The ancient Greeks would have enjoyed current controversies about the "historical accuracy" of Christopher Nolan's new adaptation of The Odyssey.
The Greeks loved arguing about the "truth" of Homer's stories . They weren't precious about their myths. Greek storytellers could - and did - criticise them. They competed to make people see old stories in new ways .
For the ancient Greeks, their deep past - the time of gods and monsters - was a paradox. On the one hand, it was full of fantastic happenings. On the other, those events mainly took place in familiar locations around the Mediterranean and featured heroes who were the ancestors of people living in the present.
We have been mapping the real-world locations tied to Greek myths. The Greeks didn't locate their deep past in far-off fantasy lands. Instead, these stories happened in places all around them. So what about the journey of Odysseus?
Traversing the Beyond
Homer's epic The Odyssey, probably composed around 800 BCE, follows Odysseus' journey home from Troy to Ithaca. Much of the voyage takes place in " The Beyond ": a storyworld with its own logic, full of eerie, strange and monstrous creatures.
Although Homer placed this part of the story in a fantasy world, it didn't have to stay there. As the Greeks spread throughout the Mediterranean, they started wondering: could Odysseus have travelled here?
Although the myth of the Trojan war freely invents some aspects of the topography, the Greeks agreed Troy was located on the Dardanelles, in modern-day northwestern Turkey. They identified various landmarks there with events in the epics. When Heinrich Schliemann excavated a Bronze-Age citadel in the region, he claimed this was Homer's Troy.
Homer calls Odysseus' island homeland off the western coast of mainland Greece Ithaca . An island in the right area still goes by that name today, although Homer's description does not exactly match it.
Odysseus gets as far as Cape Malea (modern Maleas), off southern mainland Greece, before he is hit by a storm. That storm drives him into "the Beyond".
Homer's description of what happens next can't be plotted on a map. Nothing is familiar; directions like north and south are meaningless.
Recreating the journey
Homer's epics reflect the geo-politics of his time. Around 800 BCE, hundreds of city-states across the Greek mainland were jostling for prestige. The idea local heroes had once gotten together to conquer Troy was very attractive.
From the 5th century BCE we find ancient geographers debating where exactly Odysseus voyaged. Their texts - some only surviving in fragments - are the best evidence we have for how ancient communities laid claim to the fabulous places described by Homer.
Some ancient geographers were sceptical that the Beyond was in the Mediterranean and pointed instead to the Atlantic.
Eratosthenes commented cynically :
you'll find where Odysseus wandered when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds [that Aiolos gave to Odysseus].
In other words: you won't.
But the attraction of identifying Homer's fantastic locations with real places was too strong.
There were competing claims. In Homer's account, Odysseus encounters lotus-eaters drugged by the "honey sweet" fruit of the lotus flower. Ancient geographers located their home in several regions of north Africa. Meninx , a large island off modern Tunisia, was a popular candidate: Strabo cites as proof its altar of Odysseus and trees with sweet fruit called lotus.
Artemidoros placed the lotus-eaters further west. He argued they were nomads in what is now Morocco who survived in waterless deserts by chewing a juicy root.
From the early 7th century BCE, the ancient Greeks had begun to migrate to Sicily and southern Italy. When these migrants claimed their new homelands were the places Homer described, they gave their new homes very old - and prestigious - pasts.
When Greeks founded modern Naples , they called it "Parthenope", for one of the Sirens said to be buried on a nearby headland .
Ancient artists painted the Sirens as part-woman, part-chicken. Today the islands are known as Li Galli (The Chickens).
Circe, the goddess who transformed Odysseus' men into animals by giving them a potion, was said to have lived on a headland south of Rome , still called Monte Circeo today.
Homer says Odysseus buried one of his crew on Circe's island after he fell off a roof. Ancient Greeks identified this tomb on Monte Circeo. Moly , the drug Odysseus used to counter her magic, was still picked nearby .
Some said Odysseus entered the underworld via an oracle of the dead at Cumae : the surrounding area is highly volcanic, which fit with stories about vaporous rivers in the underworld.
Scylla and Charybdis, a multi-headed monster and a whirlpool, were placed in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the tip of Calabria, which had exceptionally dangerous tides.
And people pointed out large rocks off the coast of Sicily the Cyclops had hurled at Odysseus' ship as it escaped as proof it happened there .
These kinds of claims show the Greeks making fantastic landscapes seem familiar, while highlighting the strangeness of the real world with its psychotropic plants, volcanoes and ancient relics.
Innovative interpretations of the Odyssey are nothing new. The Greeks would have enjoyed our continued grappling with the "truth" of this story.
Greta Hawes receives funding from the Australian Research Council via a Future Fellowship (FT220100543). She is co-director of MANTO, a research project mentioned in this article.
Scott Smith is co-director of MANTO, a research project mentioned in this article.
