In this extract from his book, Harry Mount visits Ithaca, haunt of Odysseus

Government cuts have meant the supposed site of Odysseus’s palace, in the north of Ithaca, lies unguarded, unfenced and open to the elements. It was almost too good to be true – not only to have the place to myself and three friends but also for the palace to fit the myth so well.

The site was uncovered in 1994. For 16 years, archaeologists from the University of Ioannina carried out research. In 2010, they declared the palace to be the right date for Odysseus’s home. There was already plenty of other proof, if that’s the right word. Far below the peak on which the palace perches, I looked down on Frikes Bay – from phrikes, the Homeric word for ripples on the surface of the sea. A little further down the coast was Aphales harbour, named after the Homeric term for white horses at sea. The sea was the great name-giver in The Odyssey, even to the gods: Aphrodite was named after Aphros, Greek for sea foam.

All circumstantial evidence, of course. But, still, there was plenty more of it in this delightful spot. The palace had easy access to three harbours – the supposedly royal harbour of Polis, used by Odysseus, and the two common harbours of Aphales and Frikes. Odysseus’s palace was built in position A, with its stellar views across the Ionian Sea. It stands on solid bedrock, able to withstand the earthquakes that ravage this corner of Greece, and the site is blessed with a natural well, still overflowing with water when I climbed down into it at the end of a long, parched summer. Just down the road from the palace, there’s a modern fountain from which locals still pick up their water.

The mighty Cyclopean walls of the palace – straight out of the Asterix and Obelix school of architecture – were still in terrific nick, with the uneven edge of each stone meticulously locked into the uneven edge of its neighbour. Just as in Homer’s description, the palace was built on two flat, terraced, rock beds, one above the other, connected by a surviving stone staircase.

Terracotta urns, a Mycenean bath and a graveyard have all been discovered on the site. Entranced, I could well believe that lovely Penelope – Helen’s first cousin, she must have been a looker – had undone her tapestry work every night within the palace’s Cyclopean walls, to keep the suitors at bay.

Still visible, beneath a rudimentary modern roof, were the moulds of a metal-working workshop. Was this where the 12 axe heads were made, the ones lined up in pairs to form a super-narrow passage – which Odysseus fired a bronze-tipped arrow through, to prove his vast martial superiority over the suitors? I certainly thought so.

Not far away, in a cave sanctuary in the Bay of Polis, an ancient inscription on a mask has been found. “Euchen odyssei,” it reads – “My vow to Odysseus.” Nearby, on the old path to south Ithaca, a rock is inscribed with the ancient letters o and ∆ – the first two letters of Odysseus’s name. Scholars think Odysseus was worshipped in a hero cult at an extremely early stage, by sailors who revered the ultimate seafarer.

Towering over Ithaca is Mount Neriton: “Neriton einosiphullon” (“Neriton with its trembling foliage”), as Homer called it. Today, the island is thick with gnarled old olive trees – the sort Odysseus built his indestructible bed around. It is by telling Penelope about the bed’s history that Odysseus convinces Penelope it is really him who has returned home after 20 years away. Of course, there are olive trees all over Greece; lots of ancient, gnarled ones, too. But, still, the evidence kept on mounting, wherever I pointed my little rental car.

There is one great stumbling block to the theory that modern Ithaca is ancient Ithaca. At one point, Homer wrote, “Low-lying Ithaca is furthest out to sea, towards the sunset, and the others are apart, towards the dawn and sun.” That, I’m afraid, isn’t true. Directly west of Ithaca, and further out to sea, is the island of Cephalonia. This anomaly led a British writer, Robert Bittlestone, to suggest that Paliki, a peninsula on the north-west coast of Cephalonia, is in fact Ithaca. According to his theory, the isthmus connecting Paliki to the main island was once submerged, leaving Paliki an independent island. An earthquake later raised the isthmus to its current elevation, Bittlestone says.

I don’t buy this conspiracy theory. How likely is it that, one day, all the islanders on Ithaca declared that, from henceforth, they were moving to a new Ithaca on the next-door island? Wouldn’t the next-door islanders be pretty peeved at having to rename themselves? Wouldn’t there be records of that previous name on what is now Ithaca? The attachment to place and place names is an extremely strong, natural human emotion. Who would go along with such a madcap scheme?

By 350 BC, coins showing Odysseus and a ship were minted on what is now modern Ithaca. By the Hellenistic period, Ithaca’s parliament was called the Odysseion. At the same time, a popular “game of the bridegrooms” was played on Ithaca. It was a dating game based on draughts – the winner ended up marrying Penelope.

It’s more likely that Homer got his geography a bit wrong when he said Ithaca was the most westerly island; much more likely than all the strange twisting of history you have to do to make Cephalonia Ithaca.

But no evidence could impress as much as the calm of the palace; the being in the moment, the unchanged look. When I first saw the remains of Odysseus’s palace, I felt almost sick with exhilaration, even if the stones had been eroded down to neck height – and all on a footprint smaller than most British villages – enough remained. Though much had been taken, so much abides.

It wasn’t just like going to Odysseus’s home, or coming to the end of his odyssey and mine. It was also going back to the beginning: to before The Iliad, to the kingdom Odysseus ruled before the Trojan War broke out.

Extracted from Odyssey: Ancient Greece in the Footsteps of Odysseus by Harry Mount (Bloomsbury). Buy a copy here.

See Harry’s online course The Miracle of Ancient Greece here.

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