Geography of the Odyssey

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Events in the main sequence of the Odyssey (excluding the narrative of Odysseus's adventures) take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands (Ithaca and its neighbours). Incidental mentions of Troy and its neighbourhood, Phoenicia, Egypt and Crete hint at geographical knowledge equal to, or perhaps slightly superior to, that of the Iliad.^[1] However, scholars both ancient and modern are divided as to whether or not any of the places visited by Odysseus (after Ismarus and before his return to Ithaca) were real.

Contents 1 Geography of the Telemachy 2 Identification of Ithaca and neighbouring islands 3 Geography of Odysseus's narrative 3.1 Ancient identifications 3.1.1 Euhemerist accounts 3.1.2 Foundation myths 3.2 Modern views 3.2.1 Imaginary places 3.2.2 The western Mediterranean 3.2.3 Around Greece 3.2.4 Unusual theories 4 Notes 5 See also 6 External links 6.1 Ancient sources 6.2 Modern views 7 Maps 8 Bibliography

[edit] Geography of the Telemachy

The journey of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta raises a few geographical problems. The location of Nestor's Pylos was disputed in antiquity; towns named Pylos were found in Elis, Triphylia and Messenia, and each claimed to be Nestor's home. Strabo (8.3), citing earlier writers, argued that Homer meant Triphylian Pylos. Modern scholarship, however, generally locates Nestor's Pylos in Messenia. The presence of Mycenaean ruins at the archaeological site of Ano Englianos, the so-called "Palace of Nestor", have greatly strengthened this view. The Linear B tablets found at the site indicate that the site was called Pu-ro ("Pylos") by its inhabitants.^[2]

[edit] Identification of Ithaca and neighbouring islands

Main article: Homer's Ithaca

The geographical references in the Odyssey to Ithaca and its neighbours seem confused and have given rise to much scholarly argument, beginning in ancient times. Odysseus's Ithaca is usually identified with the island traditionally called Thiaki and now officially renamed Ithake, but some scholars have argued that Odysseus's Ithaca is actually Leucas, and others identify it with the whole or part of Cephalonia. For further information on these debates see Homer's Ithaca; for more on Robert Bittlestone's recent work, identifying the Paliki peninsula with Homeric Ithaca, see Odysseus Unbound.

[edit] Geography of Odysseus's narrative

The geography of the Apologoi (the tale that Odysseus told to the Phaeacians, forming books 9-12 of the Odyssey), and the location of the Phaeacians' own island of Scherie, pose quite different problems from those encountered in identifying Troy, Mycenae, Pylos and Ithaca.

• The names of the places and peoples that Odysseus visits or claims to have visited are not recorded, either as historical or contemporary information, in any ancient source independent of the Odyssey.
• What happens to Odysseus in these places, according to his narrative, belongs to the realm of the supernatural or fantastic (to an extent that is not true of the remainder of the Odyssey).
• It can be doubted whether Odysseus's story is intended, within the general narrative of the Odyssey, to be taken as true.
• We cannot know whether the poet envisaged the places on Odysseus' itinerary, and the route from each place to the next, as real.

For these reasons, the opinions of later students and scholars about the geography of Odysseus's travels vary enormously. It has repeatedly been argued that each successive landfall, and the routes joining them, are real and can be mapped; it has been argued with equal conviction that they do not exist in the real world and never can be mapped.

[edit] Ancient identifications

Ancient sources provide a wealth of interpretations of Odysseus' wanderings, with a complex range of traditions which affect one another in various ways. Broadly speaking there are two dominant trends:

1. Euhemerist accounts, which re-wrote mythical stories without their fantastic elements, and were often seen as thereby recovering "historical" records; and
2. foundation myths, whereby stories of a city or institution being founded in the course of Odysseus' travels often came to have political significance.

Some identifications are common to both groups. The main distinctions between them are in how the identifications were passed down through the generations, and the uses to which they were put. The most standard identifications, which are rarely disputed in ancient sources, are

• land of the Cyclopes = Sicily^[3]
• land of the Laestrygonians = Sicily^[4]
• island of Aeolus = one or more of the Aeolian Islands off Sicily's north coast^[5]
• Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians = Corcyra (modern Corfu), off the west coast of Greece and Albania^[6]

[edit] Euhemerist accounts

Euhemerist accounts are generally those found in writers on antiquarian subjects, geographers, scholars, and historians. The most important ancient sources are the 1st century geographer Strabo, who is our source for information on Eratosthenes' and Polybius' investigations into the matter; and the novelisation of the Trojan War that goes under the name of Dictys of Crete, which many later writers treated as an authentic historical record of the war.

The prototypes for this tradition are in the 5th century BCE. Herodotus identifies the land of the lotus-eaters as a headland in the territory of the Gindanes tribe in Libya, and Thucydides reports the standard identifications mentioned above.^[7] Herodotus and Thucydides do not actively euhemerise, but simply take local myths at face value for the political importance they had at the time.^[8]

Euhemerist accounts become more prominent in Alexandrian scholarship of the Hellenistic period. Callimachus identifies Scheria as Corcyra, and also identifies Calypso's island with Gaudos (modern Gozo, part of Malta).^[9] His student Apollonius of Rhodes also identifies Scheria as Corcyra in his epic the Argonautica.^[10]

Apollonius' successor as head of the library of Alexandria, Eratosthenes, wrote a detailed investigation into Odysseus' wanderings. Eratosthenes takes a cynical view, regarding Homer as an entertainer, not an educator: "You will find the scene of the wanderings of Odysseus when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of the winds."^[11] This does not mean that he refuses any and all identifications. He conjectures that Hesiod's information about the wanderings (see below on Hesiod) came from historical inquiries that Hesiod had made.^[12] The 2nd century BCE poet-historian Apollodorus sympathises with Eratosthenes, believing that Homer imagined the wanderings as having taken place in a kind of fairyland in the Atlantic; he actively criticises the standard identifications in and around Sicily, and refuses to offer any identifications of his own.^[13]

The 2nd century BCE historian Polybius discusses the wanderings in book 34 of his history. He refutes Apollodorus' idea that the wanderings were in the Atlantic on the basis of Odyssey 9.82, where Odysseus says that he sailed for nine days from Cape Malea in the Peloponnese to the land of the lotus-eaters: it would take much longer than nine days to reach the Atlantic. He accepts the standard identifications around Sicily, and is the earliest source to identify Scylla and Charybdis explicitly with the Strait of Messina.^[14] He also identifies the land of the lotus-eaters as the island of Djerba (ancient Meninx), off the coast of Tunisia.^[15] Polybius is the most euhemerist source to this date: he justifies the description of Aeolus in the Odyssey as "king of the winds" on the grounds that Aeolus "taught navigators how to steer a course in the regions of the Strait of Messina, whose waters are ... difficult to navigate", and insists that the mythical elements in the wanderings are insignificant in comparison to the historical core.^[16]

Strabo, living in the late 1st century BCE and early 1st century CE, says that he tries to strike a balance between reading Homer as an entertainer and as a historical source.^[17] He is Euhemerist to the extent that he believes that any hypothesis at all, no matter how outrageous, is more plausible than saying "I don't know";^[18] in this regard he accepts Polybius' arguments completely. Strabo offers the most detailed surviving set of identifications:

• Lotus-eaters: Djerba, following Polybius (1.2.17)
• Cyclops: south-east Sicily, near Etna and Lentini (1.2.9); also suggests that Homer "borrowed his idea of the one-eyed Cyclopes from the history of Scythia, for it is reported that the Arimaspians are a one-eyed people" (1.2.10)
• Aeolus: Lipari, among the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily
• Laestrygonians: south-east Sicily (1.2.9)
• land of the Cimmerians: the Bosporus (1.2.9)
• the Ocean: the Black Sea (ancient Pontus; 1.2.10)
• Sirens: either Cape Faro, by the Strait of Messina; or Sirenussae, a headland in Italy between the Bay of Naples and the Gulf of Salerno; or Naples itself (1.2.12-13)
• Scylla and Charybdis: Strait of Messina (1.2.9, 1.2.16)
• Ogygia (Calypso's island) and Scheria: "imagined in fantasy" as being in the Atlantic (1.2.18)

Other sources offer miscellaneous details. The Library wrongly attributed to Apollodorus summarises most of the accounts given above. Plutarch offers the intriguing theory that Calypso's island of Ogygia was not only in the Atlantic, but specifically five days' sail west of Britain, in a sea surrounded by a continent, from which Ogygia was about 900 km distant.^[19] Aristonicus, a contemporary of Strabo's, wrote a monograph On the wanderings of Menelaus, which influenced Strabo's own discussion.

Finally, the Ephemeris attributed to Dictys of Crete, who claims to have been present at the Trojan War, was probably written in the 1st century CE or perhaps a little earlier. It falls into a tradition of anti-Homeric literature, based on the supposition that Homer got most things about the Trojan War wrong by making virtuous people look like villains, and vice versa. It is important because later historians took Dictys as a historical record, including Sisyphus of Cos, John Malalas, George Cedrenus, John of Antioch, and others. Many Western mediaeval writers also accepted Dictys (in the Latin summary by Lucius Septimius) as the definitive account of the Trojan War.

According to Dictys, Odysseus fled from Troy after being accused of murdering Aias. He first went north to the Black Sea for a while; he sacked the Ciconian town of Ismarus in Thrace on his way back. After visiting the lotus-eaters he went to Sicily, where he encountered three (or four) brothers, Antiphates, Cyclops, and Polyphemus (and possibly Laestrygon, according to Septimius), who each ruled a portion of the island. Odysseus and his men were mistreated by each of these kings in turn. Notably, they were imprisoned by Polyphemus when one of Odysseus' men fell in love with Polyphemus' daughter (Arene or Elpe) and tried to kidnap her; but they escaped. They passed through the Aeolian Islands, but the surviving accounts of Dictys do not give specific locations for the rest of the wanderings. Malalas' account of Dictys, however, tells us that Circe and Calypso were sisters ruling over neighbouring islands; that Odysseus visited a lake called Nekyopompos ("guide of the dead") near the sea, whose inhabitants were seers; that he passed some rocks called the Seirenidai; and Cedrenus' account seems to identify Scheria with Corfu, or at least an island near Ithaca.^[20]

[edit] Foundation myths

Numerous places in Italy and northern Greece had aetiological legends about cities and other institutions founded by Odysseus on his various travels. Among these foundation myths the continuation of Odysseus's travels told in the Telegony is at least as important as the wanderings reported in the Odyssey.

The earliest record of a foundation myth connecting Odysseus with Italy is the lines surviving in Hesiod's Theogony (1011ff.), which report that Odysseus and Circe had two sons Agrius and Latinus, who ruled over the Etruscans (Tyrsenoi). Latinus is an important figure in many early Italian myths. The lines are not in fact Hesiodic, but they are probably no later than the 6th century BCE.^[21]

E.D. Phillips gives a very full treatment of myths that placed Odysseus and Telegonus, his son by Circe, in Italy.^[22]

[edit] Modern views

[edit] Imaginary places

The modern Greek Homerist Ioannis Kakridis may be compared with Eratosthenes in his approach to the problem. He argued that the Odyssey is a work of poetry and not a travel log. To attempt a quick outline of Kakridis's views, it is useless to try to locate the places mentioned in Odysseus' narrative on the map; we cannot confuse the narrative of Odyssey with history unless we believe in the existence of gods, giants and monsters. Kakridis admits that one may indeed ask what real locations inspired these imaginary places, but one must always bear in mind that geography is not the main concern either of Odysseus (as narrator) or of the poet.^[23] Similarly, Merry and Riddell, in their late 19th century school edition of the Odyssey, state the following opinion: "Throughout these books [books 9-12] we are in a wonderland, which we shall look in vain for on the map".^[24] W. B. Stanford in his mid 20th century edition comments as follows on book 9 lines 80-81 (where Odysseus says that he met storms off Cape Malea near the island of Cythera): "These are the last clearly identifiable places in O.'s wanderings. After this he leaves the sphere of Geography and enters Wonderland ..."^[25] Thereafter, while frequently referring to ancient opinions on the location of Odysseus's adventures, Stanford makes little or no reference to modern theories.

The view that Odysseus's landfalls are best treated as imaginary places is probably held by the majority of classical scholars today.

[edit] The western Mediterranean

By contrast with these views, some recent scholars, travellers and armchair travellers have tried to map Odysseus's travels. Modern opinions are so varied in detail that for convenience they need to be classified, as do the ancient ones. This article deals first with those who believe, as did many ancient authors, that the hero of the Odyssey was driven west or south-west from Cape Malea and, more than nine years later, returned from the west to his native Ionian islands: his landfalls are therefore to be found in the western Mediterranean.

For a long time the most detailed study of Odysseus's travels was that of the French Homeric scholar Victor Bérard.^[26] Although adopting the general frame of reference of the ancient commentators, Bérard differed from them in some details. For Bérard the land of the Lotus-Eaters was Djerba off southern Tunisia; the land of the Cyclopes was at Posillipo in Italy; the island of Aeolus was Stromboli; the Laestrygonians were in northern Sardinia; Circe's home was Monte Circeo in Lazio; the entrance to the Underworld was near Cumae, just where Aeneas found it in the Aeneid; the Sirens were on the coast of Lucania; Scylla and Charybdis were at the Strait of Messina; the Island of the Sun was Sicily; the homeland of Calypso was at the Straits of Gibraltar. From there Odysseus's route took him to Scherie, which Bérard, like so many of his ancient predecessors, identified with Corcyra.

Bérard's views were taken as standard in the 1959 Atlas of the Classical World by A. A. M. van der Heyden and H. H. Scullard.^[27] They were adopted in whole or in part by several later writers. Michel Gall, for example, followed Bérard throughout except that he placed the Laestrygonians in southern Corsica.^[28] Ernle Bradford had meanwhile added some new suggestions: the land of the Cyclopes was around Marsala in western Sicily; the island of Aeolus was Ustica off Sicily; Calypso was on Malta.^[29] The Obregons, in Odysseus Airborne, follow Bradford in some identifications but add several of their own. The Lotus Eaters are in the Gulf of Sidra; the Cyclops and Aeolus are both to be found in the Balearic Isles; the island of Circe is Ischia in the Bay of Naples; most unexpectedly, Scherie is Cyprus.^[30]

[edit] Around Greece

A minority view is that the landfalls of Odysseus were inspired by places on a much shorter itinerary along the coast of Greece itself. Tim Severin sailed a replica Greek sailing vessel (originally built for his attempt to retrace the steps of Jason and the Argonauts) along the "natural" route from Troy to Ithaca, following the sailing directions that could be teased out of the Odyssey. Along the way he found locations at the natural turning and dislocation points which, he claimed, agreed with the text much more closely than the usual identifications. However, he also came to the conclusion that the sequence of adventures from Circe onwards derived from a separate itinerary to the sequence that ended with the Laestrygonians and was possibly derived from the stories of the Argonauts. He placed many of the later episodes on the northwest Greek coast, where there is a real river Acheron. Along the way he found on the map Cape Skilla and other names that implied traditional links with the Odyssey. Severin agrees with the common opinion that the Lotus Eaters are in North Africa and that Scherie is Corcyra.^[31]

[edit] Unusual theories

Henriette Mertz a 20th century author argued that Circe's island is Madeira, Calypso's island one of the Azores, and the intervening travels record a discovery of North America, Scylla and Charybdis are in Bay of Fundy, Scherie at the Caribbean. ^[32] Dr. Enrico Mattievich, a physisist of the Rio de Janeiro University, proposed that Odysseus's journey to the Underworld takes place in South America. The river Acheron is the Amazon; after a long voyage upstream Odysseus meets the spirits of the dead at the confluence of the rio Santiago and rio Marañon. ^[33] A quite different view, that the whole geography of the Iliad and the Odyssey can be mapped on the coasts of the northern Atlantic, occasionally surfaces. According to this, Troy is in southern England, Telemachus's journey is in southern Spain, and Odysseus was wandering the Atlantic coast. ^[34] Finally, a recent publication argues that Homeric geography is to be found in the sky, and that the Iliad and the Odyssey can be decoded as a star map.^[35]

Such views reject without any good reason the findings of archaeology and linguistics (as well as literary research on the poems themselves) and are best treated as fantasy.

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Homer
• Homeric scholarship
• Odyssey

[edit] External links

[edit] Ancient sources

• Apollonius, Argonautica
• Herodotus, History 4.177
• Homer, Odyssey
• Plutarch, Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon
• Strabo, Geography 1.2.1-1.2.23, 1.2.24-1.2.40
• Thucydides, History 1.25, 3.88, 6.2, also in Greek 1.25, 3.88, 6.2

[edit] Modern views

• Jonathan Burgess's page on the travels of Odysseus
• Jean Cuisenier's attempt to find Odysseus' route

[edit] Maps

• "The World according to Homer, B.C. 1000" in Atlas of Ancient & Classical Geography. Revised ed. (London: Dent, 1910)
• "The World of Homer" (based on V. Bérard) from A. A. M. van der Heyden, H. H. Scullard, Atlas of the classical world (London: Nelson, 1959)
• Map based on the views of H. Mertz
• Map representing Homer's Nekyia according to Enrico Mattievich
• Map of the geography of the Odyssey based on the ideas of Iman Wilkens

[edit] Bibliography

• Ballabriga, Alain (1998), Les fictions d'Homere. L'invention mythologique et cosmographique dans l'Odyssee, Paris: PUF
• Bérard, Victor (1933), Dans le sillage d'Ulysse, Paris
• Bérard, Victor (1927-9), Les Navigations d'Ulysse, Paris
• Bérard, Victor (1927), Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée, Paris
• Bradford, Ernle (1963), Ulysses Found
• Cailleux, Théophile (1879), Pays atlantiques décrits par Homère, Paris: Maisonneuve
• Hennig, R. (1934), Die Geographie des homerischen Epos, Leipzig
• Heubeck, A. and others, eds. (1981-6), Omero, Odissea, Rome (English version: A. Heubeck, S. West and others, A commentary on Homer's Odyssey. Oxford, 1988-92. 3 vols.)
• Johnson, Laurin R. (1999), Shining in the Ancient Sea: The Astronomical Ancestry of Homer's Odyssey, Portland, OR: Multnomah House, ISBN 0-9669828-0-0
• Lessing, E. (1970), The Adventures of Odysseus (contribution by Michel Gall)
• Malkin, Irad (1998), The Returns of Odysseus, Berkeley: University of California Press
• Mattievich, Enrico (1992), Viagem ao inferno mitológico
• Mertz, Henriette (1964), Wine Dark Sea
• Obregon, E. (1971), Ulysses Airborne
• Romm, James (1994), The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press
• Roth, Hal (2000), We Followed Odysseus
• Severin, Timothy (1987), The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey
• Simpson, R. Hope & Lazenby, J. F. (1970), The Catalogue of Ships in Homer's Iliad, Oxford
• Stanford, W. B. (1947), The Odyssey of Homer, London: Macmillan
• Stanford, W. B. & Luce, J. V. (1974), The Quest for Odysseus, New York: Praeger
• Wilkens, Iman (1990), Where Troy Once Stood, London: Rider
• Wolf, A. & Wolf, H.-H. (1983), Die wirkliche Reise des Odysseus, München: Langenmüller