Greeks 'discover Odysseus' palace in Ithaca, proving Homer's hero was real' - Telegraph

Quote:

Odysseus – known to the ancient Romans as Ulysses – famously took 10 years to return home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy. On his journey, he was twice shipwrecked and encountered a cyclops, the spirit of his mother and tempting Sirens before returning to Ithaca, where he found his wife, Penelope, under pressure to remarry from a host of suitors who had invaded the royal palace. With the help of his father, Laertes, and his son, Telemachus, he slaughtered his rivals and re-established his rule. But despite the fantastical details in the Greek epic, a team of archaeologists has claimed the tale is anchored in truth - and that they have discovered his home on the island of Ithaca, in the Ionian sea off the north-west coast of Greece. Nearly 3,000 years after Odysseus returned from his journey, the team from the University of Ioannina said they found the remains of an extensive three-storey building, with steps carved out of rock and fragments of pottery. The complex also features and a well from the 8th century BC, roughly the period in which Odysseus is believed to have been king of Ithaca. The location "fits like a glove" with Homer's description of the view from the fabled palace, the archaeologists claim. The layout of the complex, where Professor Thanassis Papadopoulos and his team have been digging for 16 years, is very similar to palaces discovered at Mycenae, Pylos and other ancient sites. The claim will be greeted with scepticism by the many scholars who believe that Odysseus, along with other key characters from the Homer's epic such as Hector and Achilles, were purely fictional. "Whether this find has a connection with Ulysses or not is interesting up to a certain point, but more important is the discovery of the royal palace," said Adriano La Regina, an Italian archaeologist. Further complicating the identification of the site is the doubt over whether the ancient kingdom of Ithaca was located on its modern day namesake, Ithaki. A British researcher, Robert Bittlestone, has said Homer's descriptions bear little resemblance to the island and that ancient Ithaca was in fact located on the Paliki peninsula, on the island of Cephalonia. He believes that Paliki was once an island, separated from the rest of Cephalonia by a marine channel that has since been filled in by rock falls triggered by earthquakes. Enlisting the help of geologists and ancient historians, he documented the controversial theory in a 2005 book, Odysseus Unbound – The Search for Homer's Ithaca.

"The complex also features and a well from the 8th century BC, roughly the period in which Odysseus is believed to have been king of Ithaca." If by "roughly" you mean "not", then sure.

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Give or take a couple of centuries.

I find it bizarre to claim that Hector, Achilles or Ulysses are fictional. I mean, there must have been a Prince of Troy on the defending side, a strong warrior and a willy one on the attacking side.

Whether they were named Hector, Achilles or Ulysses is not exactly important. That's how a petty war can be made into a myth.

Look at: The Cattle Raid of Cooley ( The Táin Bó Chuailgne)

The Cattle raid of Cooley - Already here they demystifie lots of the stuff (afaik) but, yeah, the origin of the conflict is obvious - Some people stole some cattle from someone else, war ensues and myths are written about it.

Seems obvious to me...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

I find it bizarre to claim that Hector, Achilles or Ulysses are fictional. I mean, there must have been a Prince of Troy on the defending side, a strong warrior and a willy one on the attacking side.

If you believe the Illiad then most of them were willy ones... *phnar*

(Sorry, typos are generally below the belt but I couldn't stop myself.)

I thought that the academic conclusion was that there had probably been some sort of longstanding conflict over trade routes going on with Troy. Less romantic than a stolen princess, but there you go...

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Originally Posted by Zichao

I thought that the academic conclusion was that there had probably been some sort of longstanding conflict over trade routes going on with Troy. Less romantic than a stolen princess, but there you go...

Oh well, I am sure that, with border raids and piracy attacks and whatnot due to the trading conflict, some women from one side or the other were stolen.

Since it's not nearly as romantic when it's some commoner girls, bump it to "Helen" and voila. You got a good story for your audience...

And it wasn't a typo. I just had forgotten the correct spelling/pronounciation - so thanks, you saved me from a potentially more embarassing scene later on - WiLy - One L. Pronounced like wiles or vile! Thanks!

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I think thats academia in defensive mode, which is understandable but also fucking dull and in danger of being erroneous in the opposite direction. They don't want to get caught out making specific statements, they don't want to fall into the trap of treating history as the actions of Great Men, but they end up with a pablum that is so featureless and depersonalised as to be totally unrealistic.

As a counter-example, Ceasar's initiation of the Roman civil war is all down to personal reasons. If we didn't have sources that made this expressly clear, presumably it too would be described in such abstracted and vague terms.

I agree with Gilles that much of this may be story accumulated about a real event, but the fact that the story was as popular and widespread as it was suggests it was important in own right. I think there is an equivalence here to the way things like the Battle of Britain are immortalised in film stories. I think to dismiss the Odyssey outright is to make the same sort of error as dismissing say Churchill or Douglas Bader.