Odyssey's End?: The Search for Ancient Ithaca

A British researcher believes he has at last pinpointed the island to which Homer's wanderer returned

  • By Fergus M. Bordewich
  • Photographs by Jeffrey Aaronson
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Amateur scholar Robert Bittlestone
Amateur scholar Robert Bittlestone says that the valley forming an isthmus on Cephalonia was once a sea channel dividing the island in two. "Across that valley," he says, "lay the ancient island of Ithaca," home to Odysseus. (Jeffrey Aaronson/Network Aspen)

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Bittlestone had no doubts. “A landslip with massive kinetic energy inundated everything,” he says. “Huge chunks of mountain broke loose and thundered down. The scale of it is mind-blowing.” Bittlestone adds he is confident that eventually his investigations will show that Homer’s description of Ithaca’s location was accurate. “I’d like to be able to vindicate him,” he asserts, “by saying he wasn’t a geographical idiot. When he has his hero Odysseus saying ‘My island lies further to the west,’ it bloody well was.”

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 400-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. The new findings, says Underhill, represent “very encouraging confirmation of our geological diagnosis.”

There is a deep seductiveness to the second, yet untested, part of Bittlestone’s theory, that the Odyssey’s landscape can still be found on Cephalonia, like a palimpsest beneath a medieval manuscript. But attempting to identify actual places that fit a nearly 3,000-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. “I’m completely convinced that Paliki was Ithaca in the second millennium b.c.,” he says. “But the poem is not reportage. We should not force it to be a road map for a set of real events.”

Bittlestone has an answer for that. “Because the landscape is real, does it mean that Odysseus was a real person? Not necessarily. But it is plausible that there was a Bronze Age chieftain around whom these stories grew. I also don’t think Homer invented an imaginary landscape. 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.c. But some believe, and Bittlestone concurs, that its core narrative dates as far back as the 12th century b.c., just after the Trojan War. “I am convinced,” Bittlestone says, “that in Ithaca, Homer describes a real place, and I think that he talked about locales that people knew and could recognize. His audience could say, ‘Oh, yeah, I know that cave, that mountain, that bay.’”

Cambridge University’s James Diggle is cautiously supportive. “We cannot dismiss the possibility of Bittlestone’s approach being valid,” he says. “Every place that he locates in the book can easily be located in northern Paliki—they all work. 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. Pointing to the mouth of the harbor, Bittlestone says it fits Homer’s description perfectly, “with two jutting headlands sheared off at the seaward side.”

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:


Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from its original form and updated to include new information for Smithsonian’s Mysteries of the Ancient World bookazine published in Fall 2009.

Robert Bittlestone is standing above the village of Petrikata, looking over red-tile roofs down upon a narrow isthmus that connects the two parts of the Greek island of Cephalonia, off Greece’s western coast. In the valley below, farmers in overalls are harvesting olives. A light breeze carries the scent of oregano and thyme. “This looks like solid ground that we’re standing on,” Bittlestone says. “But every­thing under us is rockfall. Across that valley was the ancient island of Ithaca.”

Bittlestone, a British management consultant by profession, believes he has solved a mystery that has bedeviled scholars for more than 2,000 years. In Odysseus Unbound, published in 2005 by Cambridge University Press, he argues that a peninsula on the island of Cephalonia was once a separate island—Ithaca, the kingdom of Homer’s Odysseus some 3,000 years ago. He believes that the sea channel dividing the two islands was filled in by successive earthquakes and landslides, creating the peninsula of Paliki, as it is known today.

Like Heinrich Schliemann, the businessman who discovered the site of ancient Troy in the 1870s, and Michael Ventris, the architect who deciphered the written language of Minoan Crete in the 1950s, the 57-year-old Bittlestone is part of an honorable tradition of inspired amateurs who have made extraordinary discoveries outside the confines of conventional scholarship. “Bittlestone’s insight is brilliant,” says Gregory Nagy, director of the Center for Hellenic Studies, in Washington, D.C. “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 millennium B.C. We’ll never read the Odyssey in the same way again.”

Even more provocatively, Bittlestone, who was able to draw upon sophisticated technological tools unavailable to scholars before him, believes that events like those described in the Odyssey may well have taken place, and that telltale landmarks from the hero’s adventures on Ithaca can be found on Cephalonia’s Paliki peninsula. “I find most events that are described on the island perfectly credible,” he says, adding that the chapters recounting Odysseus’ fantastical adventures among magical figures—the sea monster Scylla and man-eating whirlpool Charybdis, or the enchantress Circe—obviously owe a great deal to the poetic imagination.

“By far the most important part of this is the argument that modern Paliki was ancient Ithaca,” says James Diggle, a professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University. “Of this, I haven’t the slightest doubt. It’s irresistible, and supported by geology. The other part is more speculative. But once you go over the terrain, there is an extraordinary match.”

Since ancient times, the location of Homer’s Ithaca has been one of literature’s great conundrums. The third-century B.C. geographer Eratosthenes sighed, “You will find the scene of the wanderings of Odysseus when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of the winds.” Some dismissed Homer’s geography as a poet’s guesswork. As the renowned classicist Bernard Knox once put it, “When Homer’s characters move to mainland Greece and its western offshore islands, confusion reigns.”

Modern scholars have proposed numerous locations, some as far afield as Scotland or the Baltic. The most obvious candidate was the present-day island of Ithaca, which lies east of Cephalonia. But it doesn’t fit Homer’s description:

Around her a ring of islands circle side-by-side,
Doulichion, Same, wooded Zachynthos too, but mine
lies low and away, the farthest out to sea,
rearing into the western dusk
while the others face the east and breaking day.

Scholars have long agreed that ancient and modern Zachynthos are one and the same. Similarly, ancient Same was certainly the main body of modern Cephalonia, where a large town named Sami still exists. But modern Ithaca—a few miles east of Cephalonia—was hardly “the farthest out to sea,” and its mountainous topography doesn’t fit Homer’s “lying low” description. (Bittlestone believes ancient Doulichion became modern Ithaca after refugees came there following an earthquake or other disaster and changed its name.) “The old explanations just felt unsatisfactory,” he says. “I kept wondering, was there possibly a radical new solution to this?” Back home near London, he pored over maps and satellite images. If Paliki had once been a separate island, he mused, it would indeed have been the one “farthest out to sea.”

Then Bittlestone hit pay dirt. Perusing the section on Cephalonia in the ancient author Strabo’s Geography, the most important source of its kind for ancient geographical knowledge, Bittlestone came across the following passage: “Where the island is narrowest it forms a low isthmus, so that it is often submerged from sea to sea.” According to Strabo’s second-century B.C. sources, Cephalonia had been, at times, two islands. Strabo’s description suggested that the channel that separated Cephalonia from its present-day peninsula had gradually filled in.

Bittlestone has been convinced from the start that he was on the right track. In 2003, he traveled to Cephalonia, rented a jeep and began crisscrossing the isthmus, a narrow, rugged neck of land connecting the larger landmass to the Paliki peninsula. He was looking, he says, “for traces of a former channel” when he noted zigzagging ravines running the length of the five-mile-long isthmus. The chasms, up to 300 feet deep in some places, suggested the possible route of an ancient watercourse.

Bittlestone had already learned that Cephalonia lay on one of the most unstable geologic fault lines in the world. For eons, the African and Eurasian tectonic plates have been colliding a few miles off the Paliki coast, creating a steady upthrust that periodically explodes in violent earthquakes. The worst in modern times, in 1953, leveled almost every building on the island, causing 90 percent of its residents to flee. Perhaps, Bittlestone speculated, a giant earthquake had thrust “Strabo’s channel” (as he came to call it) up above sea level, leaving it literally high and dry.

In 2003, 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.

Underhill immediately noted that the half-mile-wide isthmus was a geologic “mess” of rocks of different ages—evidence of avalanches from the steep mountains on either side. As landslide followed landslide over the centuries, the debris could have extended farther across the isthmus, layer upon layer, to create the rugged hills. “I thought it would be easy to disprove Bittlestone’s thesis,” he says, “but it wasn’t. 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. “The only credible explanation for this geological formation is that some of it slid down from the mountain above,” Underhill says.

Bittlestone had no doubts. “A landslip with massive kinetic energy inundated everything,” he says. “Huge chunks of mountain broke loose and thundered down. The scale of it is mind-blowing.” Bittlestone adds he is confident that eventually his investigations will show that Homer’s description of Ithaca’s location was accurate. “I’d like to be able to vindicate him,” he asserts, “by saying he wasn’t a geographical idiot. When he has his hero Odysseus saying ‘My island lies further to the west,’ it bloody well was.”

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 400-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. The new findings, says Underhill, represent “very encouraging confirmation of our geological diagnosis.”

There is a deep seductiveness to the second, yet untested, part of Bittlestone’s theory, that the Odyssey’s landscape can still be found on Cephalonia, like a palimpsest beneath a medieval manuscript. But attempting to identify actual places that fit a nearly 3,000-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. “I’m completely convinced that Paliki was Ithaca in the second millennium b.c.,” he says. “But the poem is not reportage. We should not force it to be a road map for a set of real events.”

Bittlestone has an answer for that. “Because the landscape is real, does it mean that Odysseus was a real person? Not necessarily. But it is plausible that there was a Bronze Age chieftain around whom these stories grew. I also don’t think Homer invented an imaginary landscape. 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.c. But some believe, and Bittlestone concurs, that its core narrative dates as far back as the 12th century b.c., just after the Trojan War. “I am convinced,” Bittlestone says, “that in Ithaca, Homer describes a real place, and I think that he talked about locales that people knew and could recognize. His audience could say, ‘Oh, yeah, I know that cave, that mountain, that bay.’”

Cambridge University’s James Diggle is cautiously supportive. “We cannot dismiss the possibility of Bittlestone’s approach being valid,” he says. “Every place that he locates in the book can easily be located in northern Paliki—they all work. 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. Pointing to the mouth of the harbor, Bittlestone says it fits Homer’s description perfectly, “with two jutting headlands sheared off at the seaward side.”

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:

You’ll find him posted beside his swine, grubbing round
by Raven’s Rock and the spring called Arethusa,
rooting for feed that makes pigs sleek and fat,
the nuts they love, the dark pools they drink.

“So,” bittlestone says to me now, “let’s go see the pig farm.” We turn our backs on the bay and, bouncing in a jeep, follow “a rough track leading through the woods and up to the hills,” as Homer puts it. 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. The similarity between the ancient place name Arethusa and the modern Atheras tells Bittlestone he’s on the right track. “If Arethusa spring was in the vicinity of the village of Atheras,” he says, “then Eumaeus’ pig farm and Raven’s Rock should not be far away.”

According to Homer, the swineherd’s hut was on ground “exposed to view all round,” with room for some 600 sows and 360 boars behind walls made of “quarried stones” and topped with tangles of wild pear, a technique that some Greek herdsmen still use today. In the epic, Odysseus—disguised in “squalid rags, ripped and filthy”—spends a day or two at the pig farm, then tells Eumaeus that he’s going to the palace to beg for food. 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. “Everywhere along here, you find springs and wells,” says Bittlestone. “Whether or not this one is the actual Bronze Age spring of Arethusa is less important than the fact that a water-bearing fault line runs just below the surface in exactly the right place for a spring with Homer’s ‘dark water’ to emerge here.”

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. “Clearly this area has been used for keeping animals for a long, long time,” Bittlestone says. “If you have hundreds of pigs, as Eumaeus did, you need a lot of water, and this is where you would find it.” Just past the pig farm, a crag that Bittlestone designates as Raven’s Rock looms over the trail. We catch sight, far below us, of the deep Gulf of Argostoli, and the now silted-up harbor from which Odysseus and his 12 warships could have departed for the Trojan War. From here, too, we can see where his palace might have stood, on the slopes of the conical hill of Kastelli, our destination.

Half an hour after leaving the pig farm, we park in an olive grove and begin climbing Kastelli’s steep 830-foot-high slopes, through a dense carpet of prickly underbrush. The bells of unseen goats ring in our ears. We scramble over lichen-crusted terraces that might once have supported houses, and then, near the hillcrest, clamber over traces of a defensive wall and heaps of jagged stones.

Somewhere beneath our feet, perhaps, lie ruins of the “high-walled courtyard” where Penelope’s suitors gathered and the great hall with its pillars of cypress, couches, chairs and raucous banquets. Somewhere here, perhaps, Odys­seus’ despairing wife worked at her loom, spinning funeral cloth for Laertes, his aged father. (Penelope then secretly unraveled the cloth every night, having promised the suitors that she would wed one of them as soon as the cloth was completed.) Here, perhaps, with “a shield of fourfold hide” and a plumed helmet on his “heroic head,” Odysseus set to his bloody work. As Homer puts it, “Ghastly screams rose up as men’s heads were smashed in, and the whole floor ran with blood.” In the end, corpses lay heaped in the dust “like fishes the fishermen have dragged out of the grey surf in the meshes of their net onto a curving beach, to lie in masses on the sand longing for the salt water till the bright sun ends their lives.”

Bittlestone prowls the windswept summit, pointing out shards of ancient pottery—fragments of pots, wine jugs and oil jars, compacted amid generations of goat droppings and dust, the last traces of an ancient town and perhaps a palace.

Of course, the odds of finding an artifact proclaiming “Odysseus was here” are slim. But clearly, based on preliminary archaeological examinations, both the surviving walls and some of the pottery date back to the Bronze Age (c. 2000-1100 B.C.). Bittlestone gazes across the craggy landscape of Cephalonia, his blue eyes gleaming with excitement. “We don’t know what lies under these tumbled stones,” he says, as much to himself as to me, “but something was surely going on here.”

Editor's Note, Sept. 3, 2008: For more than 2,000 years, scholars have been mystified—and intrigued—by a question central to our understanding of the ancient world: where is the Ithaca described in Homer’s Odyssey? The descriptions in the epic poem do not coincide with the geography of the modern island of Ithaca, one of the Ionian islands off the western coast of Greece.


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Comments (74)

Very useful information on this post.Your post has good content and important tips.Keep up the good work.

Posted by Nicky on July 6,2011 | 02:49 PM

I learned to read on versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I have always been fascinated by the stories of Homer's heroes. This relocation of ancient Ithaka and the evidence so far for it seems entirely plausible to me. I once had a magical moment at the bay of Ermones on Corfu. It was onto the sands of this bay that the half-dead Odysseus was washed up and found by princess Nausicaa and her maidens who'd come to the stream that flows into the bay to wash clothes (presumably the princess was there in a supervisory role!) As I walked along the small beach, I came across a tiny fishing boat, resting keel uppermost. Bending to see its name, I read "Nausicaa"! I wept with joy. Another magical moment was alongside the stream. Frogs in Britain go "croak-croak" but Aristophanes in his comedy-play "The Frogs" has them go "Kerra-korax-korax-korax" - and that's just how the frogs in the small stream that runs into Ermones bay sounded! Tim Severin has written an excellent book which attempts to locate - with varying degrees of plausability - the landfalls of Odysseus: so, too, did an earlier writer, Ernle Bradford. Odysseus haunts us: we have his journeys compressed to a single day in Dublin in James Joyce's "Ullysses", Tennyson's poem of the same name urges us "To yearn, to seek, to strive, and not to yield" and Cavafry's "Ithaca" has a wistfullness that stays in the mind. As we plod through our ordinary lives, the adventures of this ancient Greek, both physical and (more importantly) psychological, thrill us and also inform us about ourselves and how we should conduct our lives. The red-headed, gnarled trickster of the Iliad becomes the hero who tries (ultimately in vain) to save his crew and eventually, despite the temptations of Circe and the mysterious Calypso, returns to his faithful wife and serves up a fate to her suitors that to modern eyes is horrific but quite in keeping with ancient ideals of honour and justice. That difference of perception, too, can guide us.

Posted by David Rhys Henry on May 6,2011 | 06:42 AM

I live in present day Ithaca, i love it here, it is the most beautiful and inspiring place in the world for me. Being from here i cant help but laugh at the idea of ithaca being kefalonia! Its quite absurd. The islanders have always known that oddysseus was from Ithaca and in August 2010 we were proven right.Archeologists from the univerity of ioanina who have been escavating parts of the island for about 10 years(ithink)finally had found the evidence they had been looking for and they made a statement to the press stating that without a doubt, they have found odysseus palace. I would like to politely suggest that this article be scraped and re written. How can you all take the word of a business man/Amature historian, who went on holiday to kefalonia, over that of a professional archeologist who has spent half his life searching for Homers Ithaca????

Posted by spiridoula Molfesi on April 11,2011 | 01:19 PM

A simlar book was written in 2003 by Nikos Livadiotis a local guy that climbed the hills for ten years and found the footings of ulysis palace. Next year this book was translated in English. I personally climbet at 2004 the hill of the small town named Livadia and witnessed the entrance to the palace, the footings of the palace and the flat piece of land where the killings took place. as a suvenir I picked two pices of tile from the ground. I also stoped in Argostoli museum and bought a book with artifacts. A month later when I returnd to the States I discocered that the two pices of tile were the same shape with the cups used 1200BC edges pointing out.
I believe Bittlestone is right too.I read his book too.
I recomend to any one the climb of the hill (trikelos)
With no dout This is the place
Nikos Lillios

Posted by Nikos Lillios on August 10,2010 | 03:44 PM

Nice research but unfortunately poetry is usually lost in translation, and we have to keep in our minds that Homer wrote a story in lyrics! Even if Paliki was an island in the past this does not prove her as Homer's Ithaca. I am expecting some real archaeological data on this topic, so please keep on working.

Posted by H. Voreadi on April 30,2009 | 12:36 PM

My profuse thanks to Kathleen and the team at Smithsonian Magazine for commissioning and now updating this article, to Fergus and Jeffrey for their inspired text and photographs, and to your readers for their very kind words. Those who would like to stay in touch with the project's progress are welcome to view the latest news and film coverage at http://www.odysseus-unbound.org

Posted by Robert Bittlestone on December 13,2008 | 05:03 PM

It was great we are reading the odyssey in school i espesially liked the pic

Posted by Troy Jordan on December 9,2008 | 01:23 PM

As a teacher of the Odyssey this is truly fascinating. Love it !!!!!

Posted by S L on November 16,2008 | 10:49 PM

I enjoyed reading this article and wonder why we pay so little attention to history in our schools. We really need a WHAT IS THIS? internet site. That we could take a picture of a leaf, flower, or rock and send it to the site and instantly the site would respond. The same goes for any place send the GPS coordinates to the site and the site would respond with its history. Find a way to make learning response to the moment.

Posted by Mike A. on September 26,2008 | 02:17 PM

This is very exciting! I had read about Mr. Bittlestone theory when he first promulgated it. My grandparents and my husband were born in villages overlooking that valley, on what Mr. Bittlestone would call the ancient Kefalonian side. I truely believe that Homer's works, if written in our times, would be advertised as - "based on a true story". The details may differ, but the basics of the story are true. We just need patience. The imagination soars with these discoveries! You need not dig deep in Greece to find an artifact - More will appear to back Bittlestone, since his is the most plausible explanation of all.

Posted by Jeanne on September 23,2008 | 11:52 AM

As the myth goes from locals in Atheras Village: Back in (WWI)locals found a statue of A young man thought to be Telemahos. It was sold to the English for next to nothing. And there is a cave there next to the beach that Scientist have large intrest...Maybe its The port of Atheras.

Posted by Dean on September 22,2008 | 09:30 AM

“Myth” was - and still is - the mnemonic tool used to orally transmit information over long distances and over generations. It is time Academia modified its knee-jerk skepticism to make room for observation, perception and original research. [“Jason and the Golden Fleece” probably referenced the first imports of sheep to Greece, obtained via Cholchis - an actual archaeological site - from the Medes.] Bravo, Mr. Bittlestone! The amateurs did it again! (N.B. Interesting the hill suggested for a palace site should be named “Kasteli” - as in castle?)

Posted by Shir-El on September 13,2008 | 08:24 AM

Wow.. I was born and raised in Ithaca. It's a very small beautiful island. I have heard that some time ago Ithaca and Cephalonia were one island and over the years (thousands) they got separated. In Ithaca we do have a location called Arethousa Spring and a cave that as they say it was Odyssey's palace. I'm interested to hear more about this..

Posted by Sophia Gavrilis on September 10,2008 | 09:07 PM

Great article! I have learned about Homer and his works, but I have never taken time to read the Odyssey. This makes me really want to read it!

Posted by Austin Martin on September 9,2008 | 10:01 PM

Having stood in the ruins that were Golden Mycenae, Menelaus' palace of Tiryns and Troy itself, I have never doubted the historicity of the once mythic Ithaca. That the resemblance of Kefalonia to Homer's account is so close is quite astonishing should it be true. We tend to forget in this age of air travel, the human scale of distances; in that, such details of Ithaca would indicate a first hand account by perhaps, Homer himself. The myth of a cunning and famed chieftain may have given rise here, but that in itself does not explain the exact parallels between a place that exists in epic poetry and one grounded in geography. Either this parallel is a modern-day whimsy of the author himself or we should perhaps reinterpret Homer in a whole new light. If the Odyssey is indeed then not a pure flight of fantasy, it would be interesting to learn what other elements of the story turn out to have a historical basis as well. Besides Circe and the Cyclopes there is also the more believable story of the princess Nausicaa and her island home, which many have commented on in regards to its Atlantean-like qualities. Rather than posit some great Atlantic empire, this may finally indicate that there is an origin to the myth and that it's more than a philosopher's example of a utopia, as in, Santorini and the Cyclades (all in Odysseus route home). Just something to think about...

Posted by Robert on September 9,2008 | 02:17 PM

What an excellent article! I feel as if I've done a short bit of vacation with some time travel thrown in. Looking forward to hearing more on this.

Posted by Matt Turner on September 9,2008 | 09:08 AM

wow this is a great discovery. just to imagine the trojan war hero odysseus exsisted is amazing!.This isn't the only ancient greek city found!.This could only mean that the TROJAN WAR is TRUE!.That even the greatest trojan war hero the lionhearted achilles exsisted!.

Posted by miguel A. on September 9,2008 | 08:18 AM

I have to admit I hate this kind of modern, sensationalist "aren't we having fun, children?" style of writing in an article whose purpose is to inform. It suggests that the information is inadequate to hold the interest of the reader, who must therefore be provided with entertainment. (Like the annoying background music in TV documentaries.) But this information is far from inadequate! I read this article with fascination, and was spellbound. And isn't its subject just perfect for a TV documentary? (Without background music, of course!)

Posted by Andy Tomlinson on September 9,2008 | 03:51 AM

it is very cool... i can't believe it... is it really ancient Ithaca?

Posted by sara on September 9,2008 | 03:28 AM

Wy do so many people seem to forge that the word 'data' is a plural?! It's really not that hard - datum for one, data for two or more. But yes, the data ARE producing interesting results.

Posted by Big Pedant on September 9,2008 | 03:05 AM

From someone who thought he had no interest in this whatsoever, I'm going back to read Homer's Odyssey which I mnust have read at least 40 years ago. This is exciting. Congratulations to Mr. Bittlestone.

Posted by Ted Speiser on September 8,2008 | 02:43 AM

Wonderful article. Will purchase the book soon. My students will enjoy the "realness" of Odysseus.

Posted by Linnea on September 8,2008 | 02:16 AM

God Bless you Mr. Bittlestone for keeping alive the search for historical truth and facts in Homer's great poems. Thank you for proving to me one more time how accurate Homer was in his descriptions of that marvelous period in our ancestors past. Bravo!

Posted by Edward Cruz-Foster on September 8,2008 | 01:50 AM

finding the home of odysseus, is a remarkable achievement. with more dedicated men like bittlestone, we might be capable of uncovering more of human history that has been forgotten as folklore.

Posted by d.d.overby on September 8,2008 | 01:41 AM

This is beautiful and a dream of mine that I see I did not fulfill on my own. I have thought for years that my full dream was to find the ancient location of Ithaca. Congratulations at the data and facts, I do pray that it is all found to be true.

Posted by Lynx on September 8,2008 | 01:41 AM

It is exciting that Homer's story might be validated by archeological findings. Who can forget the honest swineherd who kept the pig farm for his master Odysseus for twenty long years? How about the bloody scene in the palace where Odysseus fought his wife Penelope's suitors? Since the finding of the city of Troy , this may become one of the most significant archeological events.

Posted by Lee on September 8,2008 | 01:21 AM

A very interesting article, to find the historical reality that might have inspired the classics is fascinating. Like Troy and the discoveries of Schliemann it is worth the effort to see what is real and what is fancy. I do love history, in more modern times I am exploring my family history and it's connection with John Ordway and the Corps of Discovery in 1805.

Posted by David W Bailey on September 8,2008 | 01:18 AM

This is the very first time that I have heard about the possible true location of Ithaca, I never understood what was so important about this place until now. Greece has always been mystical and these possible findings is fantastic. Science has always amazed me.

Posted by Madeleine Johnson on September 8,2008 | 01:11 AM

I have always wanted to be an archeologest but given cercumstances i cant persue my dream so this is the closest i can ever get and i love it just wish i could be more of a part of it

Posted by stina on September 8,2008 | 01:04 AM

I am sure that i will see this beautiful place Ithaca very soon. This is part of my dream, and i am confident that GOD will always provide me and assist me in everything that i need to visit and see this beautiful place of Ithaca and make my dream come true. thank you.From Fernando Montemayor Pantino of the Department of Education, DepED-BSE, ULTRA, Meralco Avenue, Pasig City PHILIPPINES

Posted by Fernando Montemayor Pantino on September 8,2008 | 12:56 AM

this article was very intriguing , since I've read homers Iliad many times . thank you for your outstanding work

Posted by Frankie Moreno on September 8,2008 | 12:50 AM

wow to think it took experinced professionals THIS long to figure out that places shift and change names throughout history is kind of sad but at least they found it...and we're proud of that...

Posted by Unknown on September 8,2008 | 12:31 AM

I'm a decendant of Kefolonia (Cepholonia is the english version, and since i'm greek i'll stick with the closer to greek spelling). In fact, my family comes from a town very close to Sami. The thought that the island has such history that nobody knew about amazes and intrigues me! It makes me wonder about my own genetic history, if i'm somehow related to Homer or someone in his great books!

Posted by Gus T. on September 8,2008 | 12:17 AM

OMGosh!! This is a WONDERFUL find!! I am looking forward to having Mr. Bittlestone's information verified, and cannot wait for more informaton!! Excellent article!!

Posted by Terri on September 8,2008 | 12:15 AM

I asked this very question to our tour guide while he was lecturing us infront of the temple of the Oracle in the city of Delfi, Greece, but, all he could say was that it would take a week to explain it! Thanks for sharing this information, Wilfredo

Posted by Wilfredo on September 8,2008 | 12:14 AM

i dont doubt, based on geological evidence, that he found the correct site. that being said, i would still like to see more evidence. im pretty sure the technology exists to prove wether or not large numbers of livestock where kept in a particular area or wether or not a palace once stood in a particular place. i hope such things are being done and i hope to hear more about it.

Posted by randy turpen on September 8,2008 | 12:03 AM

I am deeply fascinated by the findings in this article, and utmost respect for Mr. Bittlestone for having his insight & passion to see a 'little' piece of ancient Greek mythology is unravelled, understood,and be awed!!

Posted by Carolyn on September 8,2008 | 12:01 AM

This article just caught my attention. All the while i thought this is just plain fiction. I was just curious of this Odysseus Unbound book? Can I have a glimpse of it?

Posted by Joyce A. Soriano on September 8,2008 | 11:53 PM

this news is very interesting for me as a future teacher in social studies

Posted by rhea on September 8,2008 | 11:42 PM

Wow, this is surprising. My grandparents live in the dead center of that peninsula in the village of Loukerata. I visited them barely 2 months ago. Quite a coincidence.

Posted by Michael on September 8,2008 | 11:41 PM

I was so excited to read this article! I have been trying to read the ancient authors' for a few years now and having some "real" place to attach their wanderings to might make the reading a bit easier.

Posted by Holly on September 8,2008 | 11:41 PM

absolutely wonderful read, the first page caught my attention and held me firm to the end. a fantastic epic from my childhood reading enraptures scholars so much they persue evidence to tie the story line to reality and find it. thank you, wow

Posted by robert hinkle on September 8,2008 | 11:38 PM

Great article! To get it all read all 5 pages. I hope the science pans out.

Posted by Careyn Henslee on September 8,2008 | 11:32 PM

Wow! How cool is this...can't wait for more...The Bronze Age!

Posted by Kit on September 8,2008 | 11:27 PM

Bittlestone's next project should be to locate Atlantis--described by Plato, many believe it to be a discoverable location. So many of the texts we have from the Ancient Greeks serve as so much more than "myth," perhaps making people start to question the use of the word as "fabrication," (about time! say all the literary, mythography folks).

Posted by Dallas on September 8,2008 | 11:21 PM

when i saw this article in yahoo.. i never stop wondering about it.. so i read it and so amazed that what is written in the odyssey could not just be an imagination.. all in all, i am 90% agreed with Mr. Bittlestone's theory..

Posted by jane ann on September 8,2008 | 11:17 PM

I am stationed in Korea and just happened upon this story. It is an amazing thing if this is the place. I would like the name of Mr. Bittlestone's book so I may read it and get more information from it.

Posted by Robert A. Rodriguez on September 8,2008 | 11:04 PM

This article is the perfect example of how much we still have to explore and discover right here on Earth. Space travel and exploration is still imperative, but we have yet to explore what lies beneath our oceans, and is buried under thousands of years of geographical changes. We know more about distant galaxies than we know about our own planet. Our history is as important as our future. History will help unite this planet.

Posted by D.J. Barkewitz on September 8,2008 | 11:03 PM

I had read somewhere before that the present day Ithaca was probably not the Ithaca of The Odyssey. Based on Odysseus' description of Ithaca as quoted in the article Mr. Bittleston certainly has a strong case in favor of the Paliki location.

Posted by Rick Garcia on September 8,2008 | 10:48 PM

I live 15 minutes from Ithaca NY so this was really neat to read. Randy Smith

Posted by Randy Smith on September 8,2008 | 10:42 PM

Whether you are a scholar who agrees or disagrees with Bittlestone's theory, you must give him credit for going to the site in question and trying to do some primary research and not relying soley on secondary sources. Underhill should be praised for going there too to see for himself before he passed judgment. Since my interest is more in the area of Medieval studies, I can see the parallel with the idea of Odysseus being a Bronze Age chieftain and King Arthur being some sort of Celtic warlord from a much earlier era. Stories are embroidered with the passing of time altering the original story just as land is subjected to physical changes. Yet, a topography can more likely be subjected to scientific research than an oral history committed to written form over the centuries. It will be interesting to see where Bittlestone's discoveries will lead scholarly research.

Posted by Christine Domingue on September 8,2008 | 10:35 PM

as a fan of the classics and an especially big fan of the odyssey. i'm glad that mr. bittlestone has discovered what appears to be ithaca. i hope that the science proves him right

Posted by Ivy on September 8,2008 | 10:32 PM

so fascinating! i enjoyed a lot reading the article. i am an avid Odyssey reader and movie viewer. i hope to find more articles in the future. Excellent work! COOL!!! :)

Posted by burns on September 8,2008 | 10:19 PM

I'm convince! please continue publications on this....

Posted by Lilith on September 8,2008 | 10:17 PM

Just imagine how really neat it would have been to provide a map of the island, a greater map of the best guess journey and a map of what Bittlestone thinks the island did look like those thousands of years ago.

Posted by John Pittman on September 8,2008 | 10:12 PM

I love the ancient greek!!!i cant believe its real!!!!!!!!

Posted by Sarah on September 8,2008 | 10:06 PM

This may be completely out of left field, but with all of the substitution cyphers being applied to ancient texts, could the fact that the symmetry between Ithaca and Paliki could lend itself to grounds to possibly go through both the Iliad and the Odyssey and apply some type of substitution cypher that could possibly lead to other revelations about these epic tales? As I stated before this could just be out of left field and mean nothing but the last 3 letters in each location are in a similar pattern and even the plosive sound of the c and the k lining up seems more than somewhat coincidental to me.

Posted by Jeremiah Birchum on September 8,2008 | 10:05 PM

Very interesting & nice to see old things brought to life anew. Perhaps, legends & ancient stories contain more truth to them than we realize. They just need new intrepretations.

Posted by Du Wayne on September 8,2008 | 09:57 PM

Enjoyed reading this article very much. Personally, I believe in the historicity of the Trojan war(s), of Ilium (Troy) and of heroic characters whose remembrance was long recalled by their descendants. Glad to learn that they have actually located the Ithaca of the Odyssey. Gary L. Alton

Posted by Gary Alton on September 8,2008 | 09:49 PM

I liked the Story that was told by My 9th Grade English Teacher. After reading this a little bit I just was more into it then ever

Posted by Aaron on September 8,2008 | 09:46 PM

Heinrich Schliemann reportedly located a group of buried Greek soldiers. When he lifted the mask off the first, the face crumbled into dust. The same happened to the second. Finally, when one was exposed without falling apart he said, "I have gazed upon the face of Achilles." Perhaps this story is just lore. Even if it's not, it's easy to see how even brilliant people can see what they want, in spite of the evidence. That snippet notwithstanding, Brittlestone seems to have kept his dreams in check. I suspect that that the geology will support him.

Posted by b fra on September 8,2008 | 09:34 PM

Verrry Interesting !!! Another classical mystery bites the dust of 3000 BC...

Posted by Bob Mitchell on September 8,2008 | 09:25 PM

I am a part of all that I have met! Odysseus' observation holds for all that went before him and all that came after. Dr. Donne agreed hundreds of years later: No man is an island, complete unto himself. What a spine-tingling, inspirational revelation is this story. Thank heaven for men upon our earth who thirst for knowledge so desperately.Great story.

Posted by W. C. Bryant on September 8,2008 | 09:23 PM

This is very interesting even though i've never learned about this city yet in Social Studies!!! I can't wait to hear about more of this city!!!

Posted by Brittany on September 8,2008 | 09:21 PM

This is amazing can not wait to find his book

Posted by Jennifer Baratta on September 8,2008 | 09:18 PM

Truly this is one of the most exciting discoveries of this new era... Our thinking of ithaca would surely changed everytime we read an excerpt from the book that talks about ancient ithaca... GOOD JOB!

Posted by laufan on September 8,2008 | 09:14 PM

I found that article truely interesting. I had wondered if they would ever find it like they did Troy. Who knows maybe they will find Atlantis also.

Posted by Rose Marie Heard on September 8,2008 | 09:12 PM

I read the Odyssey in a required college English course, and I was never capable of putting the book down, if I recall correctly. I stayed up for 5 days reading the entry, but in the end, I was fascinated, after being disappointed many times by modern day literature. I skipped several days of classes, and in the end, it may have been the best adventure my imaginative mind could have ever wandered on. Though I do not have direct roots to geology & such, I was thrilled after reading this passage in connection with something so rich in history. Thank you for the update! ~Mark~

Posted by Mark I. on September 8,2008 | 09:06 PM

Great article. Makes me want to visit.

Posted by Ted Corley on September 8,2008 | 09:03 PM

wow this is cool. =]

Posted by cookie on September 8,2008 | 08:59 PM

I have been an "off and on" student of the Greek Classics for a long time, but,have not entered into any real detail of the Odyssey. This was very interesting. Thank you. Paul

Posted by Paul Vescovo Jr on September 8,2008 | 08:55 PM

At first Odysseus, Troy,Helen,Paris,Achileas his heel e.t.c was declared a myth by the same people that claim they found the real Ithaca.What a way to make a buck,what a way to fool us.What a way to sell a book. Get a real job and stop fooling the weak world we live on. People believe in anything. Next:Europe did not formed in earth,Dropped from the sky as an asteroid and formed as a gigantic rock.But the erosion and gigantic waves from the oceans smoothed the rocks to today's surface. You heard it here don't forget. from NICK

Posted by nick on September 8,2008 | 08:53 PM

Loved this piece- makes me want to read Homer's works all over again. = )

Posted by Keelo on September 8,2008 | 08:52 PM

nice one... i liked the scene shown in the inset pic of the modern ithaca.. i never imagined such beautiful place would be ithaca.. thanks

Posted by james respondo on September 8,2008 | 08:44 PM

I personally like Greek mythology but i learned something new today,i didn't know there was a search for Ithaca but thanks for the update i truly enjoyed this information

Posted by Light on September 8,2008 | 08:39 PM

The possibility of a real Ithaca is very interesting, however, I have enjoyed the idea that Ithaca is a life long journey and not a real physical place. Ithaca for me, shall remain a beautiful place in time, where I hope to arrive when I'm 100 years old and my grandchildren are old enough to appreciate my stories that I have collected throughout my search for Ithaca.

Posted by Stela Veliziotis on September 8,2008 | 08:38 PM

bought Mr. Bittlestone's book two years ago & was enthralled. I am not a clasicist but have been interested in the wanderings of Odysseus for about sixty years. I looked up info today simply to see if there were any further details or more revelations.

Posted by admin on September 8,2008 | 08:35 PM

Cool article. I'm in 9th grade and we are reading The Odyssey in school so when I saw this I though i would read it. Really cool!

Posted by Shannon on September 8,2008 | 08:31 PM

I bought Mr. Bittlestone's book two years ago & was enthralled. I am not a clasicist but have been interested in the wanderings of Odysseus for about sixty years. I looked up info today simply to see if there were any further details or more revelations. Thank you Anthony Hudson

Posted by A.R.Hudson on July 9,2008 | 05:31 AM

This is cool

Posted by Jenny on June 2,2008 | 11:03 AM

This is a first time visit for me, seeing things & articles on places & things I have never heard of before. I enjoyed it a lot. Lee

Posted by Lee on February 19,2008 | 07:48 PM



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