The Odyssey and History: Real Places, James Joyce and Odysseus's Ithaca | Early European History And Religion

CLUES ABOUT HISTORY DRAWN FROM THE ODYSSEY

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Odysseus dreaming of Ithaca
The Odyssey offers clues about the historical period in which set — Mycenaean Greece. Juan Piquero wrote in National Geographic: The Homeric writer’s choice of words offers glimpses into Mycenaean civilization and its influence on later culture. For example, two different words for king are used: Odysseus is described variously as the anax and the basileus of Ithaca. The word “anax” is typical of the Mycenaean period, while “basileus” dates to alater period.[Source: Juan Piquero, National Geographic, April 13, 2023]

The wealth of the Mycenaean kings was primarily based on the large-scale farming of pigs, goats, sheep, and cows. Both the Mycenaean texts and The Odyssey speak of the king owning large numbers of livestock. The central role of animal husbandry is highlighted through three characters in The Odyssey: Eumaeus (a swine-herd), Melanthius (a goatherd), and Philoetius (a cowherd). When Odysseus is reunited with his father, Laertes, at the end of his journey, the old man is tending his vines, perhaps suggesting that he has a temenos (terrain set aside for a deity or king) similar to the one mentioned in connection with the king in texts from Pylos.

There are major differences between the king’s oikos, or residence, as described in The Odyssey and what is known about the how Mycenaean palaces were run. For example, Mycenaean palaces seem to have functioned as production hubs with artisans and slaves creating pottery, glassware, and metalwork from raw materials brought to the palace. For their work, they were paid in land and food rations. These kinds of workers are missing from theThe Odyssey.

As described by Homer, the Mycenaean people were organized into kingdoms. Odysseus was the son of Laertes and inherited the kingdom when he reached maturity. The description of the palace complex in Ithaca is corroborated by other Mycenaean texts. Kings did rule from their palaces. These impressive complexes serve not only as a residence for the royal family, guests, and servants, but also as an administrative center where income from the king’s lands and herds is traded or paid.

How Mycenaean kingdoms were governed and how they related to each other is not clear from history. Besides Homeric epics, other tales of the Trojan War describe a confederation of kingdoms that banded together against a common enemy. The origin of this alliance is traced back to Odysseus and the many suitors for the most beautiful women in the world. Powerful Mycenaean kings present themselves as husbands for Helen, and her father, King Tyndareus, fears that they will turn against Sparta if he does not choose them.

Odyssey and Real Places

The Tunisian island of Djerba is sometimes described as the island of the Lotus Eater and Trapani in southern Sicily is sometimes referred to as the land the Cyclops. The Cyclops, according to some scholars hurled boulders from Mount Etna and lived on islands near Catania, Sicily. Some people consider Corsica as the land of the Lestryonians and Ischia (an island in the Bay of Naples) to be Circe's island. The entrance of Hades is said to be near the Straights of Gibraltar. Western Sicily is supposedly where the sun god's sheep were killed. Some think Calypso was Malta.

The “ Odyssey” 's whirlpool Charybdis, home of the monsters of Scylla and Charybdid, refers the turbulent waters between Italy and Sicily near Messina on the Sicilian side. Bonifacio on Corsica has been identified as the place where many of Odysseus's men were munched by the cannibalistic Laestrygonians. The description of it in the “ Odyssey” goes: it is "a curious bay with mountain walls of stone/ to left and right, and reaching far inland, /a narrow entrance opening from the sea/ where cliffs converged as though to touch and close."

Zante in the Ionian islands was called "wooded Zacynthos" in the Odyssey. But most of its forests were lost to ancient boatbuilders and have since been replaced by olive groves and pastures grazed by goats. Cephalonia (3½ hours from Patras) is the largest and most rugged Ionian island and like Zante most of its forests where harvested for timber.

Could Odysseus Been a Real Person?

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Odysseus and the suitors
Juan Piquero wrote in National Geographic: Historians have found no hard evidence of an ancient Greek king named Odysseus. While the man may not have existed, scholars believe the Mycenaean kingdom of Ithaca certainly did. Its precise location is unknown, but many think Odysseus’ Ithaca was located on the Ionian island of Kefalonia on Paliki Peninsula, which was a small island in the Bronze Age. [Source: Juan Piquero, National Geographic, April 13, 2023]

Clever Odysseus, after turning his attentions to Helen’s cousin Penelope, offers Tyndareus a solution if he promises Penelope to him (which he does). Odysseus tells the Spartan king that before betrothing Helen he must make all the suitors pledge an oath to come to Helen and her husband’s aid if she were ever abducted. They all agree, and in doing so, form the alliance that will fight against Troy when Paris, one of its princes, steals Helen from her husband, Menelaus. Other contemporary historical sources point to the existence of a Mycenaean confederation, which is referred to collectively as the kingdom of Ahhiyawa in circa 1400-1220 B.C. Hittite texts and Tanaja in 15th-century B.C. Egyptian sources.

Ithaca, Odysseus's Home?

Ithaca (5 hours from Patras) is a small thinly populated island just north of Cephalonia. According to the "Odyssey” Ulysses was born in Ithaca and spent 10 years trying to reach it after the Trojan War. There is some debate as to whether this island is indeed the Ithaca from the “Odyssey “.

Ulysses met his son after his long journey near two landmarks, mentioned in the “Odyssey” that are said to be easily recognizable today: Arethusa' Fountain, a small spring hidden behind a rock that still flows with "darkling water"; and Raven's Crag, a reddish cliff that is still a favorite soaring spot for ravens. Both places are located together near the southeastern tip of the island.

Most of Ithaca is surrounded by rugged coastline and the northern part of the island is terraced for farming. Vanthi, the island largest town, is located at the end of deep blue bay fringed by steep mountains. Possible sites where Ulysses may have lived or spent time are caves located around Polis Bay from which many of the artifacts that fill the Vanthi museum were found and the remains of an ancient Bronze age city situated on a well watered and easily defensible hill.

Odyssey and the Location of Ithaca

The island of Ithaca is located off the western coast of Greece not too far from Albania. Near the place where Odysseus met his son after his long journey are two landmarks, mentioned in the Odyssey that are easily recognizable today: Arethusa' Fountain is a small spring hidden behind a rock that still flows with "darkling water" and Raven's Crag is a reddish cliff that is still a favorite soaring spot for ravens. Both places are located together near the southeastern tip of the island. Possible sites on Ithaca where Odysseus may have lived or spent time are caves located around Polis Bay from which many of the artifacts that fill the Vanthi museum were found and the remains of an ancient Bronze age city situated on a well watered and easily defensible hill.

The Greek island of Kefalonia and its Paliki Peninsula are believed by some experts to be the likely site of The Odyssey’s kingdom of Ithaca. Robert Bittlestone, a management consultant and amateur archaeologist, has argued in his book “Odysseus Unbound” that the true location of Odysseus’s Ithaca is not the modern island of Ithaca put rather the Paliki peninsula on the island of Cephalonia, which Bittlestone argues fits the descriptions of Odysseus’s home island better than Ithaca and that it was once an island based on geological discoveries he has made. Gregory Nagy, director the Center of Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C., told Smithsonian magazine, “He has done something very important. This is a real breakthrough, convergence of oral poetry and geology, and the most plausible explanation I’ve seen of what Ithaca was in the second millennia.” [Source: Fergus M. Bordewich, April 2006, Smithsonian magazine]

Ulysses and the Sirens (1909)

Homer’s description of Ithaca goes: "Around her a ring of islands circle side-by-side, / Douchlichion, Same, wooded Zachynthos too, but mine/ lies low and away, the furthest out to sea,/ rearing on to western dusk while others face east and breaking day.” Scholars have long agreed ancient and modern Zachynthos are one in the same. Similarly, Same was thought to refer to the main body of Cephalonia, which is home to a large present-day town called Sami. The island of Ithaca does not fit the description of being the “furthest to sea” and its mountainous topography is a far cry from “lying low.”

Bittlecone argues that if the Paliki peninsula were an island it would fit the description perfectly. He goes further, based on geological studies he did, and says that it was an island in Odysseus’s time and the sea channel that once divided the Paliki peninsula and Cephalonia has been filled in since Odysseus’s time by landslides and debris from earthquakes. Backing his claim is the fact that Cephalonia lies on one of the world’s most seismically-active faults and of evidence of numerous landslides that plausibly could have filled a channel found on the isthmus that divides Paliki and Cephalonia. . Geologist John Underhill of the University of Edinburgh, who checked out Cephalonia told Smithsonian magazine, “I thought it would be easy to disprove Bittlestone’s thesis but it wasn’t. Suddenly I thought, crike, there might really a channel down there.”

Further evidence backing up Bittlecone’s claim that Paliki was the “Odyssey’s Ithaca includes the beach at Theras Bay, which fits the description of the place were Odysseus came ashore and met up with the swineherd Eumaerus. It is situated on a cove with ?two jutting headlands, sheared off at the seaward side” as Homer’s book says. There are also has many features that make it ideal for farming — including springs, nuts and dark pools needed to feed Eumerus’s 960 pigs — and seems like the proper distance from Odysseys’s hometown.

Book: “Odysseus Unbound” by Robert Bittlecone (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Palace of Odysseus Discovered?

In 2010, a team of Greek archaeologists claimed that an 8th century B.C. palace they found on the island of Ithaca was the home of Odysseus and argued it offered proof that Odysseus and the Odyssey were real. Nick Squires wrote in The Telegraph: “Nearly 3,000 years after Odysseus returned from his journey, the team from the University of Ioannina said they found the remains of an extensive three-storey building, with steps carved out of rock and fragments of pottery. The complex also features and a well from the 8th century B.C. roughly the period in which Odysseus is believed to have been king of Ithaca. [Source: Nick Squires, The Telegraph, 24 Aug 2010 +]

“The location "fits like a glove" with Homer's description of the view from the fabled palace, the archaeologists claim. The layout of the complex, where Professor Thanassis Papadopoulos and his team have been digging for 16 years, is very similar to palaces discovered at Mycenae, Pylos and other ancient sites. +\

“The claim will be greeted with scepticism by the many scholars who believe that Odysseus, along with other key characters from the Homer's epic such as Hector and Achilles, were purely fictional. “Whether this find has a connection with Ulysses or not is interesting up to a certain point, but more important is the discovery of the royal palace," said Adriano La Regina, an Italian archaeologist. +\

“Further complicating the identification of the site is the doubt over whether the ancient kingdom of Ithaca was located on its modern day namesake, Ithaki. British researcher, Robert Bittlestone, has said Homer's descriptions bear little resemblance to the island and that ancient Ithaca was in fact located on the Paliki peninsula, on the island of Cephalonia. He believes that Paliki was once an island, separated from the rest of Cephalonia by a marine channel that has since been filled in by rock falls triggered by earthquakes. Enlisting the help of geologists and ancient historians, he documented the controversial theory in a 2005 book, ‘Odysseus Unbound – The Search for Homer's Ithaca’.” +\

Why James Joyce Chose Ulysses

When asked why he chose he chose Ulysses, instead of, say, Faust or Hamlet, James Joyce said Ulysses was a "complete all around character...a complete man in literature." Faust he said is "far from being a complete man, he isn't a man at all...he can't be complete because he's never alone." he then added "Hamlet is a human being, but he is only a son. Ulysses is son to Laetes, but he is father to Telmachus, husband of Penelope, lover of Calypso, companion in arms of the Greek warriors...He was subjected to many trials, but with wisdom and courage came through them all."

Joyce added: "Don't forget he was a war dodger who tried to evade the military service by simulating madness...But once at the war the conscientious objector became a Jusqu'auboutits [bitter-ender]. When the others wanted to abandon the siege he insisted on staying till Troy should fall.”

Ancient Brick Inscribed with The Odyssey Found in Olympia

Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology magazine: When an inscribed brick was first found amid a heap of discarded building material in a village outside the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, it appeared to be nothing special. Now, to researchers’ great surprise, they have learned it contains an excerpt from the Odyssey. Based on the style of its lettering, researchers have dated the newly discovered excerpt to the third century A.D. at the latest. They believe it is likely the oldest inscribed section of the Odyssey ever found in Greece. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2019]

“The inscription consists of the first 13 verses of the poem’s fourteenth book, in which Odysseus finally returns home to Ithaca, where he is reunited with his trusted swineherd, Eumaeus. “I think the brick was inscribed at some point, and later it was used for construction,” says Erofili-Iris Kolia, director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Ilia. Kolia adds that, in her opinion, the inscription was originally commissioned by a landowner in Olympia who fancied himself a latter-day Odysseus.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024