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Asteris and the Twin Harbours

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. V. Luce
J. V. Luce
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
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Extract

R. Lattimore's translation is neat and accurate:

There is a rocky island there in the middle channel halfway between Ithaka and towering Samos,

called Asteris, not large, but it has a double anchorage

where ships can lie hidden. There the Achaeans waited in ambush.

I assume that Homeric Ithaca is the island now called Ithaki and that Samos is Kephallinia. The channel will then be the Ithaca Channel, and here there is only one island, now called Daskalio (FIG. 1). So Daskalio = Asteris. So far, so good; Homer has deftly pinpointed the location of the ambush by associating it with the only small island off the west coast of Ithaca.

Daskalio is certainly πετρήεσσα; indeed it is nothing but a narrow shelf of rock about 200 yards long, and rising only about 15 feet above water level (Plate IIIa). No one can deny that it is οὐ μεγάλη; the phrase may well be a litotes. It is not strictly in ‘mid-channel’, being 3,000 yards from Ithaca and only 800 yards from Kephallinia, but this may pass in a poetic description. It is with the ‘double anchorage’ that Homer's description appears to lose touch with reality.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 96 , November 1976 , pp. 157 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1976

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References

1 Dörpfeld's, view (Alt-Ithaka, 1927Google Scholar) that Homeric Ithaca=Leukas has not won many adherents. Against it, see Shewan, A. (his papers on the problem are collected in his Homeric Essays, 1935Google Scholar), Lord Rennell of Rodd (Homer's Ithaca, 1927), and Stubbings, F. H. (A Companion to Homer, 1962, 398–421Google Scholar). W. B. Stanford (edition of Odyssey, p. xl) concludes that ‘the arguments against the traditional view are not strong enough to justify our rejecting it’.

2 Cf. Od. xv 29, where the suitors are described as lying in wait simply ‘in the channel of Ithaca and Samos’.

3 Edition of Odyssey, ad loc. See also Appendix III.

4 i 3.18. The name is very apt. I have seen Daskalio from Ithaca in the early morning, and from Kephallinia in the late afternoon. At both times the sunlight reflected from its bare limestone flanks made it gleam very brightly against the ‘wine-dark’ water of the channel. The comparison to a star in the evening sky would come readily to mind. Cf. Paulatos, (Athens, 1906), quoted by Shewan, , Homeric Essays, 46.Google Scholar

5 Homeric Essays, 47–8, 76–7.

6 Cf. Casson, , Antiquity xvi (1942) 71 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, the verdict of Miss Lorimer, H. L. (Homer and the Monuments, 498Google Scholar): ‘The numerous points of coincidence between landscape and poem, and the suitability of the site to the movements of the characters in relation to it seem to be beyond the reach of coincidence and to argue personal knowledge in the poet.’

7 On re-reading Bérard I found that he had made a similar observation from a boat in the Ithaca Channel (Les Navigations dďUlysse, 448). He does not, however, relate this observation to the Homeric text.

8 The Periplus Hannonis Carthaginiensis sect. 14 (Müller) runs: Comparison with sect. 18 shows that λίμνη means a ‘straight’ or ‘sound’, and therefore the second ἐν must mean ‘enclosed by’. It is, I suggest, just possible that Homer's could mean ‘are enclosed by’. In Od. ix 126 means ‘are not included among’. Alternatively, read ἐνί

9 An ambush based on the shore of Kephallinia ‘inside’ Asteris had the following advantages: (a) it was as close as possible to Polis Bay without being on Ithacan soil (where it might be noticed by well-wishers of Tele-machos); (b) it afforded a fine prospect of the Ithaca Channel while offering complete concealment to the ambush party. The ambush failed because Telemachos landed out of sight of the watchers on the S.E. corner of Ithaca. His ship then came round the east side of the island and slipped into Polis Bay before it could be intercepted.

10 Homer and the Monuments, 499–501.

11 As Shewan, , Homeric Essays 36–58Google Scholar, has demonstrated in great detail, Arhkoudi fits the Homeric description of Asteris far less well than Daskalio does, and the placing of the ambush at Arkhoudi generates insoluble difficulties in regard to Telemachos' homeward voyage.

12 In this she is in fact reviving a suggestion first made by Gell, Sir William in his Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca (1807) 79.Google Scholar