This post unifies two of my absolutely favourite topics: geology and classical Greek history. I have always had a soft spot for the classics. In fact, when I started my undergrad I was planning on doing a double major of geology and classics. I decided to focus on geology, but I have not lost my love of ancient civilizations particularly the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Most of us are familiar with the story of the Odyssey, but I’ll recap it here briefly. The Odyssey is the tale of Kind Odysseus’s journey back from Troy to his home island of Ithaca. Odysseus, despite being a pretty shrewd guy, angers the god Poseidon who condemns him to wander the ocean for decades before he can go home. During this time Odysseus experiences many wild adventures in is quest to return home to his wife, Penelope and his son, Telemachos. Eventually, Odysseus returns home, but just in time to prevent his kingdom falling into rival hands. It is a classic good guy triumphs over evil tale and one of the best classical poems ever written. Homer obviously took substantial creative licence in the poem, as was customary at the time, however many of the places he mentions are real, as are the people such as Agamemnon, Menelaus, Troy, Mycenae, Sparta, etc. However, there has always been a question…where is Ithaca?? Indeed, Ithaca was missing. The home of the principle character in the poem was nowhere to be found and this just doesn’t jive with the accurate nature of rest of the poem.

This is a question that had baffled classical scholars for decades. At first, many believed that Homer just made up Ithaca since at that time Troy was believed to be fictional as well. However, once Troy was discovered it no longer made sense to think that Ithaca was made up and therefore, it must be some place amongst the Greek islands.

The passage in the Odyssey that describes the location of Ithaca is as follows:

εἴμ’ Ὀδυσεὺς Λαερτιάδης, ὃς πᾶσι δόλοισιν

ἀνθρώποισι μέλω, καί μευ κλέος οὐρανὸν ἵκει.

ναιετάω δ’ Ἰθάκην ἐυδείελον: ἐν δ’ ὄρος αὐτῇ

Νήριτον εἰνοσίφυλλον, ἀριπρεπές: ἀμφὶ δὲ νῆσοι

πολλαὶ ναιετάουσι μάλα σχεδὸν ἀλλήλῃσι,

Δουλίχιόν τε Σάμη τε καὶ ὑλήεσσα Ζάκυνθος.

αὐτὴ δὲ χθαμαλὴ πανυπερτάτη εἰν ἁλὶ κεῖται

πρὸς ζόφον, αἱ δέ τ’ ἄνευθε πρὸς ἠῶ τ’ ἠέλιόν τε,

I am Odysseus, Laertes’ son, world-famed

For stratagems: my name has reached the heavens.

Bright Ithaca is my home: it has a mountain,

Leaf-quivering Neriton, far visible.

Around are many islands, close to each other,

Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthos.

Ithaca itself lies low, furthest to sea

Towards dusk; the rest, apart, face dawn and sun.

Od 9.19-26 (text from http://www.odysseus-unbound.org/PDFs/How_did_Homer_describe_Ithaca_ENG.pdf)

So there you have it in beautiful Homeric Greek. The location of Ithaca…it is the westernmost of the Greek islands, which today is Cephalonia, formerly known as Sake, and not Ithaca. As for the current Greek island called Ithaca it in no way meets the description of Homer’s Ithaca and therefore it cannot be the same island, unless Homer was trying to play a massive joke on us all or did not understand basic geography, neither of which is very likely. So where did ancient Ithaca go?

Over the past few years a new theory has emerged to answer this question. In short the idea is that the thin isthmus of land between Paliki and the rest of Cephalonia was at one point underwater separating the two places and resulting in two islands. Indeed, there is classical text to back up such and idea. Strabo, the renowned ancient geographer wrote “where the island is narrowest it forms an isthmus so low-lying that it is often submerged from sea to sea.” If we trust Strabo, this means that during classical times there were actually two islands that are now one. Perhaps, westernmost Paliki was Ithaca during Homer’s time and the current island called Ithaca was another island was Doulichion. However, how can we prove that this idea is more than just an interesting theory?