The Most Longed-For Home in Literature

Ithaca was a small, rocky island in the Ionian Sea off the western coast of Greece — and the most famous homeland in all of world literature. It was the kingdom of Odysseus, the cunning hero of the Trojan War, and the place he spent twenty years trying to reach: ten years fighting at Troy and ten years wandering the seas on his harrowing journey home. The Odyssey, Homer's epic poem, is fundamentally a story about the overpowering human desire to return home, and Ithaca is the symbol of everything worth returning to.

Despite being a minor kingdom — small, mountainous, and poor compared to the great powers of Mycenae, Sparta, or Troy — Ithaca was paradise to Odysseus. When the goddess Calypso offered him immortality and eternal youth if he would stay with her on her island forever, Odysseus refused. He chose mortal life on his rocky little island over godhood in paradise, because Ithaca was where his wife Penelope waited, where his son Telemachus was growing to manhood, and where his aged father Laertes tended his orchard.

Penelope's Wait

While Odysseus wandered, his wife Penelope held Ithaca together through twenty years of uncertainty. Over a hundred suitors invaded her home, consuming her wealth and demanding she choose a new husband. Penelope stalled them with one of mythology's most famous deceptions: she announced she would choose a husband when she finished weaving a funeral shroud for Laertes. Each day she wove, and each night she secretly unraveled her work. This clever ruse sustained her for years until Odysseus finally returned.

The Homecoming

When Odysseus finally reached Ithaca after twenty years, he arrived alone, disguised as a beggar by the goddess Athena. His palace was overrun by the suitors, his wealth nearly exhausted, and only his old dog Argos recognized him. The climactic scene — in which Odysseus strings his great bow, reveals his identity, and slaughters the suitors in his own hall — is one of the most cathartic moments in all of literature. After two decades of war, wandering, and loss, the hero reclaimed his home, his wife, and his identity.

Classical & Archaeological Sources

Historical and mythological accounts of Ithaca:

Cross-referenced with classical sources and modern archaeological research for accuracy.

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Ithaca as Homer describes it

Homer gives Ithaca a surprisingly concrete landscape. Odysseus, introducing himself to the Phaeacians, calls it "clear-seen" and dominated by Mount Neriton with its trembling leaves, lying low in the sea "furthest toward the dark," with Dulichium, Same and wooded Zacynthus nearby. He admits it is rugged, but says it is a good nurse of young men and that he can see nothing sweeter than his own land. Telemachus is equally frank when Menelaus offers him horses: Ithaca has no broad plains or meadows, he says, and is fit for goats rather than chariots.

Within the poem the island has named landmarks. The Phaeacians set the sleeping Odysseus ashore in the harbour of Phorcys, beside an olive tree and a cave sacred to the Naiad nymphs, where he hides the treasure they gave him. The swineherd Eumaeus keeps his pig farm far from the town, near the Raven's Rock and the spring of Arethusa. In the town itself stand the palace, with its courtyard and the great hall where the suitors feast, and the spring where the townspeople draw water. Laertes, broken by grief, lives apart on a farm, digging in his vineyard and orchard. That is where the final recognition scene of the Odyssey takes place, when Odysseus proves who he is by naming the trees his father once gave him as a boy.

Ithaca was not Odysseus's whole kingdom. In the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad he leads the Cephallenians, men from Ithaca, Neriton, Crocylea, Aegilips, Zacynthus and Samos (Same), along with the mainland opposite, in twelve ships. This is one of the smallest contingents at Troy. It fits the picture of a modest island lord whose fame rested on his intelligence, not on his wealth.

The "Ithaca question"

Whether modern Ithaca (Ithaki) really is Homer's island has been argued since antiquity. Strabo, writing around the turn of the era, already discussed the difficulty: Homer seems to place Ithaca westernmost of the group, while modern Ithaki lies east of Cephalonia. In the early twentieth century the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld argued that Homer's Ithaca was really Lefkada (Leukas). More recently Robert Bittlestone, working with the classicist James Diggle and the geologist John Underhill, proposed in Odysseus Unbound (2005) that Homer's Ithaca was the Paliki peninsula of western Cephalonia, once separated from the rest of the island by a sea channel. None of these theories has won general agreement. Many scholars think a poet working from oral tradition was never mapping the islands precisely in the first place.

What is certain is that the people of modern Ithaki honoured Odysseus. In a cave at Polis Bay on the island's north-west coast, excavators found Mycenaean pottery, a series of bronze tripods from the Geometric period and a Hellenistic terracotta mask fragment inscribed with a dedication to Odysseus. This is evidence that a hero cult of Odysseus was active on the island in historical times. The tripods have often been compared with the thirteen tripods the Phaeacians gave Odysseus in the Odyssey.

After the homecoming

The Odyssey ends with a truce imposed by Athena before the suitors' relatives can carry their feud through. Later poets did not let Ithaca rest so easily. The lost epic Telegony, known from Proclus's summary, sent Odysseus off on further travels to Thesprotia. It ended with Telegonus, his son by Circe, landing on Ithaca without knowing whose island it was and killing his father with a spear tipped with a stingray spine. Telegonus then married Penelope, and Telemachus married Circe. Apollodorus records further variants. In one, the suitors' families bring charges and Neoptolemus, called in as judge, sentences Odysseus to exile. In others Penelope is sent away or seduced, which is very different from the faithful wife of Homer.

For modern readers Ithaca has become a symbol of the journey itself. Constantine Cavafy's poem "Ithaka" (1911) tells the traveller to hope the road is long, because the island has already given the gift of the voyage. That idea runs against Homer, where Ithaca is a real household that has to be won back by force. Both readings depend on the same contrast, which is also the subject of Calypso's offer: a poor, specific, mortal home set against an easy immortality anywhere else.

Ancient sources

  • Homer, Odyssey 9.19–28 — Odysseus describes Ithaca, Mount Neriton and the neighbouring islands, and says nothing is sweeter than his own country.
  • Homer, Odyssey 13 — the Phaeacians land Odysseus in the harbour of Phorcys beside the cave of the Naiads, and Athena disguises both him and the island.
  • Homer, Iliad 2.631–637 — the Catalogue of Ships lists Odysseus's Cephallenians and their twelve ships.
  • Strabo, Geography Book 10 — discusses the Homeric description of Ithaca and its neighbours and the problems of identifying them.
  • Proclus, summary of the Telegony; Apollodorus, Epitome 7 — the later fortunes of Odysseus and his household, including his death at the hands of Telegonus.
  • Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs — a Neoplatonist allegorical reading of the Ithacan cave from Odyssey 13.

Frequently asked questions

Is modern Ithaca the same island as Homer's Ithaca?

Probably, but nobody can prove it. The modern island of Ithaki has kept the name since antiquity and had a hero cult of Odysseus. But Homer's geography doesn't quite match it, so Lefkada and western Cephalonia have also been proposed.

How long was Odysseus away from Ithaca?

Twenty years. He spent ten at Troy and ten getting home, seven of them on Calypso's island of Ogygia.

Who ruled Ithaca while Odysseus was gone?

Nobody ruled it outright. Laertes had withdrawn to his farm and Telemachus was too young. Penelope held the household together while the suitors pressed her to remarry. There was no assembly on Ithaca until Telemachus called one in Odyssey 2.

Did Odysseus die on Ithaca?

Homer doesn't narrate his death. Tiresias only foretells a gentle death "from the sea" in old age. In the Telegony he is killed on Ithaca by Telegonus, his son by Circe.

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