Was Homer’s Ithaca Actually an Island?: New Analysis Challenges a 2,000-Yr-Outdated Assumption

Even when we did­n’t make it to a display screen­ing of Christo­pher Nolan’s big-screen adap­ta­tion this previous sum­mer — and certainly, even when we’ve nev­er learn Residence­r’s orig­i­nal epic in any respect — we all know that the Odyssey tells the sto­ry of a ten-year-long jour­ney again to Itha­ca. The nar­ra­tive’s urgency does­n’t come up from the truth that its professional­tag­o­nist, the king Odysseus, has class­es at Cor­nell to show. The truth is, he could not even be attempt­ing to get again to the extant Greek island cel­e­brat­ed for bear­ing that very same identify. So, not less than, argues a latest paper by two dis­tin­guished professional­fes­sors, Cam­bridge’s James Dig­gle and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Aberdeen’s John Below­hill. You may learn “Was Residence­r’s Itha­ca an Island?” on the on-line jour­nal Antigone.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you possibly can watch the brand new video from clas­si­cist-nov­el­ist Hon­or Cargill-Mar­tin above. The actual Greek island of Itha­ca, or Itha­ki, with its pic­turesque ham­lets and lime­stone mono­liths, “actu­al­ly does­n’t match, pret­ty a lot in any respect, the descrip­tion that Homer provides us of Itha­ca,” she says.

Hav­ing sailed there final sum­mer, she will describe it as “an amaz­ing place, so dra­mat­ic and so evoca­tive, however largely, that’s as a result of the moun­tains essen­tial­ly rise straight out of the ocean”  — a direct con­tra­dic­tion to Residence­r’s traces about low­lands sur­spherical­ing a sin­gle cen­tral peak. Did he simply get it fallacious? Or was he tak­ing artis­tic license as a way to imag­ine the sort of place from which a hero like Odysseus would come forth, although he acquired his geog­ra­phy kind of proper else­the place?

In 2005, a person­age­ment con­sul­tant known as Robert Bit­tle­stone put forth the argu­ment that Homer’s Itha­ca was actu­al­ly Pali­ki, a penin­su­la on the west­ern fringe of Kefalo­nia. As a way to take a look at this the­o­ry, Bit­tle­stone introduced in Dig­gle and Below­hill, his col­lab­o­ra­tors on the e-book Odysseus Unbound: The Seek for Residence­r’s Itha­ca. Now, a decade after Bit­tle­stone’s loss of life, the oth­ers have professional­duced new geo­log­i­cal and tex­tu­al evi­dence for the Pali­ki hypoth­e­sis, not least that Homer nev­er as soon as explic­it­ly calls Itha­ca an island, and even describes it in phrases he applies to recognized islands. Cargill-Mar­tin finds their analysis “excessive­ly con­vinc­ing,” which makes you gained­der: will Itha­ca take down its stat­ue of Odysseus in response? Prob­a­bly not, however not less than we’ll have some­factor to speak about after we go stand earlier than it.

through Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Explains Why Homer’s Odyssey Nonetheless Mat­ters to Our World (2000)

Sean Con­nery (RIP) Reads C. P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Itha­ca,” Set to the Music of Van­ge­lis

Lau­rie Anderson’s Thoughts-Blow­ing Per­for­mance of C. P. Cavafy’s Poems “Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians” & “Itha­ca”

The Ori­gins of the Mon­sters in Homer’s Odyssey: The Cyclops, Sirens, Scyl­la & Extra

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the writer of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.