends Hermes with the order. Calypso protests the gods' envy of goddesses who take mortal lovers, yet swears she will plot no further harm. She supplies axe, adze, and drill, leads him to timber, gives wine, bread, and clothing, and sets a fair wind when he sails on the raft he builds.
IV.Other narratives
A Catalogue of Women fragment claims she detained Odysseus as a favour to Poseidon, still angry over the blinding of Polyphemus. Hyginus says she killed herself for love of Odysseus. Modern readers have compared the episode to Gilgamesh and Siduri — a lone female who plies a grieving wanderer with hospitality and sends him toward a voyage beyond the sea.
V.Later reception
Calypso remains a stock figure of detaining desire in European literature and art — from Letitia Landon's yearning islander to Fénelon's Télémaque and countless paintings of Hermes ordering the release. Film and television have cast her repeatedly (for example Vanessa Williams in the 1997 Odyssey miniseries); such modern screen roles are reception, not ancient attestation.