Where is Ithica?
Clip: 8/28/2024 | 1m 55sVideo has Closed Captions
Homer calls Odysseus “King of the Ithacans.” But there are no Mycenaean ruins on modern-day Ithaki.
Homer calls Odysseus “King of the Ithacans.” But there are no Mycenaean ruins on modern-day Ithaki. Why? At other places Homer writes about in the Iliad and the Odyssey, like Mycenae and Pylos, archeologists have found the remains of powerful cities. More than 150 years of excavations on the island of Ithaki have yielded nothing. Perhaps that’s because they were looking in the wrong place.
Where is Ithica?
Clip: 8/28/2024 | 1m 55sVideo has Closed Captions
Homer calls Odysseus “King of the Ithacans.” But there are no Mycenaean ruins on modern-day Ithaki. Why? At other places Homer writes about in the Iliad and the Odyssey, like Mycenae and Pylos, archeologists have found the remains of powerful cities. More than 150 years of excavations on the island of Ithaki have yielded nothing. Perhaps that’s because they were looking in the wrong place.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipHomer's poems are stuffed full with geographical information.
But actually, by the time that Homer was composing these poems, the Trojan War itself was already distant history, almost becoming myth.
The consensus is that Homer was a poet.
And being a poet, he's not a very reliable source.
But the Homeric text gives us plenty of information.
Every time somebody studies Homer, they discover something new.
In 1870 the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann was looking for Troy.
And he found it.
A few years later, he found the city of Mycenae.
The capital of the Mycenaean empire, and the home of King Agamemnon.
And then in the 1930s archeologists uncovered the palace of King Nestor, at Pylos.
All of the locations that Homer describes in the Aegean, they check.
How come all these years we haven't found where Ithaca is?
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In 1992, the discovery of a tomb leads to claims that the body buried there is King Odysseus. (1m 37s)
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The 1992 excavation of the tomb Makis Metaxas found gives up an incredible piece of evidence. (2m 36s)
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Ismini Milliaresis describes the archeological dig that took place on her family's land on Kefalonia (2m 25s)
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Makis Metaxas believes Odysseus' kingdom was in his hometown on the island of Kefalonia. (2m 37s)
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An ancient tomb might prove that the hero of Homer’s Odyssey really existed. (30s)
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