‘The Odyssey’ and the Search for Historical Truth, with James Diggle and John Underhill

[00:00:00]Okay, so hear me out people. This episode really is a bit of a departure for us.

[00:00:05]I assume if you're listening to the School of War podcast that like me, you are excited about the new Christopher Nolan Odyssey. I haven't seen it yet, but I intend to hear very shortly. And in my excitement for the coming of this film, I came across a new article in a classics journal about what the identity of the real Ithaca in fact is. Ithaca of course is Odysseus's home. There's an island in the Mediterranean called Ithaca, but it turns out that these madmen from the United Kingdom, originally a man named Robert Bittlestone and then he was assisted by a classicist named James Diggle and a geoscientist named John Underhill spent decades trying to vindicate the theory that in fact the island today called Ithaca was not Odysseus's true home. In fact, it's an entirely different place called Paliki. It's a crazy story.

[00:01:06]It is as close to the world of Indiana Jones what they did as I think one can encounter in real life. And in the end, I think they have actually solved the mystery and proven their thesis that they in fact had figured out where Odysseus's home really was. We're going to go on the journey together here with two of those men and have a truly fascinating conversation about the Bronze Age, about obsession, about archaeology and classics. Let's get into it.

[00:01:39]>> It is a prescription for war. [music] >> December 7th, 1941.

[00:01:46]A date which will live in infamy.

[00:01:49]>> The bloody [music] experience of Vietnam is to end in a statement.

[00:01:53]>> We continue to face the same situation around here.

[00:01:56]>> They're building >> [music] >> there.

[00:02:03]>> [music] [music] >> Hi, I'm Aaron MacLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am genuinely delighted to welcome to the show today James Diggle and John Underhill.

[00:02:22]James Diggle is a Emeritus Professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, a life fellow of Queens College. His many publications include the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, of which he is the editor-in-chief. John Underhill is the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Energy Transition and Professor in Geoscience and Energy Transition at Aberdeen University. Years ago, they collaborated with a man named Robert Bittlestone on a book called Odysseus Unbound, the search for Homer's Ithaca, and very recently have an article out in a classics journal called Antigone, Was Homer's Ithaca an island? Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining School of War.

[00:03:05]>> Great pleasure. Nice to be with you.

[00:03:06]>> So, look, I mean the the occasion for our conversation is obvious. I, like many Americans, I assume many Brits, uh very excited about uh the new Christopher Nolan movie, The Odyssey, and I had it in the back of my mind to find some way to do an episode um that would be relevant to to to that cinematic event. Um I you know, read the Odyssey as a kid and then again as a as a classic student um as an undergraduate, and I I came across your article and Antigone, read it, got the book from some years ago that you gentlemen produced with Robert Bittlestone, and I just have to say and the purpose of this episode we're going to kind of unfold this long project in which you gentlemen have been engaged along with the late Mr. Biddlestone, Um this magnificent inquiry, this and I'm and I mean gentlemen, I mean this in the nicest and really genuinely complimentary possible way, a sort of mad >> [laughter] >> project to to figure out where was Ithaca, Odysseus' homeland, which may seem like a strange thing given that there is an island called Ithaca and I certainly had long been under the assumption that that was Odysseus' home. Maybe we could start very big picture before we get into your work specifically on this question of the historicity of Homer.

[00:04:28]These are these are epic poems.

[00:04:31]These are you know, obviously they traffic quite literally in myth. Where does this notion that there have to be real places associated with what we're discussing in the poems begin or or maybe that was always the case. What this question of the historicity of Homer, how should how should we understand its its tradition before we even get to to your work?

[00:04:53]>> I would start there Aaron by saying that initially people did think that these were potentially stories, just storytelling that Homer was putting down in writing several centuries after the events that he depicts.

[00:05:11]But of course what happened largely in the 19th century is that remains, archaeological remains, started to be uncovered at places like Troy and Mycenae and Tiryns and people began to realize that actually this might be at least the geography of the the sites might be correct. Most authors when they write fiction actually have places that are geographically identifiable by the readership.

[00:05:47]So it's a motiveless crime to get the geography wrong because it's an attempt thereby uh the author to give some authenticity to the story that they're telling. And this is the key question, I think, that as Troy and other sites were being uncovered, the question was, where was ancient Ithaca, Odysseus's homeland, and could that also be found alongside some of these other Mycenaean Bronze Age sites?

[00:06:18]>> And then perhaps another scene-setting question before we we zoom in. So, then assuming that these stories um have some uh connection to history, real history.

[00:06:31]This is this is the second millennium BC that we're talking about. This is the Bronze Age. What what is the Eastern Mediterranean like during this period? I mean, it's it's it's not the classical Greece of much of Greek literature. It's it's a different sort of world. What what is that world like?

[00:06:50]>> Our knowledge of um the late Bronze Age comes from several sources. John has already mentioned that um in the 19th century um Mycenae and other major Mycenaean, that is early and late Bronze Age sites were discovered by archaeologists. And as John has said, um [snorts] it was seen that um many of the details about these places that we find in Homer uh proved to be correct. There had been a time when people imagined that Troy was a a poetic fiction, that Mycenae was a poetic fiction.

[00:07:38]But um what was uncovered by archaeologists in those spaces confirmed much of what we read about them in the Homeric poems.

[00:07:50]So the Homeric poems are a source of knowledge both for sites on mainland Greece and elsewhere like Troy and for the kinds of activities, the kinds of artifacts that were found uh at at that time.

[00:08:13]So we do have vast amount of knowledge both literary and archaeological about the period that we're interested the late bronze age say 1200 BC.

[00:08:26]>> And so um at some point around I suppose it's the um it's the 1100s right that we we think broadly speaking we're talking about something comparable to the war Homer depicts happens there's a clash between east and west and then um Homer tells the tale in the Iliad and then he tells the tale of this remarkable homecoming of one of his captains Odysseus to a place named Ithaca.

[00:09:00]Again there is an island named Ithaca. I had certainly I'd never been there but I'd certainly always been under the impression that gosh that must be that must be what we're talking about.

[00:09:10]Who who was Robert Bittlestone and how does it become a problem for you gentlemen and apparently a defining problem for at least portions of your careers um to to um to figure out where Ithaca actually was.

[00:09:25]>> Yes Ithaca its location and its appearance are described in great detail uh in the Odyssey and so he narrates his past adventures and at one point in his narrative he describes Ithaca in this detail. He says My home is Ithaca. It is the furthest west of a group of islands.

[00:09:56]It is low-lying.

[00:09:58]In other words, it is mount not mountainous.

[00:10:02]And it is closest to the sea of these islands.

[00:10:08]And these islands face the west.

[00:10:13]Now, try and reconcile that description with the location of modern Ithaca.

[00:10:20]Ithaca is not the furthest west of the group of islands which we now call the Ionian Islands. It is the furthest east of them.

[00:10:32]It doesn't face the sea.

[00:10:35]It faces the mainland of Greece.

[00:10:38]And it is not low-lying, that is not mountainous.

[00:10:42]It has cliffs that plunge sheer into the sea.

[00:10:48]It was this incompatibility between the location of the modern island of Ithaca and Homer's description in the words of Odysseus of his homeland of Ithaca that has puzzled scholars and readers for generations ever since [clears throat] antiquity.

[00:11:12]Many, many attempts have made been made to uh reconcile the descriptions and the locations, but none have been successful.

[00:11:23]Many alternatives to Ithaca have been proposed for Homer's Ithaca.

[00:11:31]None of them convincing.

[00:11:35]So, Robert Bittlestone came up with this brilliant idea that perhaps Homer's Ithaca was the peninsula of Paliki, as it is now called, which lies to the west of the island of Cephalonia, which is one of the group of islands mentioned by Odysseus in that passage.

[00:12:01]The only problem with that was that um Paliki is a peninsula and not an island, which fits Homer's description perfectly. It's furthest to sea, it's westernmost point of these islands, and it is now lying in the way that it is not an island.

[00:12:23]So, there was a major problem.

[00:12:25]And when John and I got together with the Robert Bittlestone, uh he put to us a suggestion that perhaps in the time of Odysseus, what is now a peninsula called Paliki, was not in fact a peninsula, but was a separate island, and that the strip of land that at the moment joins Paliki to Cephalonia, the strip of land having been formed by rock falls and landslides from the overhanging mountains in this area, which is the most tectonically active region uh in the whole of the Mediterranean.

[00:13:13]Perhaps John might want to expand on that.

[00:13:17]>> Well, and let me before we I I do want you to expand on that, uh John, but be be before we do or perhaps as part of doing that, I'm I'm genuinely curious in who Robert was. Gentlemen, part of the fascinating aspect of this story for me, and not to not to give too much away about the end, which we'll get to here in the course of the conversation, is my reading of your piece in Antigone is that you've actually solved the problem.

[00:13:39]Um, which is an extraordinary thing to say here in the year 2026 that there are big problems remaining to be solved in classical literature. Big problems. Um, and that you you actually solve it. Um, it's I mean, I I'm that unusual, perhaps mysterious figure, the general intelligent reader for a piece like yours. That is to say, I'm not particularly qualified to evaluate the details of what you're saying, but I know enough to follow the argument, and I find it extremely persuasive.

[00:14:07]What you come up with, and the article is just this extraordinary adventure in its own right, and then as was the the original book, Odysseus Unbound, which is you know, a serious book, quite unlike um, well, quite like any other book that I'm familiar with, combining, you know, reportage, geology, analysis of classical texts, you know, biographical accounts of islanders and the earthquakes they've lived through. I mean, it's just an extraordinary volume.

[00:14:33]And so, part of what's of interest to me is who are the kinds of people, both you two gentlemen, but but Mr. Bittlestone originally as well, who devote so much time to to such an enterprise. I mean, tell tell me about this man and and how he got engaged with it.

[00:14:48]>> Well, um, maybe I can just take you back to the beginning of how James and I got involved. Um, Robert clearly very classics were very close to his heart, even though he had actually studied a different discipline and set up a business, um, and was effectively a businessman going about his his day-to-day activities.

[00:15:14]When he reached out to James initially to say, uh, I've had this idea that, uh, on Cephalonia the the western peninsula fits like a glove the narrative in Homer. And just to to reiterate this, what is said within the Odyssey is that Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus are islands that are close to each other.

[00:15:47]And it says around are many islands close to each other. Dulichium, Same, and wooded Zacynthus. Ithaca itself lies low furthest to the sea towards the dusk, i.e. towards the west.

[00:16:01]And they, that is the islands, lie apart facing dawn and the sun. And that very sentence, that very paragraph, was what Robert based his conversation initially with James on. And then, realizing that actually if Paliki that fitted all those clues was indeed an island as he believed at the time, there needed to be a marine channel running through a low land bridge that connects Paliki currently with Cephalonia, the main body of Cephalonia.

[00:16:39]This is called the Thinia Valley. It is 6 km long 2 km wide in the north and tapers to be only 500 m wide to the south.

[00:16:49]Now, this is where it gets interesting, Aaron, for me and why I I got involved because, you know, frankly what Robert and James did first of all was to seek advice from other colleagues at Cambridge, James Jackson and others who are esteemed geoscientists working in the Aegean province.

[00:17:10]I think it's true to say James will be able to confirm this that indeed James Jackson said, "I largely work in the Aegean, but I knew someone that's worked in in the West and his name is John Underhill and he did a PhD there."

[00:17:25]And interestingly, Robert when he approached me basically admitted that he had simply put in the words Cephalonia geology into Google or equivalent search engine and my name had had come up. So now it's been corroborated in two sources.

[00:17:42]And he thought, "Actually, I'm going to reach out to this geoscientist."

[00:17:47]And the conversation went a bit like this where Robert rang me. I was at Edinburgh University at the time, minding my own business and the phone went and he said, "I'm not a crank." Now, if you hear that, [laughter] you immediately think, "What on earth is going to happen here?"

[00:18:06]And I am eternally grateful, Aaron, that I listened on because he just simply explained the hypothesis he had as James has articulated and he knew it was a seismically active region. He'd been there, seen the steep slopes and some of the rockfall landslides and asked me whether it was feasible or possible.

[00:18:35]And I was extremely skeptical. I thought it would be something that would be easy to disprove.

[00:18:43]But what was interesting about it for me was it was an opportunity to go back to an area that I knew well, I loved, I'd worked 3 years there on a PhD, published papers on on the geology of the island, so I knew it.

[00:18:59]But what it told me was actually if we had the resources, I'm not saying unlimited budget and unlimited time, but if we had the opportunity, this would be testable.

[00:19:11]Would there be a marine channel of the right age in the right place that made Paliki an island?

[00:19:18]And what we would need to do would be geological mapping, dating of the sediments, determining what their environment of deposition was at the time of the Bronze Age. But more particularly, and at that stage, at the very beginning of this project, uh it was more hope than expectation that we might get a body scan beneath the surface. And to do so, we would need to collect geophysical data, seismic data, gravity, resistivity, and the like, electromagnetics and the like, and also drill boreholes and take continuous cores and be able to analyze those.

[00:20:00]And part of my thinking here was actually, when you look at some very distinguished American geoscientists, l- like um John Kraft and and R- Raff and others, they had worked at Troy and demonstrated that the Trojan Plain actually w- was uh water-bearing marine and in- embayment that actually fitted the Homeric text there. And so there was a precedent of trying to determine a paleogeography for the Bronze Age, which actually determined that it worked it that the paleogeography fitted the Homeric story. And so I felt, actually, you know what? I'm going to suspend disbelief.

[00:20:45]Uh I'm going to take a risk with my ac- academic reputation and get involved with this. And uh I am still here, you know, 20 or so years later.

[00:20:55]>> When does Robert Bittlestone approach you both? When does it all get >> 2003, 2004, around that time.

[00:21:02]Um you know, we James and I sometimes laugh that um the the time it's taken us to actually test this theory, and I stress test rather than prove, because the original theory, as we're going on to talk about, needed to be modified based upon the data and evidence that we discovered, and indeed new translations that James went back to to look at the text. But at at the outset, we it yeah, it's 20 years ago or more, so where where James and I probably tease each other is the fact that it's taken us slightly longer than it took Odysseus to get to Troy and to get back to to Ithaca than it's taken us to actually rigorously and forensically test the theory.

[00:21:48]>> So, um, sorry, just to stick with the logistics of all this for a bit and then we'll get back to the substance, but I I mean both aspects both the story of your own inquiry fascinates me as does the the substance of it itself. But was you know, you know, did Bittleton bring I mean at one point you're drilling for core samples here with heavy equipment.

[00:22:07]I mean, this is an extraordinary project. Um, you know, paired of course with James's you know, really very fascinating textual analysis based on what you're seeing physically on the ground. Was did Bittleton bring substantial financial resources to this?

[00:22:23]Were you raise >> No.

[00:22:24]>> No, okay. So, I've I've just I didn't I didn't know much about the man. So, I don't know if he was one of these mad eccentric is so good at producing, but maybe just eccentric countryman that you have so many of. But maybe just eccentric countryman >> So, we maybe eccentric and and a little bit of obsessive, but equally uh, brilliant. And uh, you know, he came up with that that theory. It was then a question of one testing it and then for me, how do I get the resources to do a proper job? And this is the the key bit I think to answer your question.

[00:22:54]Robert and I um, set off to meet a geotechnical company uh, called Fugro who are based in Holland. And they have expertise in foundations for bridges and and construction houses and and and and the like.

[00:23:13]Uh, and frankly, I pitched to them that uh, there was something interesting here and their CEO at the time and their chief technical officer were in the room with Robert and I.

[00:23:28]Uh, we I took them through the tests I would wish to undertake.

[00:23:33]And uh, of course, I would say, to their great credit, they leaned in and decided to support the project. And support it to the tune of over a million euros.

[00:23:45]In-kind support.

[00:23:47]In parallel with that, I pitched to the U- UK uh, research and innovation uh, UKRI they're called, the research council.

[00:23:58]And they also provided a hundred thousand pound to support a PhD student working under my supervision to analyze a lot of the data that would be collected um, by the geotechnical company. That enabled us to fly helicopters with uh, what would look like almost like a Exocet missile, but actually was a sensor to detect electromagnetic uh, variations in the earth.

[00:24:28]To take gravity, to shoot seismic records to get the aforementioned body scans at the subsurface.

[00:24:35]They brought their equipment with boreholes that would take uh, hun- cores, complete cores, um, which we were then able to pallet and bring back to the UK and was stored in their core shed initially in North Wales and then brought to Aberdeen. Um, so it was it was a military operation uh, done a whole series of different tests that in and of any one of them would not give an answer, but collectively would give us the body of evidence to test the original theory that there was a marine channel or not.

[00:25:10]And I And I'm sure James would, um, support me here. I I I kept reminding colleagues that we were testing a hypothesis. We weren't trying to prove it, but we were gathering the data and evidence and whatever would show, even if it was an inconvenient reality, then that's what we needed to table. And and it becomes a fascinating story in the recent times, last four, five years, because as the data and evidence was being gathered, analyzed, and synthesized into interpretation, it challenged Robert's original theory, but we were able to, uh, reconcile the geoscience that we have collected with the translations that that James can describe in more detail than me. And bringing that together, we have a holistic model that, as you say, does appear to resolve a 3,000-year-old mystery and one that has perplexed archaeologists and classicists for centuries.

[00:26:15]>> So, James, you'll you'll take it next, but before we do, let me let me help the audience just orient a bit here. Um, uh, and if, you know, perhaps on YouTube we'll put this up, but if folks are listening, if you get the opportunity, you should look up the Ionian Islands just to get a quick visual of what we're talking about. So, this is a group of islands, as you gentlemen said, they're they're off the west coast of of of the Greek mainland, really at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, which, you know, separates the Peloponnesus from from the from the the mainland mainland of Greece. Um, and then the big island in this grouping is Cephalonia, which has this peninsula out to the west, Paliki. I'm going to do my best to absorb your correct pronunciations here.

[00:26:55]Um uh which the Paliki obviously being the target of of your investigation.

[00:26:59]Then you have sort of to the northeast um Ithaki, which I would have always assumed I think many people would have always assumed with was Ithaca, but as as um James pointed out earlier, doesn't match at all the description um in the Odyssey itself, which is a bit of a head-scratcher. And then down in the south you have uh Zakynthos. So those and and they're all clustered together there at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth um in this protrusion of Paliki out to the west, it's a peninsula that kind of fish hooks down. So it's largely on a north-south axis, and then it's connected by this little land bridge as you say with this valley in it to the mainland of of of Cephalonia. And and the I one hesitates to describe I'm holding this book Odysseus I'm mad in my head this is massive volume. One hesitates to describe conclusions reached by such a book as tentative, but I I suppose nevertheless we will say it's it's it's tentatively the conclusion that in Paliki you have found the true Ithaca and that Paliki was an island. And then as we've been discussing, but I want to make it clear for the listeners, crisis strikes.

[00:28:04]Cri- crisis stri- You all this work, all this money, this military operation or at least por- early portions of it have occurred. You seem as though, you know, Bittlestone writes this book with your support. It seems like you've got it solved or or or very likely have it solved. And then disaster.

[00:28:21]I I it it turns out that the sea really didn't run through that valley uh in the Bronze Age. Uh that's this is the conclusion you come to. So so please tell me what what comes next.

[00:28:32]>> Well, so let me just talk a little bit through uh what we did find to come to the conclusions that we did geologically.

[00:28:41]Um those boreholes that we took um were able to demonstrate that there were there was once marine water within this valley.

[00:28:52]However, the age of those sediments was much older than the Bronze Age. In fact, the youngest ages that we have found are around 290,000 years ago, which is something called the Upper Pleistocene within the Quaternary period.

[00:29:11]After that, the area gets contorted. It gets compressed and a series of reverse faults, or what are known geologically as thrust faults, cut through and transect the valley and uplift it.

[00:29:26]But, what was fascinating was that on top of the sediments of marine age of Pleistocene age, we found sediments that were bedded infilling effectively a canoe-shaped hollow, quite large, still, you know, several hundred meters in length and width, although elliptical, canoe-shaped, as I say, with two old drainage systems going to the north coast and to the south. And this is where I need to introduce a second literary um, figure, Strabo, because Strabo in his Geographies described the island of Cephalonia and says, and I paraphrase, but at the head of the gulf on which the Roman settlements of Pale, which gives its name to Paliki, and Kranoi, both of which that the position of which are known, he says that at the head of the gulf where is a a narrow isthmus in which water, and I'm going to choose my words carefully here, water goes from end to end from time to time.

[00:30:42]Uh at that appeared to Robert and indeed to us initially to be reaffirming the idea of a marine channel.

[00:30:50]Now, the work that I've led has demonstrated that the marine waters were too old as I've said, but that there was effectively a lake or a meadow which from which drainage occurred by by directionally.

[00:31:09]One river system going to the north coast and one to the south coast. And the dates that we have obtained from the meadow area that connects these two regions at the saddle of the valley, the highest point of the valley, they are older than the same age as and younger than the Bronze Age. So, in other words, the uh there is an explanation where there would be a continuous watercourse that ran overland to separate Paliki from the main body of Ithaca from time to time. It would flow from end to end when the meadow became a lake and overflowed in in both directions. We can now demonstrate that on the basis of the geological evidence that has been collected and analyzed.

[00:32:04]And then it's a question of actually does that match with or marry with the classical translation. But that is what the geology showed and so in it in simple terms, I think I I can demonstrate that Robert Bittlestone's original hypothesis is disproven that there was a marine channel running through here uh in the Bronze Age.

[00:32:27]However, the data and evidence threw up a more intriguing possibility that there was a continuous or semi-continuous watercourse that took water from time to time from end to end that fits with Strabo's description, a second independent geographical description of the same area, which is remarkable in its own instance. And the final thing I I'll leave you with before James pitches in is that there was another really odd curious uh a set of events that led us to look at maps of Western Greece, of those islands that you described previously.

[00:33:06]And amazingly, Ithaca used to be called Dulichium.

[00:33:12]And its capital, Vassilike, was Dulichium.

[00:33:15]So, in other words, the missing island of Dulichium, which was in Homeric text, used to be ascribed to the island now known as Ithaca. So, in other words, prior to Ithaca being uh ascribed to Ithaca or vice versa, that island went under a different name, which means we didn't have an Ithaca whatsoever within the the geographical description, but we do have a peninsula out to the west which uh fits with all the clues. A peninsula that subsequently got named Paliki after Palai in Roman times.

[00:33:55]And at that point, I should uh hand over to James to give his perspective on what I've just said in terms of the geology and how uh classics and and and geology could be um reconciled with each other. And who would have ever thought that a classicist and a a geoscientist would work on an interdisciplinary project like this?

[00:34:18]>> [laughter] >> And then, of course, James, you'll help us land the plane here, which is the the most the the most obvious outstanding problem that listeners' minds have probably already gone gone to is if we've disproven the fact that Paliki was an island. Sure, if these water courses existed, perhaps it has some semi-separate cultural identity or something like that. But, um Ithaca's an island. It's everyone knows.

[00:34:45]Everyone who's read the Odyssey knows that Ithaca's an island. So, if Paliki is not an island, it can't be Ithaca, which seems like a big problem. And then, of course, this is ultimately the subject of your True. True. I mean, it's it's an advent It's It's the as classics articles go, it's the closest to an adventure story I've I've ever seen.

[00:35:02]>> Yes.

[00:35:04]It was, to me, a great surprise when uh the geological work undertaken by John demonstrated after 20 years that um Paliki had never been an island.

[00:35:22]But then I began to think about uh Robert's hypotheses again. In fact, Robert's hypothesis had two parts to it.

[00:35:34]The first part was that the peninsula of Paliki, as it now is, was home as Ithaca.

[00:35:42]Everything pointed to that. The description in the Odyssey the location of it fitted perfectly.

[00:35:54]So, it was going to be difficult to abandon that notion without a struggle.

[00:36:00]The second part of his hypothesis was that, well, Paliki was once upon a time not a peninsula. It was an island because there was the marine channel.

[00:36:12]Now, John has uh proved that there was not a marine channel. So, one part of Robert Bittlestone's hypothesis collapsed.

[00:36:22]Did that, however, mean that the second part of the hypothesis, the identification of Collekey with Ithaca, also collapsed. It collapsed only if Ithaca has to be an island.

[00:36:41]So, I thought, well, everybody has assumed that Ithaca was an island. Robert assumed it. It's been assumed since antiquity. It was assumed to be me that Ithaca was an island. But, what justification is there for that assumption?

[00:36:59]So, I immediately reread the Odyssey.

[00:37:04]And I discovered a very interesting fact that nowhere does Homer describe Ithaca as an island.

[00:37:18]He has many opportunities to do so, but he never does.

[00:37:24]The word for island in Greek is nasos.

[00:37:30]He uses this to describe a great many islands in the poem, but he never describes Ithaca as an island or nasos. So, what does he describe it as?

[00:37:43]Well, he or his characters, including Odysseus, always describe Ithaca as a land, Greek gaia or aia, or in the case of Odysseus, native land, homeland, patris.

[00:38:01]And then, particularly interestingly, another word is used to describe Ithaca.

[00:38:10]It is the word demos.

[00:38:14]It's the first part of several familiar English words, such as democracy.

[00:38:20]Now, in Homeric Greek, demos means either land or inhabitants of a land.

[00:38:33]And in a dozen or so passages, Homer in the Odyssey, and once in the Iliad also, has the expression Ithaca's demos, the demos the land of Ithaca.

[00:38:53]Now, what is especially interesting and important here is that the word demos has exactly the same metrical shape as naisos, the word for island.

[00:39:07]So, why does Homer speak of the demos of Ithaca when his verse would allow him to speak of the naisos of Ithaca?

[00:39:24]Then, I discovered one particularly interesting passage.

[00:39:29]It's uh in the 13th book of the Odyssey, where Odysseus is described as returning home.

[00:39:39]He's brought home on a ship provided by uh the uh people of Phaeacia, um who he has been recently entertained by.

[00:39:55]And in this passage, we read that the ship approached the island. Aha!

[00:40:03]You will say, well, then doesn't this then prove that uh Ithaca is an island? But, the text goes on.

[00:40:12]On the demos of Ithaca, there is a bay called the Bay of Forkis.

[00:40:20]Now, when I translated that passage for the book that is Odysseus Unbound, I mistranslated it not because I didn't know the meaning of the word demos, but simply because I was translating it into blank verse.

[00:40:40]And um this verse form wouldn't allow me to translate the term Demos of Ithaca uh fully. So, what I translated it as was the ship approached the island. On Ithaca, there is a harbor. Now, anybody reading that would assume then that the harbor and Ithaca were part of the island.

[00:41:05]But when I looked at the text again, I realized that in my translation, I had left out the word demos.

[00:41:12]So, what the text says is the ship approached the island.

[00:41:20]On the land of Ithaca, there is a harbor. Now, that makes a clear distinction between island, which we assume to be Cephalonia, and Demos, land, area.

[00:41:39]And so it it it it it appeared from that and from all the other indications that I had found that the most likely explanation of what is going on here is that Ithaca was a piece of land, an area, a locality that was a part of the larger island of Ithaca.

[00:42:13]Once one had seen that, everything fitted together. There was nothing whatever in the poem to contradict that assumption.

[00:42:25]And there were many of further indications that it was possible to put one's finger on that that was the correct location of Ithaca.

[00:42:38]The westernmost part.

[00:42:42]That is the modern peninsula Paliki of the island of Cephalonia.

[00:42:52]Why, you may say, does uh this part have a separate name?

[00:42:57]Well, it's clear that Odysseus was king of Ithaca, but not only of Ithaca, of Cephalonia, too.

[00:43:09]He had his his palace on Ithaca, that is on Paliki, but he was equally the king of the Cephalonians.

[00:43:24]In the Iliad, uh he's described as leading in to Troy a contingent of Cephalonians, not Ithacans. I mean, Ithacans, no doubt, form part of that contingent, but he's described as king of the Cephalonians.

[00:43:40]So, um because his palace is centered on Paliki, which has its separate name, Ithaca, that is why the focus is on Ithaca in the Odyssey.

[00:43:55]>> Yes, and the Cephalonian sort of mystery, I mean, in a way the poem starts to make more sense. Both poems start to make more sense with this hypothesis, cuz otherwise it's a bit mysterious why Odysseus should be leading the contingent from a different island.

[00:44:08]As you just pointed out, rather than from his own. I suppose this is me riffing a bit, so feel free to say this doesn't make any sense, but it also makes the story of the suitors make a bit more sense. You know, if Ithaca is this small island, then we have to assume that suitors are coming from all over Greece to make trouble and camp out. But if Ithaca is part of this substantially larger island of Cephalonia, and it's it's sort of a district of it even though it had been the politically dominant district under Odysseus. Well, it makes it would be easier. It makes more sense that they would be, you know, barons from elsewhere on this large island coming in to harass Penelope um uh then in the conception of Ithaca as its own stand-alone island. I mean, it's it's it's Once it falls into place, the whole thing is really pretty elegant.

[00:44:57]>> Yes, certainly. And we have at one point in the poem a narrative of um a herdsman of Odysseus.

[00:45:09]Uh he looks after Odysseus's cattle.

[00:45:14]Not on Ithaca, but on Cephalonia.

[00:45:18]And he is required by the suitors regularly to supply >> [laughter] >> um cattle for their feasts.

[00:45:31]And he's described as bringing them across to Ithaca by ferry.

[00:45:37]Now, Robert had imagined uh that um there was a ferry service across his uh across a hypothetical uh marine channel. But um you know, once we have identified Ithaca with a part of Cephalonia, a peninsula, then the obvious explanation is that the ferry service runs uh across the Bay of Argostoli where there is still today a ferry service linking Cephalonia with with Paliki.

[00:46:18]>> And then the other I mean or among the other passages that seem to be settled by this question is this question of Telemachus' return.

[00:46:27]You discuss this in the article. I'm just looking at the passage right now.

[00:46:31]Telemachus return to Ithaca from his journey to other islands where he is warned by Athena that the suitors are waiting to kill him. So she tells him um Well, I guess her exact words, I'll just read it here. Send on your ship and all your comrades to the city which Robert Bittlestone took to mean that there was going to be a circumnavigation of the island to go the long way around. But you you gentlemen say and you've got a fascinating diagram here. It makes just as much sense that rather than go into the little sound that separates Paliki from the mainland of Cephalonia you can quite easily see him just going up the west coast and landing on the west coast of Ithaca. So that passage is resolved as well.

[00:47:17]Essentially as you keep saying, there are no unresolved passages. The poem makes >> That's right. That's That's right. The passage that I just referred to about the the cattle which were brought over was one of two passages where Robert had assumed that the Homeric text demands that Ithaca should be a separate island.

[00:47:41]So I was able to dispose of that previous passage.

[00:47:45]This left the passage that you've just referred to because Robert in analyzing the route taken home by Telemachus who's just been on a visit to the Peloponnese, Sparta and Pylos.

[00:48:01]Suppose that Telemachus' way of outwitting the suitors, who were lying in ambush for him in the Strait of Argostoli, was to take the channel route back home.

[00:48:18]That is to sail his ship around Paliki, Ithaca, and approach the the the palace area on Ithaca from the north, through the channel.

[00:48:33]So, I had to dispose of that and show that it was quite unnecessary uh to have Telemachus returning by that route.

[00:48:45]Um it's quite clear that Telemachus does land on the west coast of Paliki, Ithaca.

[00:48:56]He's given instructions where to land by the goddess Athena. She tells him to keep his ship far from the islands. In other words, steer clear of Cephalonia and Dulichion and Zacynthos.

[00:49:14]In other words, don't uh sail up the Argostoli Gulf because the suitors are lying in wait for there.

[00:49:24]She says uh land where you can on um Ithaca, Paliki, and that has to mean the west coast of Paliki.

[00:49:39]And she says, "Once you have landed there, make your way overland to the old pig farmer Eumaeus, and then go back to uh uh the palace."

[00:49:53]Uh in the meantime, um the ship without Telemachus uh is free to sail back through the Augustoli Gulf, uh outwitting the suitors if it can, but even if it gets caught by the suitors, they won't catch Telemachus. Uh it uh he will be quite quite safe. So, the two passages in which Robert thought it was necessary for the Hermetic narrative to have a channel it proved not too difficult to show, didn't require that channel.

[00:50:35]>> If Robert I guess he passed away I see in in 2015, how how would he react to to all of this um new information that you gentlemen have have uncovered a new interpretation over the course of the last decade?

[00:50:49]>> So, one of the things about Robert was that he um welcomed challenge.

[00:50:56]Um and I think he introduced James and I into the mix in order to try and come up with the right answer as opposed to the one that that he originally was wedded to.

[00:51:12]Uh he was open-minded and flexible to other possibilities, whilst at the same stage of course having the strong conviction that Paliki was Ithaca.

[00:51:24]I think if he were to look at where we've ended up uh he will feel hopefully vindicated by what we have done and accepting of the fact that the appliance of science has actually thoroughly tested and disproved his original theory, but um given us a different resolution, a solution to that that mystery.

[00:51:51]And if I may, Aaron, there are just a couple of other elements that um you might uh wish to um, consider. And I'll I'll I'll bring James into this because um, I mentioned Strabo before. And Strabo's use of a particular verb has been translated by many to mean is submerged.

[00:52:14]Um, but as James will testify, the the word literally means washed over.

[00:52:20]And what effectively in James, he he's too humble to to say this, but in going back to look at Strabo, he realized that actually Strabo was also describing a water course that passed over land rather than being submerged. And and James might want to talk to that a little bit because I think that is again an independent corroboration, a second source, if you like, that that suggests that this is the answer. And the final thing that I'll I'll I'll add at this stage is um the geology actually explains another phenomena that's described in uh the Homeric text. And that is when Odysseus lands on uh back in ancient Ithaca, it's in a in a mist, shrouded in a mist, on a on a beach of a bay within a bay.

[00:53:16]And the northern part of uh Paliki, there is a village called Atheras, and north of that Atheras Bay.

[00:53:24]And there are two outer headlands and two inner headlands.

[00:53:29]And not only that, on the eastern side of that particular bay, there is one of these thrust lines that I mentioned before, these these faults that run through that have transected and uplifted parts of the island.

[00:53:44]And water passes along the fault plane itself.

[00:53:48]Cold fresh water that when it enters the bay it it and the bay is is an embayment, is enclosed, and warms up in the summer.

[00:54:00]And there is this really unusual temperature inversion.

[00:54:04]And what we find is that in the summer months that that northern bay is shrouded in mist because the cold water meets the warm water and you have that condensation effect. And it actually would explain the Homeric text and be describing not only geographically cuz the headlands within the headlands but also the mist that that congregates at that particular place for this geological reason. It's another um bit of circumstan- tial evidence, but when you build it in for all the bits that we've talked about actually produces a compelling explanation for all the descriptions that you find.

[00:54:51]>> Yes, in addition John, as you know uh at that location there is um a subterranean cave.

[00:55:02]Now this is one of the features of of that place that is the bay where Odysseus landed. There's a great play is made of in the poem is described in great length. It's uh the cave dedicated to the nymphs. It has two entrances exits, one for gods, one for mortals.

[00:55:23]Now Robert tried to find that cave.

[00:55:28]And he did find that there was a huge cave.

[00:55:34]No longer accessible with no entrance or exit currently uh inside.

[00:55:43]But, it is there.

[00:55:44]Um gravity testing was done.

[00:55:48]And at one point, we had an extraordinary piece of luck.

[00:55:54]The local people uh the local authorities were repairing the road that runs right alongside where Robert knew that such a cave existed.

[00:56:12]And uh the one point uh a bulldozer dug into the side of the road and a fissure opened up.

[00:56:26]It was quite clear that it was leading to a cave.

[00:56:33]The builders quickly patched it up because they thought that if the uh authorities the speleologists heard of this, it would immediately be declared a site of importance and their work would be interrupted.

[00:56:50]But, the local I think the mayor knew of this and Robert was a friend of his and he told us about it. So, um we arranged with uh the local mayor to get a bulldozer and open up that fissure again.

[00:57:11]We had to of course patch it up again as soon as we had finished. Uh Robert did a lot of boring on the top of the hill with uh rather primitive drills [clears throat] that he himself had got and he got down a fair way and uh since then uh is it going to be absolutely clear there is an enormous cave there underground.

[00:57:38]Now, if this is the cave that Homer describes sacred to the nymphs, it will be quite a discovery if we can get into it because it will have remained untouched for three millennia.

[00:57:58]And goodness knows what religious and other artifacts might be found in it.

[00:58:05]>> Well, perhaps there will be some people listening who would be interested in in participating in in such a project.

[00:58:10]James, John, I don't really know what to say besides congratulations. I mean, it's it's it's extraordinary on so many levels what you've done. One, as as we were talking about at the top that that there are big questions in classical texts and archaeology um that one can identify unresolved issues that one can identify and actually solve in the 21st century or at least by all appearances seem to solve. That in and of itself is extraordinary and then just the elegance of having spent decades now on this poem of homecoming and and bringing it home. Actually actually in a in a way to me as a reader very satisfyingly um coming up with with an explanation that that ties together everything that needs to be tied together. It's just remarkable everything that you were describing seems to me to come as close as real life is going to come to Indiana Jones.

[00:59:08]I don't suppose you discovered any any ancient spirits in these underground caves or anything like that, but as close as one can get >> Well, uh maybe just to elaborate a little bit. I mean, having undertaken, thanks to geophysical colleagues, we've been very fortunate actually to have a I've been able to call upon a a team of a experts and Professor Peter Styles in in geophysics, Jean-Luc Svennegard for the OSL dating, Maria from the University of Athens has been doing a lot of the biostratigraphy.

[00:59:43]And a byproduct of some of the work that we've done is to actually, although there is sometimes nothing at the surface, to see structures which are buried beneath the surface and to be able to date those by taking trenches and samples. And and what we already know from Cephalonia and indeed Paliki is that there are some Mycenaean tombs, there are Mycenaean archaeological artifacts, sarcophagus has been found, Mycenaean wall constructions and the like.

[01:00:17]A number of our geophysical and geological tests have highlighted sites of interest that could and potentially should be archaeologically excavated by experts. What they already tell us, Aaron, is that Cephalonia and Paliki were a much more significant Mycenaean site, Bronze Age site and settlements than generally is thought to be the case. And I think that's the exciting bit of where this goes next and there are geological geophysical tests and archaeological work that hopefully will follow that will enable us to to to take this story further and we stand ready to do some of that work and I I think the last two or three years and the work that the results that have been coming out over that time and working with James in terms of passing the baton to him and saying there isn't a marine channel, at least there was one but not at the right time and the right place. But, there is this overland water course uh for him to go back and to do the thorough forensic translations that he's done both of Strabo and of Homer to get to the point where we are now, but there is still uh work that we could and should do and to take this forward archaeologically, I think. And that that's the exciting next stage.

[01:01:46]>> James Diggle of Cambridge University, John Underhill of Aberdeen University.

[01:01:51]Um this has been um an extraordinary conversation. Your project is extraordinary. Thank you so much for making the time to come on School of War to discuss it.

[01:02:01]>> Thanks for having us, Aaron.

[01:02:03]>> Great pleasure.

[01:02:12]>> [music]