Relevant Links

Internet Links (often ephemeral)

• See my new book (2025), The Travels of Odysseus (Oxford), for the theme of Odysseus’ travels, including his return home, his false tales of travel on Ithaca, and various stories of his further travel.
• Cf. Gladstone’s map of earth according to Homer (from volume III of Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, ‘THALASSA: THE OUTER GEOGRAPHY).  I largely agree with his circumscribing Homeric knowledge of the Mediterreanean, though I do not accept details of his argument. This version is on Project Gutenberg. Robarts Library has a torn if better colored version that they kindly scanned for me.
• In this article Armin Wolf usefully surveys maps of the journey of Odysseus, with discussion of issues pertaining to localization and a summary of his own theories.
• Christopher Nolan is reportedly filming in Mediterranean locations for his forthcoming movie on Odysseus’ return,  including Favignana off of Sicily as “Goat Island [Favignana is one of the Aegadi (“Goat”] island]. The Return (dir. Uberto Pasolini), starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, is a recent excellent and meditative study of Odysseus’ return on Ithaca, though not the wanderings.
• “To Sicily and Cyclops” blog (2008), including trip to (Butler’s?) grotto di Poliphemo near Pizzolungo
• “Who were the Cyclopes?” Neolithic cavemen on the Adriatic coast, that’s who [actually a sound ethnographic/archaeological paper, even if the localization is idiosyncratic]
• Mark Twain in a letter composed while on a trip to Europe that resulted in Innocents Abroad refers to “Pozzuoli, where St Paul landed, the Baths of Nero, & the ruins of Baia, & Virgil’s tomb, the Elysian Fields, the Sunken Cities & the spot where Ulysses landed”. The reference may be to localization in this area of the underworld (as in the Aeneas myth); cf. the late legend that Baiae is named after Baius, companion of Odysseus (as Cape Misenum after a Misenus).
• informative blog on North Atlantic localization theories, including F. Vinci’s The Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales, now translated into English (2006) — which we can’t say we recommend.