The cave of the Nymphs: Odyssey 13.96–112

The Phaiakes deliver Odysseus to his home island, Ithake, leaving him asleep on the shore. When he wakes up, he hides their gifts to him in a nearby cave:

At the head of the harbour is a long-leafed olive tree;
and near it, a cave, lovely and shaded,
sacred to Nymphs, who are called Naiads.
In it there are jars and amphoras
of stone; and bees store honey in them.
And there are stone looms, long, where Nymphs
weave cloths of shimmering sea-dye, a wonder to see;
and ever-flowing waters. And there are two entrances.
The one to the north is where humans gain access,
the one to the south is more divine: not that way
do men enter — that is the path for immortals.

The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry famously wrote an essay on this passage, interpreting it in allegorical terms (Lamberton 1983). There’s no good reason to think it’s a real cave: even Porphyry reports that no ancient geographical writer could identify it. And the Odyssey’s sense of geography is unrealistic at the best of times.

Real caves

That hasn’t stopped the modern trend for identifying real places as the setting for scenes in the Odyssey. Fans have identified the cave of the Nymphs with multiple real caves: Loizos’ Cave, at Polis Beach; Marmarospilia (‘marble cave’), near Vathi; and Lake Melissani on Kefalonia.

Ancient people left religious votive offerings in these caves, dedicated to a range of divinities, and in a few late cases they seem to have done so under the influence of the Odyssey. But that was centuries later. It doesn’t mean the Odyssey itself is thinking of realist landscapes: as we saw in looking at the wanderings, the Odyssey’s idea of prehistory is related to reality, but it’s a fictional alternate prehistoric reality.

Still, here are a few more details on these candidates.

Polis Beach, Ithaki. Until 1953 Loizos’ Cave was on the north side of the bay, at top. (Image source: DiscoverGreece.com)

Loizos’ Cave was destroyed by the 1953 earthquake, but in the 1930s it had been surveyed by the British School at Athens. This cave did have older votive offerings, some Iron Age, and a few from the Bronze Age. Where it’s possible to identify the divinities that votive offerings are dedicated to, they’re mostly Olympian gods, especially Hera and Artemis. Finds relating to nymphs or Odysseus are late: there are some Hellenistic-era nymph reliefs; and, among a hundred-odd clay masks found in the cave, there’s one mask of a female face, dating to the 2nd/1st century BCE, with ‘prayer to Odysseus’ written on the back. These don’t suggest the Odyssey had this cave in mind in the 7th century BCE: they suggest people in the Roman era were influenced by Homer. The main attraction of this cave as a candidate actually lies in twelve 9th century BCE bronze cauldrons, though they aren’t specific to any divinity, and the context suggests that if they were dedicated to a specific divinity it would most likely be Hera. See further Antonaccio 1995: 152–155. Note that some finds were apparently stolen by Schliemann, who visited the cave in the 1860s, and are presumably lost forever.

Marmarospilia near Vathi, Ithaki, photographed by Teun de Visser, July 2026. (Image source: Google Maps)

Marmarospilia (‘marble cave’) is signposted locally as ‘Cave of Nymphs’ (Σπήλαιο Νυμφών), with UNESCO endorsement — in spite of the fact that it’s 190 metres above sea level, more than a kilometre from the head of the bay where Vathi is located, and the entrance faces away from the bay. It is widely claimed — falsely — that there used to be a second entrance downhill by the bay: that’s wishful thinking, trying to make it sound more like the cave in Odyssey 13. In reality the cave extends about 25 m into the hillside, sloping upwards to the east. The identification with the Odyssey’s cave was proposed by Anna Petroheilou in 1971. The cave is normally closed because of damage done by archaeological excavations in 1998–2002, which left the cave unsafe, and reportedly destroyed many of the cave’s speleothems.

Map of Marmarospilia, rebranded as ‘Cave of Nymphs’: sign located at cave entrance, photographed by Teun de Visser, July 2026. The scale (at right) appears to be in decimetres: another part of the sign reports that the ‘big chamber’ is 10 by 13 metres. (Image source: Google Maps).

Melissani is actually an underground lake in a sinkhole, which was exposed when the roof collapsed in the 1953 earthquake. No scholars have identified it with Odysseus’ Nymph cave (so far as I know), but some tourism materials do, probably because it is extremely colourful with the roof gone. A cave on Kefalonia is under consideration thanks to the theory that ‘Homer’s Ithake’ shouldn’t be identified with modern Ithaki but with the Paliki peninsula of western Kefalonia (though Melissani is not on Paliki).

The Paliki theory is associated with Spiridon Marinatos and Robert Bittlestone. It’s motivated by two false assumptions: (1) Homer is always realist, and the job of modern researchers is to find the reality that corresponds to Homer; (2) geographical descriptions in the Odyssey are always rigorously accurate. Bittlestone, for reference, localises Odysseus’ cave at a hypothetical cave that he thinks must have once existed at Atheras Beach, which he calls ‘Phorcys Bay’ in anticipation of his own theory (Bittlestone 1998: 418–431).

Homeric allegories

When Porphyry wrote his essay on the cave, there was already a long-standing tradition of interpreting Homer allegorically. Where some modern fans like to pretend everything in Homer is literally real, the ancient allegorists liked to treat the poems as hidden knowledge in code. A notable work is Herakleitos’ Homeric problems (1st/2nd century CE), which sees all kinds of meteorological, psychological, and cosmogonic symbolism in Homer. But the tradition goes back centuries: way back in the 6th century BCE Theagenes of Rhegion was already interpreting Homer’s gods as metaphors for natural forces — Hera = air, Hephaistos = fire, and so on.

Herakleitos: see Russell and Konstan 2005. Theagenes: schol. B on Iliad 20.67 (= Porphyry, Homeric questions on the Iliad ad 20.67–75 ed. MacPhail).

In reality, the Odyssey is a fictional narrative designed to be transparent. A sane reading shouldn’t be either realist or allegorical.

Having said that, there are cases of symbolism in Homer. But to look for legitimate cases, we have to explain Homer from Homer. If there’s symbolism, we find it by comparing how Homer operates in other contexts.

For example, hospitality is genuinely symbolic. It’s a cipher for virtue or vice. We know this because it’s a common pattern: a character’s behaviour in a hospitality type scene shows whether they are a good civilised person (they welcome guests into their home properly, they behave well when they visit others) or an uncivilised threat that has to be eliminated (they abuse their host or their guests). Homer uses formulaic scenes to send very specific ethical messages.

What about the cave? Is there legitimately any coded symbolism, whether or not it agrees with Porphyry’s analysis? Well, let’s review the physical features of the cave:

• located next to an olive tree at the head of a bay
• stone ‘jars’ and ‘amphoras’ that act as beehives
• stone ‘looms’ with colourful ‘cloths’
• running water
• two entrances, to north and south

We don’t need to imagine that this is realist in the sense of being a specific real cave on Ithaki; but individual features in isolation may be inspired by features that exist in real caves.

The text specifies that the Nymphs are Naiads: that implies that the running water is a freshwater spring. Some modern readers have reasonably interpreted the stone jars, amphoras, and looms as stalagmites or stalactites. That’s clearest in the case of the ‘looms’: the ‘cloths’ must surely be inspired by flowstone formations.

Flowstone: travertine drapery, also known as cave ‘bacon’, photographed by James St. John in Shenandoah Caverns, Virginia, USA. Pure travertine is white; the coloration here is produced by iron oxides. (Image source: Flickr.com)

No symbolism so far: this is just the text’s direct meaning. I don’t see any clear signs of symbolism in the olive tree, the speleothems, the bees, or the spring.

But the two entrances, one for mortals and one for gods? That’s definitely symbolic. Because it fits into a pattern that appears elsewhere in Homer and in other Archaic poetry.

Dualities: mortal and immortal, real and unreal

The closest parallel for the cave’s two entrances is in Penelope’s account of how dreams work (Odyssey 19.560–569).

Stranger, dreams are stories impossible to work out,
and not all of them work out for humans.
For fleeting dreams have have two gates:
one is made of horn, and the other of ivory.
The ones that come through the sawn ivory,
those ones cheat you: their words are irrelephant.
But the ones that come through the door of sawn horns,
truth is deer to them, whenever someone sees one of them.
I do not think my strange dream came from there,
though it would be good news for me and my son if it did.

By the way, the wordplays aren’t jokes: in Greek, the ‘ivory’ (elephas) dreams are cheaters (elephairontai), and the ‘horn’ (keras) dreams accomplish things (krainousi). In early Greek literature, wordplay is word magic.

Poems, dreams, and oracles are regularly cast in terms of two types of knowledge: truth and falsehood, divine and mortal, day and night, reality and opinion. The divine knowledge of the Muses is real, while mortal knowledge is just rumour or kleos (Iliad 2.484–486). At the same time, the Muses know both how to say false things that sound real, and also how to declare the truth (Theogony 27–28). Apollo warns that mortals who rely on valid omen birds will do well, but those who trust in vain birds will achieve nothing (Hymn to Hermes 543–549).

Gates and doorways are a particularly vivid bit of imagery for the two types of knowledge. In Penelope’s account, and in the cave of the Nymphs, one door is reserved for the mortal and the unreal. The other is for truth, the divine, and the real.

Compare how Parmenides passes the gates of Night and Day on his journey along the ‘road of the divinity’, travelling the path of knowledge:

Hastening to guide me to the light
the daughters of the Sun left the house of Night,
lifting the veils from their faces with their hands.
Here are the gates of the paths of Night and Day:
they have a lintel, and a stone threshold,
and the gates of aither fill the great doorframe.
Justice, goddess of payment, holds the keys of exchange.

Parmenides, On nature fr. B1.8–14

Rather than one gate for each type of knowledge, these gates are the barrier between day and night. Parmenides goes on to talk at length about the relationship between what is and what is not, and between truth and opinion. He does not name the goddess who instructs him in these things: the role of an oracle would typically be played by Night, as in the Derveni Theogony. When Justice allows him through the gates, it is ambiguous whether he is passing from day to night or from night to day; Hesiod, too, talks of Night and Day ‘exchanging’ as they pass the threshold of their house (Theogony 748–754).

Porphyry suggests that the mortal entrance to the cave of the Nymphs is for entering the cave, and the divine entrance for ‘those ascending to the gods’ (On the cave of the Nymphs 23). He singles out Parmenides, saying that Parmenides was thinking of Odysseus’ cave when he wrote about the gates of Night and Day. The symbolism is a bit more widespread than that. But Porphyry is certainly right in seeing that they’re related.

On the motif of ‘two types of knowledge’ see Gainsford 2015: 48–50. On mortal-immortal dualities in Parmenides, see Tor 2017: 227–250, with discussion of links to Porphyry and the cave of the Nymphs at 247–248.

References

• Antonaccio, C. M. 1995. An archaeology of ancestors. Tomb cult and hero cult in early Greece. London.
• Gainsford, P. 2015. Early Greek hexameter poetry. Cambridge. [Cambridge Core]
• Lamberton, R. (tr.) 1983. Porphyry. On the cave of the Nymphs. Barrytown (NY). [Internet Archive]
• Russell, D. A.; Konstan, D. (ed., tr.) 2005. Heraclitus: Homeric problems. Atlanta.
• Tor, S. 2017. Mortal and divine in early Greek epistemology. Cambridge.

Odysseus’ wanderings

Odysseus’ wanderings are the most famous sequence in Homer’s Odyssey. The Cyclops, the Lotus-eaters, and Circe are some of the epic’s most memorable parts, even though the wanderings as a whole occupy only one sixth of the poem.

On one level, they’re pretty clearly envisaged as taking place in an Otherworld, like a portal fantasy or isekai. On another level, they have strong links to real geographical locations. The Otherworld isn’t totally unreal. But the real places aren’t anything like how the Odyssey describes them. (For one thing, Sicily doesn’t have real Cyclopes.)

Real places, mythical footprints

The most straightforward example is Circe, the sorceress who uses magic potions to turn sailors into pigs. In Odyssey 10, Circe lives on an island in some indefinite location. But throughout antiquity, Circe’s home was always imagined to be at Monte Circeo in Italy, 90 km southeast of Rome.

Monte Circeo as seen from Terracina (image source: Wikimedia)

An epilogue to the Hesiodic Theogony has Circe and her family there ruling over the Tyrrhenians (a general Greek term for the people of western Italy); in the 500s BCE Rome founded a colony at Monte Circeo named after her, Circeii; a fragment of Aeschylus’ poetry refers to the Tyrrhenians as a ‘pharmakon-making race’, referring to Circe’s potions.

Hesiod: Theogony 1011–1016. Circeii: Livy 1.56.3; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 4.63.1. Aeschylus: eleg. fr. 2 West2.

Circe leaves footprints on the real place, even though she’s mythical. Her association with the area never faded: Apollonius again has her living in Italy in the Argonautica, she and her descendents are linked to founding legends for several cities in the area, and a Roman-era folktale gives her an Italian apprentice named Hals (‘sea’) who ends up turning Odysseus into a horse for the rest of his life.

Apollonius: Argonautica 3.310–313. Foundation legends: Telegonus as founder of Tusculum and ancestor of the gens Mamilia (Dionysius of Halicarnassus 4.45.1; Horace, Epistles 1.29–30; Livy 1.49.9; etc. etc.) and, in isolated sources, Praeneste (Aristokles, FGrHist 831 F2) and Caere (Servius on Aeneid 8.479); Telemachus as founder of Clusium (Servius on Aeneid 10.167). Hals turning Odysseus into a horse: Ptolemaios Chennos, in Photius’ Myriobiblon 190, 150.i.12–19 ed. Bekker; Sextus Empiricus, adversus Mathematicos 1.267; Servius auctus on Aeneid 2.44; schol. V on Odyssey 11.134.

So, an Otherworld, but also not. It's more like an imaginary prehistory: like Tolkien’s legendarium, or Robert E. Howard’s ‘Hyborian Age’ — except that Homer doesn’t redraw the coastlines of entire continents. He limits himself to relatively minor things like imagining that Monte Circeo was once an island.

‘Localisations’ baked into the Odyssey ... sort of

Similar things apply to the other stopovers in Odysseus’ wanderings. It’s just that they aren’t so well attested, or attested so early. There was some variation in where ancient people imagined each stopover as taking place, but many of them are pretty consistent:

• (book 9) Kikones — Thrace.
• Cape Malea, Kythera (specified by name in the Odyssey).
• Lotus-eaters — usually localised in Djerba (Tunisia).
• Cyclops — Sicily.
• (book 10) Aeolus — Isole Eolie (islands north of Sicily).
• Laestrygonians — Sicily.
• Circe (Aia) — Monte Circeo, Lazio.
• (book 11) soul-summoning, Nekyia, or ‘land of the dead’ — doublet: stated in the text to be beyond Oceanus among the Cimmerians, but soul-summoning was historically practised at Lake Averno, Campania, and Ephorus located the final home of the Cimmerians in Campania.
• (book 12) Sirens — Li Galli (islets south of Sorrento).
• Scylla and Charybdis — Strait of Messina.
• Cattle of the Sun (Thrinakia) — apparently Sicily (Thucydides gives Trinakria, ‘three-cornered’, as an old name for Sicily)
• Calypso (Ogygia) — various; sometimes localised in Atlantic Ocean

Sources: Kikones: Ismaros (Od. 9.39–40) is named for Lake Ismaris, Thrace. Malea and Kythera: Odyssey 9.79–81. Lotus-eaters: Polybius apud Strabo 1.2.17. Cyclops, Laestrygonians: Thucydides 6.2.1, etc. Aeolus: Thucydides 3.88. Circe: see main text. Nekyia beyond Oceanus: Od. 10.511, 11.13–22, 11.638–12.1. Nekyia among Cimmerians: Od. 11.14. Nekyia at Averno, in Campania among Cimmerians: Ephorus FGrHist 70 F 134a = Strabo 5.4.5; see further Ogden 2001: 23–24, 61–74. Sirens in Tyrrhenian Sea: Hesiod fr. 27 M-W (schol. on Apollonios Argonautika 4.892 states that Apollonios localises the Sirens on the same island as Hesiod), calling their island ‘Anthemoessa’. Sirens at ‘Seirenoussai’ (= Li Galli): Strabo 1.2.12, etc. Scylla and Charybdis at ‘Scyllaeum’, i.e. Strait of Messina: Polybius apud Strabo 1.2.15 (see further Phillips 1953: 59 n.66). Thrinacia: Sicily = Trinakria, Thucydides 6.2.2.

Odyssean Italy. In red: real Greek colonies that existed by ca. 650 BCE, around the time the Odyssey was composed (pale colour denotes doubtful cases). Blue: sites of Odyssean significance, either associated with the wanderings in the Odyssey, or linked to foundation legends involving Odysseus’ and Circe’s children.

Scholars tend to take the position that in the Odyssey itself, the wanderings are set in a purely imaginary Otherworld, and localisations for Odysseus’ stopovers are later developments. That's the position taken by Jonathan Burgess in his 2025 book The travels of Odysseus.

I mostly disagree. But in a nuanced way. To Greek colonists in Italy and Sicily, the ‘localisations’ of Odysseus’ wanderings felt very real. If you superimpose them on a map of Greek colonies that existed at the time, the wanderings look like a checklist of Greek colonies (in red, in the figure above) and trading partners (further north, especially in Etruria).

But this needs nuance. It’s instructive to look at Strabo’s long discussion of the geography of the Odyssey (Geography 1.2.7–33), and how it was treated by earlier scholars like Eratosthenes. It’s no good to say Homer’s geography is wholly fictional, as Eratosthenes did; but is equally wrong to say it’s strictly realist, as Strabo does.

You will find where Odysseus wandered when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds.

Eratosthenes, Geographica F5 Roller (= Strabo 1.2.15)

Eratosthenes is right to the extent that Homer’s geographical knowledge is poor, so poor that it barely counts as real. The myths are mythical. But they still echo real places.

First, as we’ve just seen, Circe was always placed at Monte Circeo. The setting for the Sirens is early too: from the 9th to the 5th centuries BCE, the Greek colony of what is now Naples was named Parthenope. Either Parthenope was considered to be one of the Sirens all along, or she became identified as a Siren sometime within that period.

The ‘localisations came later’ position is true in the sense that the Odyssey is mostly ignorant of the real geography. But it’s a bit like Dan Brown writing about Paris in The Da Vinci Code: the landmarks are real, but ... they’re wrong. Contemporary Greek colonists knew their way around Italy and Sicily; some sailors made it as far as Gibraltar. The epic knows these places exist. But it doesn’t have a clear idea of where they are or what they’re like. It doesn’t even know Ithaki!

Some of the Ionian islands as seen in Google Earth, looking westward (annotations in large type are mine). The real Ithaki is in the middle of the group; by contrast, the Odyssey thinks that Ithakē ‘lies furthest out in the sea towards the sunset, and the other islands are towards the dawn and the sun’ (9.25–26). If you think Homer’s geographical information is realist and accurate, you might want to instead localise ‘Ithakē’ on the Paliki peninsula of Kefalonia, as Marinatos did. But the Odyssey is an epic, not a carefully-researched geographical survey.

The colonists who lived in these places couldn’t help but find the story real — just as Homer’s Ithaca, even with its wild inaccuracies, feels real to the people who live on Ithaki today. Modern tourism maps of Ithaki are studded with Odyssey-themed locations.

In that nuanced sense, the localisations were baked in right from the start. The Odyssey isn’t clear on where Monte Circeo is, but it knows Circe lived somewhere along the Italian coast. It doesn’t know the Bay of Naples, but it knows that soul-summoning was practised at a lake near Cumae. It doesn’t know the layout of Sicily, but it knows that there are Greek colonists living on an island called Trinakria ‘three-cornered’ (or Thrinakia, adjusted to make it fit into dactylic hexameter).

Modern Odysseus-hunters love to come up with their own localisations, of course. That kind of mindframe takes a realist reading of the Odyssey, confident that every geographic detail is literally true — well, except the inconvenient details, naturally. I recommend against engaging with them (unless it’s to plunder them for citations of ancient geographical sources).

Lycophron’s Odyssey

The Odyssey’s understanding of Italian geography is shaky, but the 3rd century BCE poet Lycophron has much more detailed knowledge.

Lycophron’s Alexandra is a 1474-line mythological poem in iambic trimeter. It’s framed as a prophecy uttered by Cassandra about the horrible fates that await the Greeks who are going to destroy Troy. Lines 648 to 819 deal with Odysseus’ wanderings and his death.

For commentaries on the Odyssean part of the poem, see Schade 1999; Hurst 2008: 190–228; Hornblower 2015: 273–317. On Odysseus’ attachments to Italy more generally, see Phillips 1953.

The Alexandra is framed in obscure language, and densely packed with outrageously esoteric allusions. Here’s a taster, the bit about Odysseus’ death at the hands of Telegonus:

Finally, like a bird running on the waves,
worn down by brine on all sides like a shellfish,
finding his wealth squandered in the feasting of the Pronians
along with the fiercely raging Lacaenian woman,
wrinkled after escaping the sea’s shelter, he will die
with weapons, a crow, near Neritonian groves.
A deadly point will strike his side and kill him
with the sting of a Sardinian fish, impossible to heal.
His offspring will be called his father’s butcher,
the maternal cousin of Achilleus’ bride.

Lykophron, Alexandra 789–798

There are many obscurities to explain here:

• ‘Pronians’: Penelope’s Cephallenian suitors. The Prōnnoi were the people of a city on Cephallenia (Thucydides 2.30).
• ‘Lacaenian woman’: Penelope as Laconian. Her father Icarius was the brother of Tyndareus of Sparta.
• ‘fiercely raging’: in some non-Homeric variants, Penelope actively colluded with the suitors, or even had sex with all of them (thereby engendering the god Pan).
• ‘escaping the sea’s shelter’: a kenning for a ship; i.e. escaping a life at sea.
• ‘crow’: emblematic of extreme old age.
• ‘Neritonian groves’: Mt Neriton, on Ithaca. This line seems to presuppose a story that Odysseus is warned by an oracle or a dream that his son will kill him, and he goes into hiding in the hills (this story appears explicitly in ‘Dictys of Crete’ 6.14, 1st/2nd century CE).
• ‘sting of a Sardinian fish’: Telegonus uses a spear tipped with the venomous sting of a ray. Other sources don’t discuss the ray’s origin. ‘Sardinian’ (across the Tyrrhenian Sea from Lazio) evokes a story that the Sardinians allegedly euthanised their elderly, using a poison that produced a rictus grin known popularly as the ‘Sardonic smile’.
• ‘His offspring’: Telegonus, son of Odysseus and Circe.
• ‘maternal cousin of Achilleus’ bride’: cousin of Medea. Medea is in fact Circe’s niece, and in some traditions she marries Achilleus in the afterlife. (This translation interprets αὐτανέψιος as ‘maternal cousin’ by analogy with αὐτοκασίγνητος and αὐτάδελφος, ‘brother by the same mother’.)

As you can imagine, this is a poem that really needs accompanying notes.

It’s also controversial whether it’s really by Lycophron, and whether it’s the work of a single poet or a synthesis written in multiple periods. To my eyes, most of the doubts are motivated by a refusal to accept that Odysseus’ wanderings were deeply embedded in the Italian landscape all along.

Lycophron’s version of the wanderings covers most of the same ground as the ‘standard’ localisations above, though in a different sequence:

• Alexandra 648. Lotus-eaters: Odysseus will visit Syrtis (Gabès, near Djerba) and ‘the plains of Libya’ (not the modern country but the ancient Greek name for all of northern Africa).
• 649–652. Scylla: the ‘hybrid’ at the ‘Tyrrhenian strait’ (Strait of Messina).
• 653. Sirens, the ‘harpy-limbed nightingales’ on their rocks.
• 659–661. The Cyclops, the ‘fierce one-eye’ who will drink Odysseus’ wine.
• 662–665. Laestrygonians, the ‘remnant’ left unslain by Heracles.
• 666–672. Further references to Charybdis, Scylla, and the Sirens.
• 681–693. Consultation of the dead, set close to Ischia (‘the island that crushed the back of the Giants’) and the Greek colony at Pithecusae (where Zeus put ‘a race of apes’, pithēkoi).
• 694–711. Baiae, Cumae, and Lake Averno. Odysseus passes the tomb of his steersman Baius; the ‘Cimmerians’ (placed at Cumae also by Strabo, Geography 5.4.5); and the ‘Acherousian waters’, i.e. lakeside oracle of the dead, at Aornos, the Greek name for Averno.
• 712–737. The death of the Sirens, throwing themselves into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Parthenope washes ashore near the river Clanio (north of Naples) and receives cult honours from the Neapolitans; Leucosia washes ashore at ‘the rock that bears her name’, i.e. Licosa, south of Paestum; Ligeia washes ashore at Terina, an ancient city near the coast, west of Catanzaro.
• 738–748. Calypso, the ‘daughtter of Atlas’. Location not specified; but the relationship with Atlas implies somewhere near or beyond the Atlas mountains and Gibraltar.
• 749–761. A non-Homeric interlude where Odysseus visits the sea god Glaucus. Location not specified, but Glaucus has links of his own to Italy.
• 761–765. Cercyra (often regarded as a localisation of Homeric Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians): the ‘isle of the sickle’.
• 766–788. Return to Ithaca: the events of Odyssey 13–24.
• 789–798. Odysseus’ death at the hands of his and Circe’s son Telegonus.
• 799–811. Odysseus in both northwest Greece and Italy: he receives cult honours among the Eurytanians and Trampya (Aetolia and Thesprotia, in Greece), and is buried at ‘the hill of the Tyrrhenians in Gortynaia’ (Cortona, in Italy). This geographical duality mirrors a similar duality in the lost Telegony, whose first part was set in Thesprotia, with the second part beginning and ending at Circe's home in Italy.

Later in the poem at lines 1236–1245 there’s also a scene where Aeneas encounters Odysseus while travelling in Etruria, and they combine forces. This alludes to an eccentric tradition attested in fragments of Hellanicus and Damastes that the two of them founded Rome together (New Jacoby 4 F 84, 5 F 3). The context for these fragments is obscure, but sits well with the other foundation legends associated with Telemachus and Telegonus dotted around Latium and Etruria.

References

• Burgess, J. 2025. The travels of Odysseus. Oxford. [DOI]
• Hornblower, S. 2015. Lykophron. Alexandra. Greek text, translation, commentary, and introduction. Oxford.
• —— 2018. Lykophron's Alexandra, Rome, and the Hellenistic world. Oxford.
• Hurst, A. 2008. Lycophron. Alexandra. Paris.
• Ogden, D. 2001. Greek and Roman necromancy. Princeton.
• Phillips, E. D. 1953. ‘Odysseus in Italy.’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 73: 53–67. [JSTOR]
• Schade, G. 1999. Lykophrons ‘Odyssee’. Alexandra 648–819. Berlin. [DOI]

The Odyssey on screen: a catalogue

A catalogue of onscreen versions of the Odyssey. This list includes metatheatrical versions, parodies, and adaptations of parodies (including James Joyce’s novel Ulysses).

Dan Renalds as Telemachus, Kelly B. Jones as Penelope, and Dylan Vox as Odysseus (Troy: the Odyssey, 2017)

Year	Title	Director / medium	Country	Actors: ‘Odysseus’, ‘Penelope’, ‘Telemachos’
1905	L’île de Calypso – Ulysse et le géant Polyphème	Georges Méliès	France	Georges Méliès, —, —
1909	Le retour d’Ulysse	André Calmettes	France	Paul Mounet, Régina Badet, —
1911	L'Odissea	Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan	Italy	Giuseppe De Liguoro, ?, ?
1918	Die Heimkehr des Odysseus (parody)	Rudolf Biebrach	Germany	Bruno Decarli, Henny Porten, —
1922	Die Heimkehr des Odysseus	Max Obal	Germany	(?)Luciano Albertini, (?)Claire Lotto, —
1954	Ulisse	Mario Camerini	Italy	Kirk Douglas, Silvana Mangano, Franco Interlenghi
1962	Ulisse contro Ercole (parody)	Mario Caiano	Italy, France	Georges Machal, —, —
1963	Le mépris (meta)	Jean-Luc Godard	France	Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, —
1965	Il ritorno di Ringo (alternate setting)	Duccio Tessari	Italy	Giuliano Gemma, Hally Hammond, —
1967	Ulysses (Joyce adaptation)	Joseph Strick	Ireland, UK, USA	Milo O’Shea, Barbara Jefford, Maurice Roëves
1968	L’Odissea	TV series	Italy	Bekim Fehmiu, Irene Papas, Renaud Verley
1982	Ulysses 31 / 宇宙伝説ユリシーズ31 (alternate setting)	TV series, anime	France, Japan, Luxembourg	Osamu Kobayashi, —, Yū Mizushima
1988	James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ (Joyce adaptation)	TV episode (The modern world: ten great writers)	UK, Ireland	David Suchet, Sorcha Cusack, John Lynch
1989	Nostos: il ritorno	Franco Piavoli	Italy	Luigi Mezzanotte, ?, ?
1993	Naked (meta)	Mike Leigh	UK	David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, —
1995	Το βλέμμα του Οδυσσέα (meta)	Th. Angelopoulos	Greece	Harvey Keitel, Maia Morgenstern, —
1995	Homer sweet Homer	TV episode (Wishbone)	USA	Larry Brantley, —, —
1997	The Odyssey	TV miniseries	USA	Armand Assante, Greta Scacchi, Alan Stenson
1997	Ulysses	TV episode (Xena: Warrior Princess)	New Zealand/USA	John D’Aquino, Rachel Blakely, —
2000	O brother, where art thou? (alternate setting)	Joel Coen, Ethan Coen	USA	George Clooney, Holly Hunter, —
2000	Sans plomb (parody)	Muriel Téodori	France	Alexis Loret, Emma de Caunes, —
2003	Bloom (Joyce adaptation)	Sean Walsh	Ireland	Stephen Rea, Angeline Ball, Hugh O’Connor
2003	Mission Odyssey	TV series, animated	France, Germany	Cyrille Artaux, Sophie Arthuys, —
2008	Odysseus and the isle of mists	TV movie	USA	Arnold Vosloo, Leah Gibson, —
2011	Keyhole (alternate setting)	Guy Maddin	Canada	Jason Patric, Isabella Rosselini, —
2017	Troy: the Odyssey	TV movie	USA	Dylan Vox, Kelly B. Jones, Dan Renalds
2017	Prison break, season 5 (alternate setting)	TV series	USA	Wentworth Miller, Sarah Wayne Callies, Christian Michael Cooper
2018	Odysseus	TV episode (Superhelden)	Germany	not credited, —, —
2021	Les grands mythes, season 3	TV series, animated	France	—, —, —
2024	The return	Uberto Pasolini	Italy, Greece, UK	Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Charlie Plummer
2026	The Odyssey	Christopher Nolan	USA	Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland

Matt Damon as Odysseus (The Odyssey, 2026)

The highest-profile productions listed here are the Kirk Douglas Ulisse (1954); the fondly remembered Italian series L’Odissea (1968); the US miniseries The Odyssey (1997); and the most recent renditions, Pasolini’s The return (2024) and Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026).

Since ethnicity in the Odyssey is a hot topic at the moment, I’ll note that there is only one Greek actor in this list, Irene Papas as Penelope in L’Odissea (1968); she also played Odysseus’ mother Anticlea in The Odyssey (1997). Almost all the other actors represented here have northern and/or western European backgrounds. The exceptions are Osamu Kobayashi and Yū Mizushima, the original voice actors for Yurishizu and Teremaku in Ulysses 31 (1981–1982); Maia Morgenstern as the various women in A’s life in Ulysses’ Gaze (1995); and Kelly B. Jones as Penelope in Troy: the Odyssey (2017).

History and the Odyssey

The Odyssey is coming out soon, a feature film starring Matt Damon, and directed and written by Christopher Nolan.

Various online pundits have already criticised it, focusing on historical authenticity — faithfulness to some preconceived idea of how the world in the film ought to look. Why isn’t Odysseus’ armour consistent with Bronze Age armour? Why does his ship look like a viking longship? And above all, how dare they cast some actors of non-northern-European extraction!

Odysseus and his men blinding the Cyclops. If you use Homer’s Odyssey as the one true measuring stick, you will find multiple ‘anachronisms’ and ‘inauthenticities’: (1) the tool used to blind the Cyclops is a metal implement (either a forked cooking spit or a spear with a leaf-shaped blade), not the sharpened log used in Odyssey 9; (2) the drinking cup that the Cyclops is holding is a precursor to the Type A kylix, which only came into use in the 500s BCE; (3) Odysseus is helped by only two men instead of four (Od. 9.334–335). (Protoattic amphora, Eleusis Museum, ca. 650–625 BCE; figures are about 42 cm high)

Two kinds of response:

1. There’s no sense in which the Odyssey is set in the Bronze Age. It is set at some indefinite point in a fictional past, but it’s totally flooded with classical-era motifs and preoccupations, with a smattering of archaic touches for decoration.
2. Myths are always tailored to contemporary audiences. They always have been — including Homer. There’s no canon of how things and characters ought to look: Homer wasn’t ‘authentic’ in that sense, and if Homer isn’t, no one is.

1. There’s nothing Bronze Age about the Odyssey

Recently a popular religious historian on Youtube said: ‘the Odyssey is set at the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BCE’ (Henry 2026). Andrew Henry is a deeply knowledgeable scholar, but for this point he made the mistake of relying on common wisdom.

Many people are taught that Homer ‘remembers’ a story that was repeated over generations. There was an Odyssey tradition: a story transmitted orally for centuries, containing a fossilised core of Bronze Age elements.

The trouble is, there’s no actual evidence to suggest that. It’s entirely based on an analogy with the metrical formulaic system. The formulaic system did indeed exist for some period before 700 BCE: the style of language reflects a tradition more than a hundred years old at the time, possibly a lot older. But the same thing doesn’t automatically apply to the story.

There’s nothing Bronze-Age-specific about the Odyssey. By contrast, there’s a torrent of material that is 8th/7th-century-specific. So I don’t just mean it’s Iron Age: it’s classical era. There are reasons to think the story is a bit older than the Odyssey itself, but probably not by much: some aspects of the Trojan War myth presuppose the existence of the 8th century BCE Greek colony at Troy.

Note. For clarity: here ‘classical era’, with a small c, means the historical era, starting in the early 700s BCE with the development of the classical alphabet. This includes the Archaic period (traditionally 776–480 BCE) as well as the Classical period proper (480 BCE onwards).

Even if we granted the idea of a long-standing ‘Odyssey tradition’, no material can be shown to have entered that tradition earlier than the late 700s BCE. The Iliad does have a handful of Bronze Age motifs — the Odyssey has none at all — but even in the Iliad cases, we can be extremely confident that those motifs entered a purported ‘Iliad tradition’ at a late date.

The most famous example is a boar’s tusk helmet described in Iliad 10.261–265. Boar’s tusk helmets are a real Bronze Age thing, associated especially with the 15th–14th centuries BCE. But Iliad 10 was inserted into the Iliad after the rest of the epic was already in place, probably in the decades on either side of 600 BCE. This Mycenaean boar’s tusk helmet is in the latest part of the Iliad. And because it’s an insertion, it tells us nothing at all about the setting of Iliad 1–9 and 11–24.

Note. See e.g. West 2011: 233–235. Recently I covered a bunch of other supposedly Bronze Age elements in the Iliad in more detail.

How to make sense of a Mycenaean artefact in that context? Well, there’s a conversation to be had about that, but here and now, the point is this. However that artefact or that description was transmitted, it wasn’t as part of an Iliad tradition. There are no elements that can be shown to have entered an Iliad tradition at an early date.

The Odyssey has no notion of what the Mycenaean palace culture was, nor of a Bronze Age. (‘Bronze Age’ is a modern periodisation: it was invented in the early 1800s CE.) But it is stuffed with story elements, cultural trends, and preoccupations that are firmly embedded in the classical era.

• The story of Penelope and the Suitors dramatises a problem with classical-era inheritance law, specifically a practice that Athenians called the epiklerate. When a man died without a male heir, his wife would become epikleros (‘attached to the estate’) so that the estate could be passed on by marrying her off to a male relative. The Odyssey creates an intractable legal situation by closing off all standard inheritance scenarios. Telemachos cannot inherit because he’s a minor (or treated as one), so Penelope becomes epikleros. But Odysseus has no brothers or male uncles that Penelope can be married off to (Od. 16.116–120). The Suitors are the only people available to marry her: and they’re unrelated to the household, and vicious thieving murderers. But because there’s no alternative, Penelope’s father and brothers want her to marry one of the Suitors (Od. 15.16). The standard inheritance model is only salvaged by Odysseus’ surprise return.
• Metal artefacts in the Odyssey are normally made of iron (axes, weapons, arrowheads, ploughs, shepherds’ tools, etc.). The exceptions are a handful of prestige items. A couple of passages in the Odyssey treat the iron trade as commonplace, and describe aspects of iron production processes.
• Bronze, by contrast, is a prestige material. And it’s only in the centuries after 900 BCE that both of the following were true: (a) bronze was a prestige material, and (b) iron was not a prestige material. For fuller details, and for a full listing of references to iron, see this piece, in the section ‘Bronze weapons and armour’.
• Frequent references to Phoenician traders require a setting after 800 BCE, after the rise of Phoenician trading dominance and Greek-Phoenician trading relations. Trade in the Odyssey generally has a colonisation-era look and feel.
• The assembly plays a key role in civic life and government, meeting in the agora: see especially Odyssey 2.1–259, 8.4–25, 16.361–406, 20.144–146 (there are also multiple assemblies in front of Odysseus’ house). The assembly and agora are distinctively classical-era political features.
• In Odysseus’ wanderings, most stopovers are envisaged as fictional prehistoric versions of Greek colonies founded in the 700s and 600s, notably in Sicily and up the west coast of Italy. This has the effect of making Odysseus an archetype for real colonists, paving a mythical path for them.

John Waterhouse, ‘Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses’ (1891; image source: Wikimedia). This too is not a Bronze Age scene: the cup is a Type C kylix, no earlier than the 400s BCE; glass mirrors didn’t begin to come into use in the Mediterranean world until the 1st century CE; Doric columns put us in the Archaic period or later (700s BCE onwards).

Now, there are archaising elements too. But the archaification is mostly artificial.

Imagine it’s 2026 and you’re watching a fantasy movie set in a quasi-mediaeval past. You don’t expect to see authentic mediaeval warfare, because film-makers have no idea what that looked like. You don’t expect to see 2026-style warfare either, because drones blowing things up would ruin the atmosphere. What you expect is warfare that’s archaic in flavour, without being authentic; but which is still cool according to 2026 tastes.

And that’s exactly what Homer provides. A faux archaic flavour, but completely framed around contemporary practices and motifs.

Naturally this creates lots of anachronism. In book 2, when Telemachos presents his case against the Suitors before the assembly, he’s taking part in a 7th century political process, with heralds and standardised seating arrangements. But in book 3 when he goes on a voyage in search of his father, the idea is that we’re in ‘olde times’: there are no modern mechanisms for travelling between cities or finding housing in a different city. The story transitions back and forth between the contemporary and the purely mythical.

The world-building is comparable to that of Game of Thrones. They’re both versions of an imaginary past, but the archaism is inconsistent, anachronistic, and there’s a hefty dose of fantasy. (Except Homer is the more unreal of the two — George R. R. Martin at least had the option of being more ‘authentic’, if he felt like picking up a book about the Wars of the Roses.)

2. Myths are always contemporary

A myth is a story with a purpose. It has to be contemporary. If it isn’t, if it has no contemporary purpose, then it’s just a sterile relic behind glass.

Every iteration of the story of Odysseus has always looked wildly different, and has been tailored to the time the story was being told. There have been between 25 and 30 previous onscreen versions of the story of Odysseus, ranging from Georges Méliès’ L’île de Calypso (1905) to Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (2024). Some reproduce aspects of the epic relatively literally, like the Italian TV series L’Odissea (1968), and the US TV movie The Odyssey (1997). Others transplant it into a different setting, like the anime series Ulysses 31 (1981–1982) and season 5 of Prison Break (2017). Some take a metaphorical approach, alluding to Homer’s epic in a metatheatrical way, like Godard’s Le mépris (1963) and the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Then there are the musical versions, like Rivera-Herrans’ Epic: the Musical (2022–2024), Symphony X’s The Odyssey (2002), and a bunch of classical operas.

Not even the most literal of these is ‘faithful’ by the standards of 2026 pundits. The thing is, even Homer isn’t ‘faithful’, in the sense of being historically realistic. It’s turtles all the way down.

Isabella Rosselini in two Odyssean roles: left, as Athena in The Odyssey (1997); right as Hyacinth, a Penelope analogue, in Keyhole (2012).

Every iteration has looked wildly different. As the Homer scholar Joel Christensen pointed out earlier this year, in Euripides there’s a Helen made of clouds; in the 6th century BCE poet Stesichoros, Helen is a pornographic painting, which Paris used to ‘assuage his passion’.

Stesichorus in his poetry tells that when Alexander had seized Helen and was making his way through Pharos [in Egypt] he was robbed of her by Proteus and received from him her portrait [eidōlon] painted on a panel, so that he could assuage his passion by looking at it.

Note: Euripides, Helen 29–36; Stesichoros, Palinode fr. 192 ed. and tr. Campbell (= scholion on Aelius Aristides, Oration 1.128; iii.150 ed. Dindorf).

Homer’s Helen is human, but she too is a contemporary figure. She’s tailored to a 7th-century-BCE story about inheritance law. Her marriage with Menelaos holds up a mirror to Odysseus’ household: Odysseus’ estate is in legal limbo because of a lack of heirs, but when we first see Helen’s and Menelaos’ family in the Odyssey, they’re celebrating their daughter’s wedding — they’re ensuring continuity to the next generation. There will be someone to inherit their estate. This is a very classical-era preoccupation: it’s contemporary. There’s no such thing as ‘historical Homer’ (as Christensen also pointed out).

Exactly the same is true in all the modern treatments. None of them adheres strictly to Homer. In O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Poseidon is a ruthless American sheriff. In Ulysses’ Gaze (1995), the Cyclops is a statue of Lenin carried up the Danube on a barge. In The Odyssey (1997), Teiresias is Christopher Lee sitting in a fiery cave next to a river of lava. In Keyhole (2012), the Suitors are ghosts that haunt Odysseus’ house. In Epic the Musical (2022–2024) Aiolos lives on a floating island, but it’s floating in the sky. In Fauré’s Pénélope (1913), Penelope is friends with Eumaios, and Eumaios is a shepherd.

None of these is faithful. And that’s fine. That’s in spite of the fact that these variations are more significant than the kinds of axes that 2026 pundits like to grind.

No treatment could, or should, try to reproduce Homer with complete fidelity. That’d be crazy. Even if they wanted to, what should they emulate? Which period? You need to find a period when Phoenician merchants dominated international trade, when implements were standardly made of iron, Greek sailors were venturing as far as the Atlantic Ocean, and Greek cities were governed by assemblies. That’ll be in the 600s BCE, then. So no Bronze Age gear please, and Troy had better look like the 7th-century-BCE Greek colony. (Which is what the Iliad envisages, anyway: it has the Greek cult of Athena Ilias.)

Does it also have to be a period when there are monsters and cannibals traipsing about in Sicily, mermaid-monsters lurking on the islands off the coast of Campania, and witches turning people into pigs in Lazio? That’ll be a little trickier.

The upshot is that, even when an artist puts a high priority on authenticity — and most of the time, that isn’t the case — even then, the ordering of priorities is entirely an artistic choice. And every artistic choice is motivated by contemporary priorities. Certain 2026 pundits really really want everyone’s top priority to be skin colour, because that’s the thing they care about. Fortunately, there are plenty of artists out there with more diverse ideas about how old stories can become relateable to a contemporary audience.

References

• Henry, A. 2026. ‘What the Odyssey gets wrong about Bronze Age Greek religion.’ ReligionForBreakfast. [Youtube]

For further references to support the claims made here, see this two-parter from April.