On Homer's Ithaca

Introductory note: In the summer of 2007 Robert and Dina McCabe and their daughter Anne kindly invited my wife and me to join them in a voyage to and around Ithaca and Kefalonia. Well equipped with texts, including Homer and Strabo, and with binoculars, maps, charts and cameras, we proposed to test hypotheses purporting to show that modern Ithaca (Ἰθάκη or Θιάκη) was not the island of Odysseus since, so it had been claimed, the hero lived elsewhere — for example in Kefalonia or in Leukas (Lefkas or Lefkada). We visited many parts of Ithaca and Kefalonia, and subsequently lectures were given by me in England, Ireland and the United States with the title Ulixes redux: why the island called Ithaki today is Homer’s Ithaca. The purpose of this brief essay is to assure readers that the Ithaki (Ithaca, Ἰθάκη or Θιάκη) illustrated here by Mr McCabe’s fine photographs is indeed the island home of the heroic son of Laertes. (September 2012)