About Lefkada
Lefkada is a largish island off the west coast of Greece, south of the more famous Corfu. To call it an island almost overstates the case; at the moment, cars have to drive over a very small floating drawbridge that bridges an artificially created canal. Without that canal, it looks like Lefkada would be very nearly joined to the mainland by a narrow spit of land. Not quite, but nearly.
Aristotle Onassis put Lefkada on the modern tourist map when he purchased the small island Skorpios for his very own. There are several private islands in the area, including one inhabited entirely by feral pigs.
Is Lefkada actually Ithaca? Lots of people think so, including Captain Gerasimos of the Odysseia. The most finely argued treatment of this topic comes from Wilhelm Dörpfeld. He was the intellectual successor to Heinrich Schliemann, and wrote about all things Bronze Age archaeological. But he kept coming back to, “Was Lefkada Ithaca?”. Here’s his 1905 treatment of the question.
This is not the place to recapitulate all of his arguments, but here’s a short one. From the Odyssey, Odysseus talking:
My native land is Ithaca, a sunlit island
With a forested peak called Neriton,
Visible for miles. Many other islands
Lie close around her—Doulichion, Samē,
And wooded Zacynthos—off toward the sunrise,
But Ithaca lies low on the evening horizon…
— Homer, Odyssey, 9.24–9.29
So, “Ithaca”, the home-island of Odyssey, has an extra-visible peak. Lefkada’s central peak, Σταυρωτά, is 3,425 feet; “Ithaca’s” highest is only 2,100 ft. But Odysseus’ Ithaca is “low on the evening horizon”, that is, to the West. Looking at our modern map of the islands, it is hard to see how Lefkada could be Odysseus’ Ithaca.
But it is equally hard to see how modern “Ithaki” could be, either, since Kephalonia is larger and farther to the west.
Dörpfeld noted that the ancients did not orient their maps by a magnetic compass, and that our “North” is never at the top of ancient maps. He presents this view, with elaborate argument:
By this map, Lefkada is the farthest west of the islands.
Finally, there is this passage from the Odyssey, in which Odysseus’ swineherd, Eumaeus, innumerates his master’s wealth:
…Twenty men together
Could not match his wealth. Let me count it for you.
Twelve herd of cattle over on the mainland,
And as many flocks of sheep, droves of swine,
And spreading herds of goats—all of them pastured
By his own herdsmen or hired foreigners.
— Homer, Odyssey 14.110-14.115
Dörpfeld is something of a local hero in Lefkada. There’s a statue to him on the Nidri waterfront and several roads named after him throughout Lefkada.