The locations mentioned in the narratives of Odysseus's adventures have long been debated. Events in the main sequence of the Odyssey take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands (Ithaca and its neighbours). There are also incidental mentions of Troy and its house, Phoenicia, Egypt, and Crete, which hint at a geographical knowledge equal to, or perhaps slightly more extensive than that of the Iliad.Setting aside the geographical knowledge shown in the Catalogue of Ships and Trojan Battle Order, which are extremely detailed and precise, but may have an orally transmitted history different from the remainder of the Iliad narrative. The places visited by Odysseus in his journey have been variously identified with locations in Greece, Italy, Tunisia, the Maltese archipelago, and the Iberian peninsula. However, scholars both ancient and modern are divided whether any of the places visited by Odysseus (after Ismaros and before his return to Ithaca) were real. Many ancient writers came down squarely on the skeptical side; Strabo reported what the great geographer Eratosthenes had said in the late 3rd century BC: "You will find the scene of Odysseus' wanderings when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds."Strabo 1.2.15, quoted by Moses I. Finley, The World of Odysseus, rev. ed. 1976:33. For the oxhide bag of winds, see "Aeolus", in Odyssey X.22 ff.
Geography of the Telemachy The journey of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta no longer raises 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, or 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.Simpson and Lazenby, p. 82. See also the section headed Atlantic Ocean theories.
Identification of Ithaca and neighboring islands
The geographical references in the Odyssey to Ithaca and its neighbors seem confused and have given rise to much scholarly argument, beginning in ancient times. Odysseus' 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. Lately, Robert Bittlestone, in his book Odysseus Unbound, has identified the Paliki peninsula on Cephalonia with Homeric Ithaca.
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 Scheria, 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' 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. Even if the places were envisaged as real, the effects of coastal erosion, silting and other geological changes over thousands of years can alter the landscape and seascape to the point where identification may be extremely difficult.
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 convictionRecently by Robin Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer, 2008, ch. "Finding Neverland"; Lane summarizes the literature in notes and bibliography. that they do not exist in the real world and never can be mapped.
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. One is that of Euhemerist accounts, which re-wrote mythical stories without their fantastic elements, and were often seen as thereby recovering "historical" records. The other reflects the conventions of 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 = SicilyEarliest sources for this identification: Euripides' play Cyclops, set near Mount Etna; and Thucydides 6.2.1. land of the Laestrygonians = SicilyEarliest source for this identification: Thucydides 6.2.1. island of Aeolus = one or more of the Aeolian Islands off Sicily's north coastEarliest source for this identification: Thucydides 3.88. Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians = Corcyra (modern Corfu), off the west coast of Greece and AlbaniaEarliest source for this identification: Thucydides 1.25.4. It is notable that the Archaic poem the Naupactia referred to Corcyra in the context of the story of Jason, which was earlier in the mythic age than Odysseus, but does not seem to have identified it with Scheria (Naupactia fr. 9 West). Ogygia, the island home of the nymph Calypso = Gaulos, modern Gozo, part of the Maltese archipelago.Strabo 7.3.6, referencing Callimachus' account in relation to Euhemerus. Also, Bradford, Ernle (1963), Ulysses Found
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 BC. 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.Herodotus 4.177.Thucydides 1.25, 3.88, 6.2. Herodotus and Thucydides do not actively euhemerise, but simply take local myths at face value for the political importance they had at the time.On the political importance of Corcyra's identification with Scheria, see e.g. C.J. Mackie 1996, "Homer and Thucydides: Corcyra and Sicily", Classical Quarterly 46.1: 103-13.
Euhemerist accounts become more prominent in Alexandrian scholarship of the Hellenistic period. Callimachus identifies Scheria as Corcyra, and also identifies Calypso's island with Gaulos (modern Gozo, part of Malta).Strabo 7.3.6. His student Apollonius of Rhodes also identifies Scheria as Corcyra in his epic the Argonautica.Argonautica 4.983ff.
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."Strabo 1.2.15. 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.Strabo 1.2.14. The 2nd century BC poet-historian Apollodorus of Athens 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.Strabo 1.2.37, 7.3.6.
The 2nd century BC 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.Strabo 1.2.15-16. He also identifies the land of the lotus-eaters as the island of Djerba (ancient Meninx), off the coast of Tunisia.Strabo 1.2.17. 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.
Strabo, living in the late 1st century BC and early 1st century AD, says that he tries to strike a balance between reading Homer as an entertainer and as a historical source.See especially 1.2.3, 1.2.17, 1.2.19. 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";Strabo 1.2.37. 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)