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From Ithaca to the Odyssey1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Helen Waterhouse
Helen Waterhouse
Affiliation:
Hinksey Hill, Oxford
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Abstract

All references to Ithaca in ancient authors are in Homeric contexts. The BSA's excavations in the island, here summarized, have shown the importance throughout classical times of the shrines at Aëtos and Polis, indicated by the objects dedicated from many parts of the Greek world. Among these, the twelve tripod-lebetes found in the Polis Cave cannot be dissociated from the Phaeacian tripods given to Odysseus. It is suggested that the dedications preceded, and inspired, that part of the Odyssey, and that the importance of Odysseus in the Homeric poems reflects that of the cults at these shrines. Problems of transmission are considered, with a discussion of Homer's island geography and pre-colonial routes to the West.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 91 , November 1996 , pp. 301 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1996

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References

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8 Earlier finds and excavations in the island are comprehensively described by Kalligas, P. in Κεφαλληνιαϰά χρονιϰά, 3 (1978–1979), 45–69.Google Scholar Full references for the British publications are: ‘Ithaca I (Aetos)’, BSA 33 (1932–3), 22–65; ‘Ithaca II (Pelikata)’, BSA 35 (1934–5), 2–44; ‘Ithaca III (the cave at Polis), part 1’, BSA 35 (1934–5), 45–73, and ‘part 2’, BSA 39 (1939), 1–51; ‘Ithaca IV: summary’, BSA 40 (1939–40), 1–13; Robertson, M., ‘Ithaca V (the Geometric and later finds from Aetos)’, BSA 43 (1948), 1–124Google Scholar; ‘Ithaca 6: further excavations at Aetos’, BSA 48 (1953), 255–358; ‘Ithaca 7: excavations at Tris Langadas’, BSA 68 (1973), 1–24; ‘Excavations at Stavros, Ithaca, in 1937’, BSA 47 (1952), 227–42.

9 Heurtley left Athens for Jerusalem at the end of 1932 to become librarian in the Palestine Department of Antiquities. He died in Jan. 1955.

10 Grave III contained a coin of Agathokles.

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