For ten years, Odysseus was returning home from Troy to his native Ithaca … His journey generated more versions and legends than there were points on the map of his route. But there is a suspicion that a significant part of this time, the cunning hero of Homer circled very close to home …

Modern sailors anchor in the hospitable harbor of Ithaki (Vati), sheltered from the winds of the Ionian Sea

– In the morning we went towards Lefkada, – a guy from a pleasure yacht that anchored in Ithaki (Vati), the capital of Ithaca, pours his ouzo and continues, – suddenly the sails lose the wind. The boat slows down. Clouds overtake the sky before our eyes. The helmsman calls for the captain, he barely manages to intercept the helm when a flurry hits … For an hour we were shaken before we managed to return to Ithaca.

Listeners of a fresh marine story in a tavern on the embankment nod with understanding. “Poseidon went wild, but Odysseus helped you,” says Zotikos Ioannidis, the owner of the establishment, a broad-shouldered gray-bearded Greek in a blue plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves, wide trousers and a snow-white apron. He pats the guy on the shoulder and puts in front of him a double portion of fried fish under the Savoro marinade. Opposite the tavern, on a short pier, stands a monument to Odysseus, the hero of the poem of Homer, depicted in two guises. The first figure, in front of which tourists take selfies, represents a harsh sailor. He confidently rests his foot on a rock and looks towards the sea. You do not immediately notice behind, on the same pedestal, the second Odyssey fighting the sea elements. Standing on one knee on the wreck of a ship or raft, he stubbornly rowed with the rest of the oar.

“I often hear similar stories,” says Zotikos, nodding toward the guy from the yacht. – Sailors consider Vati the most protected bay in the Ionian Sea, they come here in bad weather.

– How does Odysseus help them? – I ask.

“Such a saying,” explains Zotikos. – For a long time on Ithac, they honored Odysseus, considered the patron saint of seafarers. His kingdom was also called Ithaca, although, besides our island, it could occupy several more: Kefalonia, Lefkada, Meganisi.

Cyclops on the sidelines

Desperately clutching the steering wheel of a scooter, I rush along the white stones of the pavement in Spartokhori, one of the three villages on the island of Meganisi. I am in a hurry, risking not fitting into the frequent turns of narrow streets so as not to lose sight of the scooter of Barnabas, the guide-boy who undertook to show me Cyclops Cave. Fortunately, wise Meganisi cats do not try to cross the road, sit on the side of the road or peek out from homespun curtains on the windows of light cream and white houses. In addition to cats, having traveled the whole village, I do not meet a single soul (and this is in the middle of the day), then the path goes along the serpentine down to the side of Spilia harbor.

Embroidery and weaving – traditional crafts in Lefkada

It is likely that Meganisi Island during the Trojan War and immediately after it, approximately in the XIII-XII centuries BC. e., was part of the Kefalonia state along with the modern islands of Ithaca, Kefalonia, Lefkada, Zakynthos and others. The Kefalinians engaged in agriculture, crafts, were experienced sailors and traded with Crete, Egypt, Cyprus, the regions of present-day Italy, Asia Minor and the Baltic Sea countries. In Homer’s poems, a state with the same set of lands as Kefallia is called the kingdom of Ithaca, which is ruled by Odysseus. And Meganisi most likely acts as the semi-mythical island of Taphos. Its inhabitants succeed in trade and piracy, and the ruler is a good friend of King Ithaca.

Returning home from the Trojan War, Odysseus with his army plundered the Thracian city of Ismar. Then the storm carried his flotilla to the land of lotophages, lotus eaters. Probably to North Africa – to the territory of Libya or Tunisia. Then King Ithaki came to the island of the Cyclops, the geographical prototype of which is most often claimed by Sicily and Crete. But the residents of Meganisi have different data.

Miraculously unscathed (why didn’t I sit on Ithaca?), Cursing serpentines and scooters, I finally catch up with Barnabas. He is waiting in a miniature car park, next to the almost imperceptible sign to the cave. Three large gray rabbits, like sheep, pluck grass near the Barnabas scooter. When we walk along the path to the alleged home of the one-eyed Polyphemus, a pheasant appears from the tall grass and, ignoring us, steps ahead, biting something on the ground. Birds are singing around, butterflies are flying, bells are ringing in the forest, which are hanged on the neck of goats and sheep. People are still not visible – neither tourists nor Aboriginal people. I am ready to believe that three thousand years ago in such a corner of the island the cyclops, or even more than one, could well have been lost.

In the foreseeable part, the cave turns out to be a shallow grotto filled with accreted stalactites and stalagmites. My guide swears that in fact the cave is very large, but a passage into it has not yet been found.

“Archaeologists have explored the cave,” says Barnabas, “found the fragments of an ancient jug in which the one who lived here could store milk. We believe that Cyclops Polyphemus, captivating Odysseus with the team, kept sheep in this place.

The one-eyed giant ate several of King Ithaca’s companions. But Odysseus gouged out the cannibal’s eye and cunningly rescued everyone from the cave: tied three sheep together, and each survivor hid under the belly to the middle sheep in the top three. Letting the sheep out of the cave, the blind Polyphemus felt their backs, thus allowing the fugitives to leave.

“Does Meganisi fit into the Odyssey route?” – the skeptic wakes up in me again.

– Why not? – the descendant of the Tafians raises his hands. “Poseidon could play a cruel joke and throw King Ithaca close to home much earlier than he expected.”

Living “in the country of Odyssey,” it’s hard not to get your own myth. After being saved from the Cyclops, the sailor stayed with the god of the winds Aeolus, then the giants of the Stelrigon destroyed all of his ships, except one. Traces of these adventures are found outside the Ionian archipelago. But the further route of the Odyssey leads to the flowering island of Paxos.

Meganisi’s rugged bays provide shelter for cruise yachts

In a magical embrace

Paxos is buzzing. The local bees, large and fluffy, slowly fly around the bushes of bougainvillea and hibiscus, over meadow irises and fireweed. They hang in front of flowers, as if they want to buzz something important and secret to them: about a forest path that leads to an abandoned house made of stones, or about a boat under sail, recently entering the emerald-turquoise bay of Lakka. On the hills of Paxos, cypresses, olives, almonds and grapes grow. The aromas of local herbs act like a witchcraft potion: inspire dreams of eternal summer and happiness. In the valley near the Ipapandi church, I want to pick up flowers, weave wreaths – such that the blades of grass stick out from them in all directions – and arrange dances with nymphs by the stream. “Tsok-Tsok, Tsok-Tsok” – because of the church fence, not a faun or a centaur comes out to meet, but a red goat. It’s amazing how beautiful her face is, that is, I apologize, muzzle. Exact proportions, clear smart eyes, as if summed up with a brown pencil, long eyelashes and twisted horns, like a crown crowning a regal head. Straight hair goes almost to the ground. The goat comes up and reaches for the flowers that I picked, but did not figure out what to do with them. Having received the bouquet, the wonderful animal disappears into the bushes in one jump.

– Pickaxe! Kirk, where are you? – An elderly woman in yellow linen trousers and a white tunic runs along the path. – Have you seen the goat? Constantly goes to the forest! I’m John, I live here nearby, in a villa. Want yogurt with herbal honey?

In the dining room of Joanna, with wooden multi-colored chairs around a round table, garden and wildflowers stand alternately in several vases. On the wall, in a wicker frame, hangs a photograph of a mistress with a horned Pickaxe (latinized form of the name – Circe). John lays out thick homemade yogurt in a bowl and mixes with light greenish-yellow honey. Serves coffee to yogurt. He says that due to the high prices in Guyos, the main city of Paxos, she moved to the villa several years ago, and her friends gave her Kirk.

“Why did you name the goat after the goddess?”

“Because it’s beautiful,” laughs John. “He loves the forest like a witch.” Everyone knows about Circe. They say she lived on Paxos.

The goddess and sorceress Circea infused the people of Odysseus with a potion and turned them into pigs. King Ithaki himself escaped the same fate with the help of a magical flower and made the Circe to conjure everyone. Odysseus spent a year with the goddess on the fertile island of Eey – Paxos could well have been his prototype. In addition to the lush nature and the bay of Lakka, suitable for anchoring an ancient Greek ship, the English scientist Tim Severin found another nearby landmark from Homer’s poem: the river Acheron, along which Odysseus arrived in the kingdom of the dead to receive a prediction of fate. A river of the same name flows in mainland Greece, opposite Paxos, a few hours from the island. Leaving the beautiful goddess, Odysseus again rushed to “native Ithaca.” If you go south from Paxos, to the modern Ithaca, the island of Lefkada (Lefkada) lies on the way.

Asos, the most photogenic village of Kefalonia, located on the isthmus of the peninsula

Siren shore

I don’t have time to take five steps along the gray rocky Mili beach in the north-west of Lefkada, when a sharp gust of wind first blows my hat, and when I try to catch it, it rips off my scarf. Jogging in a narrow long braid in the afternoon, when the west wind delights only surfers, it costs me a broken knee. I catch a scarf from the water a meter from the shore. I do not have time to dodge the wave, and it merrily rolls me from head to toe. Hats are nowhere to be seen. To dry out and calm down, I’m going away from the surf, to one of the windmills. There are more than ten of them, many without blades and roofs. Someone set up a deck chair next to mine and took it, throwing flippers on the seat. Judging by the layer of accumulated sand and the number of snails that have run up, a week has passed since then.

Miles Beach is not crowded. On the east side of its cape is a sandbank, which at low tide turns into a swamp. Old mills on an almost five-kilometer spit make the landscape both romantic and dreary. The sad mood is aggravated by the wind, which whistles in a stone mill skeleton, and there is not a single sweet-voiced note in this whistle.

According to one version of the Odyssey route, the insidious sirens of the tsarist and his crew lured to this coast. The sorceress Circea warned that the songs of sirens make sailors forget their homes and relatives. Therefore, Odysseus covered his ears with wax for his people, and ordered himself to be tied to the mast in order to enjoy the song and stay alive.

Coldly. I would like to be on Ithac, in the Vati closed from all winds. When it’s cool, the good Zotikos distributes soft terry towels to the tavern’s guests;

– Your panama? – a gloomy man in a surfer costume gives my hat back and smiles unexpectedly contagiously. “I saw you running after her.” Does your leg hurt? Where to take you?

– To Scylla and Charybdis.

Double trap

Usually, the point of deployment of a pair of monsters who destroyed ships and sailors in the Odyssey is the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Apennine Peninsula. But near Lefkada there is a place that fits the description of Homer.

“In the narrow gap between the island and the mainland, turbulences could occur during the strong tides that happened here in antiquity,” says Maya Ksenaki, an employee of the Archaeological Museum of the island of Lefkada. “That explains the legend of Charybdis’s whirlpools.”

Now the strait is calm and shallow. But one can imagine how the water rose here before, rustled and boiled, resembling the roar of an animal. The rowers threw oars out of fear, the captains could not cope with the panic on the ship, the current dragged him and threw him onto the rocks. Or the bulky ship itself could not stand it and broke.

On the hillside of Lamia, towering above the strait on the mainland, along a steep staircase, knocked out in the rock, and in some places along the path among the stones and spiny bushes of May leads me to the den of the second monster. The entrance to the rocky cave is covered with yellowed wooden doors. According to legend, which is 30 years old, a voracious Scylla lived here. According to Homer, she dragged the six best rowers of Odysseus, while he was saving the ship from the swirl of Charybdis.

The doors are not locked, we pull them together with a couple of Danish tourists armed with selfie sticks. Candles burn inside the dark stone hemisphere, icons are placed and the altar of the chapel of St. Anthony is built.

Passing Scylla and Charybdis, Odysseus with the rest of the team ended up on the island of Trinacria (from the Greek “three-pointed”, “three capes”), where the bulls of the sun god Helios grazed. The “Ionian” trace of the route may have been found on Meganisi (again Meganisi!) – the three cleverly indented headlands of the island stand out to sea. In Trinacria, the sailors of Odysseus caught and ate several sacred bulls, for which they paid with their lives. Odysseus himself reached the island of Ogigia, where the nymph Calypso lived. Homer could have in mind the Gozo Maltese island or come up with this waypoint. Odysseus spent seven years with Calypso, until longing for his homelands and Penelope’s wife pushed him back on the road. King Ithaki built a raft and sailed to the island of feacs.

Miracle transfer

When the sea god Poseidon fell in love with the nymph Kerkyra, he fled with her to the nameless island, where they had a son, Feak. The Greeks named the island after the nymphs, it is known to foreigners as Corfu, and Homer used the semi-mythical name Scheria. The son of Poseidon became the ancestor of an entire nation – the sailors of the feacs. They owned magical ships that headed the course, reading the thoughts of the helmsmen, and moved at high speed. Hospitable feacs fed Odysseus, gave him beautiful clothes, gifted with gold, silver and other precious gifts and returned home to Ithaca.

“Studying a myth, you balance between a fairy tale and a truth,” says Kinthia, a student at Ionian University and my guide in Kerkyra. “It doesn’t work differently here: many mythical events are interwoven into the history of our island.” One must be able to “translate” them into the language of reality.

We walk with Kintia through the streets of Ermones, an idyllic village on the west coast of the island. Figs and olives grow in the local gardens, and ripe pomegranate fruits hang from branches on either side of the road. Some have already burst the peel and dark red grains are visible.

“In the garden of the king of the feacs, the same plants grew here as here,” notes Kinthia.

Not far from the village, a stream flows near the sea. How must the princess of the feasts of Nausicaa be afraid when Odysseus, exhausted and ragged, came out of the bushes on the shore …

It is now half an hour from Ermones by car to Paleokastritsa, with its banks covered with pine trees, around several safe bays where the ships of the feacs could stand. On a boat from the harbor of Paleokastritsa, skirting the sharp rocks sticking out of the clear azure water, we approach the bay of St. Spyridon – a semicircular bowl between two large rocks. The western cliff is more suitable for the location of the royal palace – a better view from it, as Kinthia explains.

“When the feac ship returned from Ithaca, Poseidon became angry with them for helping Odysseus,” the guide says, “and on the way to the port he turned the ship into rock.

The guidebooks call the ship of the feacs the island of Pontikonisi – opposite the island’s capital, the city of Kerkyra. But Kintia is sure: if the king’s palace was in the Paleokastritsa area, it would be logical to look for a petrified ship among small cliffs at the foot of the western cliff of Agios Spiridon Bay. One of the rocks near the shore looks like an oblong shape like a ship, but small. There is more, reminiscent of the outlines of the island of Pontikonisi – probably she. But on the other side of the cliff there are still a few suitable stones. Kinthia reassures:

– It doesn’t matter which stone, the main thing is to believe that it is there. Otherwise, how would Odysseus return to Ithaca?

Odysseus would be back, no doubt. Don’t even have the feacs of the magic ship. The question remains where exactly he returned.

I’m at home?

Even early in the morning, while the ebb is on, the Myrtos beach on the island of Kefalonia needs strength and agility to swim. High waves prevent you from entering the water, and the current does not allow to exit. Bathers on the beach two or three people. But in the evening, several groups of tourists are photographed against the sunset. The orange sun falls over the dark brown, almost black line of the mountains, creating a picture in the colors of Mycenaean ceramics, with which Odysseus, if only he was not a fiction of the poet, was well acquainted. There, on the sunset side, is the Paliki Peninsula, one of the first candidates for the right to be called Ithaca Homer, the capital island of the Odyssey kingdom.

Robert Beatlestone, a British amateur archaeologist and researcher of Homer’s work, shocked the world in the mid-2000s with the theory that in the era of the Trojan War Paliki could be separated from the rest of Kefalonia. If so, then, unlike Ithaca, the geography of this island coincides with the description of the kingdom of Odysseus.

Homer (or the authors who spoke under his name) was probably more a poet than a geographer. Kintia is right: everyone who delves into the Odyssey balances on the verge of fiction and truth. Over time, answers will be found. In the meantime …

***

At dusk in the tavern Zotikosa on the embankment of Vati not crowded. Yachts, one after another, pass through the narrow throat of the bay into the harbor and are moored for the night near the pier with the monument to Odysseus. Over the hills, somewhere in the sea several lightnings flare at once, in the city it rains. The owner brings a large dish of something tasty and hot from the kitchen and sets it in front of the sailor, excited about a day’s adventure. He speaks excitedly, and Zotikos, leaning on the counter, listens so carefully, nods and encourages, as if he had never heard such stories before.

At the height of the season, there is no free space in the taverns of Kefalonia

– What did he say? – I ask Zotikos when he passes by, and straightens a warm terry towel on his shoulders.

“Another odyssey,” he answers. “For this they come here.”

– I thought because of the delicious food.

“Not to the tavern,” he grins, “to Ithaca.” Our island is like a house. Cozy, beautiful, sheltered. He gives hope for a return. When you are at sea, it is important to know that you have somewhere to hide from the weather. Any wanderer, mythical or real, will want to return to Ithaca.