Odysseus’ Ithaca

 

Odysseus’ Ithaca

Where Mycenaean Ithaca was precisely located has been the subject of great debate among classical scholars for some considerable time. In his Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad, Homer named those who had travelled to the Trojan War under the leadership of the great Odysseus and in the Odyssey, the hero described his homeland.

Odysseus led the brave young Kephallenians from Ithaca, well-forested Neriton, Crocyleia, the jagged hill of Aegilips, Samos and Zakynthos and the lands opposite it. These were led by Odysseus, the equal of Zeus in counsel, and with him there came twelve ships bearing red prows.

I live in clearly-seen Ithaca where Mount Neriton is, all covered with quivering foliage and seen from far off, and around it are many islands close together, Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus.

Modern day Ithaca is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, located just northeast of the larger island of Kefalonia and west of mainland Greece, in an area known as the Ionian Islands. Not to be confused with Samos, an island in the eastern Aegean off the coast of Turkey, the Samos (Same) mentioned by Homer in this context, was a city on the coast of Kefalonia. Mount Neriton is located on Ithaca and Aegilips and Crocyleia have both been placed on the present-day nearby Ionian island of Leucas (Lefkada), situated close to modern Ithaca. Wilhem Dorpfeld the archaeologist held that Leucas was Ithaca because it was closer to the mainland and also suggested that Aegilips was actually the island of Meganisi. One ancient story had Dulichium located about two miles off the coast of Kefalonia, but subsequently sunk by an earthquake and yet others reported it as being a city on the island of Kefalonia itself. With all of his various references taken into account, it seems obvious that Homer’s location for Odysseus’ Ithaca was somewhere near to where we find it situated in modern times in the Ionian Sea.

But not everyone agrees that Ithaca was one of the Ionian Islands off the coast of Greece. In his 1897 work, The Authoress of the Odyssey, Samuel Butler places Ithaca on Favignana, one of the Aegadian Islands situated about 18 kilometers off the west coast of Sicily between Trapani and Marsala. In the Odyssey, Homer makes reference to the Harbour of Phorcys on Ithaca and Butler suggests that the Bay of Trapani fits this description. Butler’s rationale for his theory is that the Odyssey was not written by Homer, but by a young Sicilian woman. He postulated that the entire narrative of the Odyssey was located in and around Sicily, and that the authoress wrote herself into the story in the character of Princess Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous and Queen Arete of Phaeacia.

Laura Coffey takes up Butler’s suggestion in her Enchanted Islands, but moves Ithaca even further west in the Aegadian Islands. Homer described Ithaca as being the farthest west island, toward the dusk, and that all others were facing Dawn and the rising sun. To accommodate that description, Coffey places Ithaca on the Aegadian island of Marettimo, some 45 kilometers off the coast of Sicily and farther to sea than Favignana, in fact the westernmost island in the archipelago. Coffey did not find Marettimo particularly welcoming and moved on to Favignana, which to her felt like Circe’s island. “Felt like” are the operative words, as there is no literary evidence that can be pointed to for making her case, only feelings. Homer, on the other hand, was very specific in placing the whereabouts of Ithaca and his location coincides with modern geography.

There are those who make the case that Homer’s Ithaca was not the island known by that name today, but rather the Paliki Peninsula found on the western coast of the nearby island of Kefalonia. Emily Hauser takes up this position in her book Mythica. The theory is that the modern peninsula was once an island and that the channel between it and Kefalonia has since silted over, or that island became a peninsula after an earthquake. Being the furthest west point of the Ionian Islands would fit with Homer’s description of the location of Ithaca being the last point of land facing the setting sun. However, Paliki does not fit with Homer’s description of a channel of water situated between Ithaca and Samos on the east coast of Kefalonia, where the suitors anchored in ambush for the returning Telemachus.

But come now and give me a ship and twenty men so that I can lie in wait and ambush him as he ferries between Ithaca and rugged Samos.

The best of the suitors lie in wait to ambush you in the strait between Ithaca and rugged Samos and they are eager to kill you there before you can return to your native land.

I think that we can safely assume that the Ithaca described as Odysseus’ homeland in the Iliad and the Odyssey is definitely the present-day island of Ithaca in the Ionian Sea. Other proposed locations are pure speculation and have no basis in the literature and have no real geographical foundation. But what did Ithaca look like? Homer often described it as sea-surrounded and clearly seen. He said that it was well-forested and had jagged hills and used terms like rocky and rugged in his descriptions. When King Menelaus of Sparta offered to give horses to Telemachus as a parting gift, Odysseus’ son provided the following description of his homeland.

Whatever gift you wish to give, let it indeed be a treasure, but I will not take horses to Ithaca but will leave them here for you to enjoy, for you are the lord of an extensive plain where a lot of lotus grows and galingale and wheat and spelt and wide-eared barley. But in Ithaca there are no wide fields or meadow-lands. It is a pasture-land that is better for goats than horses, because none of the islands that touch upon the sea are fit for driving horses or rich in meadows, and Ithaca least of all.

The description provided by Telemachus is confusing because it does not jibe with other references to Ithaca made in the Odyssey. There are times when the island is pictured as being rich, fertile and well-tilled. We know that both Eumaeus the swineherd and Odysseus’ father Laertes had extensive gardens. We likewise know from the legends that Odysseus farmed the land. He was plowing his fields and feigning madness when Palamedes visited him to recruit him for the Trojan War at the request of Agamemnon. Was Ithaca rich and fertile, or barren and rocky? Ithaca today is mountainous and rugged, but does contain olive and cypress groves, so perhaps it was both.

The island’s exact location and physical characteristics notwithstanding, the fact remains that Ithaca symbolizes the ultimate destination in the Odyssey and represents the overwhelming longing for home and family and the completion of an arduous challenge. Ithaca is the symbol for the hero’s journey home, his Nostos. It is a powerful metaphor for the struggles often involved in life’s journey. Ithaca is a small island, but it plays a huge role in the story of the Odyssey and serves as a powerful cultural and spiritual symbol for homecoming and perseverance.