Where is ithaca in the odyssey

In his master's absence he has ignored his duty and has ingratiated himself with the suitors by catering to their whims. Menelaus - King of Sparta, husband of Helen, and brother of Agamemnon. Like Odysseus, he too has a series of misadventures on his return home from Troy. Mentor - A faithful friend of Odysseus who was left behind on Ithaca as Telemachus' tutor; he is wise, sober, and loyal.

Nausicaa - The daughter of Alcinous and Arete. She is a charming young maiden, in her adolescence. Nestor - King of Pylos, father of Peisistratus.

A very wise and garrulous old man, one of the few survivors of the Trojan War. He is the first of the Greek epic heroes to be renowned for his brain as well as his brawn. Peisistratus - The gallant young son of Nestor.

He is the companion of Telemachus on his journey through the Peloponnesus. Penelope - The wife of Odysseus. She is serious and industrious, a perfect wife and mother in many aspects.

Philoetius - The chief cowherd of Odysseus; he is brave and loyal and, despite his age, stands besides his master during the battle with the suitors. Polyphemus - A one-eyed Cyclops who held Odysseus and his men captive in his cave until he was made drunk and blinded by Odysseus.

Poseidon - Younger brother of Zeus, god of the sea and earthquakes, father of Polyphemus. Because Odysseus is a sailor and must travel home by ship, Poseidon is able to do him much harm. Poseidon bears a grudge against Odysseus because of his rough treatment of Polyphemus. Scylla - A sea monster with six heads whom Odysseus and his crew must pass during their voyage.

Sirens - Two beautiful maidens who dwell in a flowery meadow on an island somewhere between that of Circe and of Scylla. They tempt passing mariners to their deaths by their tantalizing songs. Telemachus - The son of Odysseus and Penelope. He is just entering manhood and is very aware of his duty, and his father's reputation as a hero which he feels he must live up to.

Tiresias - The most famous of all Greek seers. The legend was that in compensation for his blindness the gods had given him his awesome visionary powers. His spirit is consulted by Odysseus in Hades. Zeus - The supreme god and king of Olympus. He is officially neutral in human affairs; his duty is to carry out the will of Destiny, but he is often sympathetic towards humans.

Aeaea - The island home of the enchantress Circe. Aeolia - A floating island home of Aeolus, king of the winds. Capri - Island home of the Sirens. Cicones - A Thracian tribe whose capital was raided by Odysseus and his men after leaving Troy. Hades - The land of the dead. Also known as Tartarus or Klysium. Ithaca - The island kingdom of Odysseus. Off the west coast of mainland Greece. Ismaurus - The capital of the Cicones, located in Thrace, to the north- east of Greece.

Laestrygonians - A tribe of cannibal barbarians who seriously defeat Odysseus and his men when the Greek ships land in their country. Ogygia - Island home of the nymph Calypso.

Thought to be modern day Malta. Olympus - A mountain in Greece, which is home to many of the gods and goddesses. Phaeacians - The inhabitants of the land of Scheria. Pylos - The kingdom of Nestor, located on the Peloponnesian Peninsula. Scheria - The island home of the Phaeacians, and the kingdom of Alcinous. Also may be referred to as Drepane. Sparta - The kingdom of Menelaus, located on the Peloponnesian Peninsula.

Troy - A kingdom that was destroyed by the Greeks in the Trojan War. The worst in modern times, in , leveled almost every building on the island, causing 90 percent of its residents to flee. In , Bittlestone contacted John Underhill, a professor of geography at the University of Edinburgh. Underhill, who has studied the geology of Cephalonia for more than 20 years, told him that geological uplift on such a large scale was impossible.

But he was sufficiently intrigued to meet Bittlestone on Cephalonia for a firsthand look. As landslide followed landslide over the centuries, the debris could have extended farther across the isthmus, layer upon layer, to create the rugged hills. Suddenly I thought, crikey, there might really be a channel down there. The more he looked the more certain he became that Cephalonia had once been two islands.

Bittlestone had no doubts. The scale of it is mind-blowing. Recent follow-up research, announced last year by Bittlestone, Diggle and Underhill, dramatically bolsters the case they are making. Among other findings, teams of international scientists have shown that a foot borehole drilled on the isthmus met no solid limestone—only loose rockfall. A Greek Geological Institute survey pinpointed a submerged marine valley, consistent with a onetime sea channel between modern Paliki and Cephalonia.

But attempting to identify actual places that fit a nearly 3,year-old narrative does present problems. For one, it is by no means certain that individuals in the poem—Odysseus; his wife, Penelope; son, Telemachus; the suitors—ever existed. Gregory Nagy is cautious. We should not force it to be a road map for a set of real events. Bittlestone has an answer for that. Not necessarily. But it is plausible that there was a Bronze Age chieftain around whom these stories grew. There was a real Troy, a real Mycenae, a real Sparta, all of which have been rediscovered by archaeologists.

Most scholars agree that the Odyssey was first put into writing in the eighth or seventh century b. But some believe, and Bittlestone concurs, that its core narrative dates as far back as the 12th century b. If you accept that the channel exists, and that Ithaca is Paliki—the external geography, so to speak—then you cannot dismiss the possibility that the other passages may reflect the internal geography of Ithaca.

On a crisp day in october, Bittlestone leads me along the route that he thinks Odysseus may have followed upon his return to Ithaca. We begin at Atheras Bay, a crescent of beach enfolded by terraced groves of olive trees. Bittlestone believes this could have inspired the description of Phorcys Bay, where Odysseus—or his prototype—was put ashore by friendly Phaeacian mariners.

It was here that Athene appeared to Odysseus in the guise of a handsome young shepherd and commanded him to find the hut of the loyal swineherd Eumaeus:. A herd of goats stares at us with yellow, inexpressive eyes, then explodes in panic, bounding away down the hillside.

Soon we pass through the village of Atheras, its stucco houses painted white and yellow, its gardens lush with bougainvillea, morning glories and lemon trees. Since Odysseus then asked Eumaeus to guide him there, the palace must not have been in sight of the pig farm—though it had to be near enough that Eumaeus could go there and back twice in a single day. We turn onto a stony track and stop at an old well on a small, circular terrace.

Next we follow an old sunken path through an eerie forest of stunted wild oak trees, emerging into daylight to find an animal enclosure fenced with piled-up stones.