Does Homer (ever) say that Ithaca was an island?

Homer has many opportunities to call Ithaca an island, but he never does so. Instead, he (or his characters) refers to it constantly as ‘land’ (γαῖα, gaia, e.g. 1.21), “native land” (πατρίς, patris, e.g. 1.75, πατρὶς αἶα/γαῖα, e.g. 1.75, 1.290), “country” (δῆμος, dēmos, for which see below).

Now, there are several places where it may appear that Homer does call Ithaca an island. But on closer examination it turns out that he does not. Let us first have another look at the passage which I quoted earlier: “Bright Ithaca is my home… Around are many islands, close to each other, | Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthos.” Homer says “many islands”. If Ithaca is an island, why does he not say “many other islands”? The passage ends with the lines “Ithaca itself lies low, furthest to sea | Towards dusk; the rest, apart, face dawn and sun.” “Ah,” you may say, “the rest” implies “the rest of the islands”. But my translation is wrong. It is wrong because I was led astray by the assumption that Ithaca is an island. What Homer says is not “the rest”. He says “but they” (αἳ δέ, that is, “but they, the islands just mentioned”). This passage, then, offers no evidence that Ithaca is an island.

There are three further passages where Ithaca is compared with the neighbouring islands. First, we have Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, describing Ithaca:

ἐν δ᾽ Ἰθάκηι οὔτ᾽ ἂρ δρόμοι εὐρέες οὔτε τι λειμών·
οὐ γάρ τις νήσων ἱππήλατος οὐδ᾽ εὐλείμων,
αἵ θ᾽ ἁλὶ κεκλίαται· Ἰθάκη δέ τε καὶ περὶ πασέων,
αἰγίβοτος, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπήρατος ἱπποβότοιο.

Ithaca has no meadows or broad horse-runs;
Neither has any of the sea-perched isles.
But Ithaca surpasses them all,
Goat-land, more lovely than horse-grazing land.

Some translate the third line as “But there’s not one so fair as Ithaca” but the correct translation is “But Ithaca surpasses them all”, that is “surpasses all those islands”. So, once again, the passage offers no evidence that Ithaca is an island.

[Rocky Paliki or Ithaka]

Second, we have Telemachus listing the suitors of Penelope:

ὅσσοι γὰρ νήσοισιν ἐπικράτεουσιν ἄριστοι,
Δουλιχίωι τε Σάμηι τε καὶ ὑλήεντι Ζακύνθωι,
ἠδ᾽ ὅσσοι κραναὴν Ἰθάκην κάτα κοιρανέουσιν.

All of the noble lords who rule the islands,
Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthos,
And all who rule in rocky Ithaca.

Here, once again, we have the familiar trio of islands (Doulichion, Same, Zacynthos), and they are called islands, but Ithaca, once again mentioned separately and last, is not called an island.

Third, again referring to the suitors:

οὔθ᾽ ὅσσοι κραναὴν Ἰθάκην κάτα κοιρανέουσιν
οὔθ᾽ ὅσσοι νήσοισι πρὸς Ἤλιδος ἱπποβότοιο.

Not those who rule in rocky Ithaca
Or on the islands off horse-grazing Elis.

Ithaca is again contrasted with “the islands”, not “the other islands”.

There are two passages where Ithaca is contrasted with “the mainland”. In the first, Eumaeus, Odysseus’ loyal pig farmer, describes Odysseus’ vast livestock:

ἦ γάρ οἱ ζωή γ’ ἦν ἄσπετος· οὔ τινι τόσση
ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων, οὔτ᾽ ἠπείροιο μελαίνης
οὔτ᾽ αὐτῆς Ἰθάκης.

His stock was truly vast. No other hero
Had so much, either on the dark mainland
Or Ithaca itself.

The second passage comes from the Iliad:

αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἦγε Κεφαλλῆνας μεγαθύμους,
οἵ ῥ᾽ ᾽Ιθάκην εἶχον καὶ Νήριτον εἰνοσίφυλλον
καὶ Κροκύλει᾽ ἐνέμοντο καὶ Αἰγίλιπα τρηχεῖαν,
οἵ τε Ζάκυνθον ἔχον ἠδ᾽ οἳ Σἀμον ἀμφενέμοντο,
οἵ τ᾽ ἤπειρον ἔχον ἠδ᾽ ἀντιπέραι᾽ ἐνέμοντο.

Odysseus led the gallant Cephallenians,
From Ithaca and leaf-quivering Neriton,
From Crocyleia and rugged Aigilips,
Men hailing from Zacynthos and from Samos,
From the mainland and the region opposite.

In the former passage, Odysseus is described as possessing livestock on the “mainland” as well as on Ithaca itself. The “mainland” is certainly Samos/Same, not the mainland of Greece. In a moment we shall introduce the herdsman Philoitios, who looked after the livestock on Samos/Same.

And now a passage which is particularly telling. Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca, on a ship rowed by his Phaeacian hosts:

τῆμος δὴ νήσωι προσεπίλνατο ποντοπόρος νηῦς.
Φόρκυνος δέ τίς ἐστι λιμήν, ἁλίοιο γέροντος,
ἐν δήμωι Ἰθάκης.

Then the seafaring ship approached the island.
On Ithaca there is a bay of Phorcys,
The old man of the sea.

Ah, you might think, so Homer does describe Ithaca as an island after all. However, the phrase which I have translated, for the sake of my metrical scheme, as “on Ithaca” is ἐν δήμωι Ἰθάκης, which means (roughly) “in the country of Ithaca”. In Homer, δῆμος designates either an inhabited region or the inhabitants of a region. This phrase “the δῆμος of Ithaca” is used eight further times in the Odyssey and once in the Iliad. Why is it always the δῆμος, never the νῆσος, of Ithaca? The two words are identical in metre. In every place where the word is used to describe Ithaca, Homer could have said νῆσος. But he always says δῆμος.

[Odysseus and the Sirens, Roman Mosaic, 2nd century AD (Bardo National Museum, Tunis, Tunisia)]

If we look more closely at our passage, we can see what is happening. “The ship approached the island.” But it does not come to shore “on the island”. It comes to shore ἐν δήμωι ᾽Ιθάκης, “in the country of Ithaca.” Ithaca, so far from being “the island”, is distinguished from the island. It is only a part of the island.

Not only does Homer distinguish Ithaca from the nearby islands by referring to it as a δῆμος, rather than a νῆσος. He also distinguishes it by denying to Ithaca an epithet which he elsewhere applies to islands and by instead giving it an epithet which he never applies to islands, although these epithets appear to be, at first sight, synonymous and interchangeable. The epithet which he applies to islands is ἀμφίρυτος (amphirhytos), “with water flowing all around, sea-girt”. The epithet which he applies to Ithaca is ἀμφίαλος (amphialos), “surrounded by sea, sea-girt”. I have given, in both cases, the definition and translation of the Cambridge Greek Lexicon. In metre, these epithets are interchangeable. In sense, they are apparently synonymous.

And yet, if they are synonymous, why is no island described as ἀμφίαλος, and why is Ithaca never described as ἀμφίρυτος? In other Greek poets ἀμφίρυτος reappears a dozen or more times as an epithet for islands. ἀμφίαλος reappears only thrice, twice as the epithet of an island (Lemnos, in Sophocles, Philoctetes 1464, Dia in Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica), and once (significantly) with reference to the isthmus of Corinth (Pindar, Olympian 13.40), “flanked by two seas” (Cambridge Greek Lexicon). It is, at the very least, a reasonable inference that the epithet applied by Homer exclusively to Ithaca, ἀμφίαλος, was chosen because it describes a feature different from that described by the epithet applied exclusively to islands, ἀμφίρυτος. In other words, that it describes an Ithaca which does not have sea “flowing all around”, like an island, but has sea which is merely “around” (ἀμφι-) an unspecified part of it. In Pindar, as we have seen, “around” means “on two sides of”. Paliki is surrounded by sea on three sides.

But, even if Homer never says that Ithaca was an island, and uses terms which are compatible with its not being an island, is there any passage in the Odyssey which requires it to be an island?

First, we hear of a ferry service by which cattle are brought over to Ithaca. The cowherd Philoitios arrives in Ithaca,

οῦν στεῖραν μνηστῆρσιν ἄγων καὶ πίονας αἶγας.
πορθμῆες δ᾽ ἄρα τούς γε διήγαγον, οἵ τε καὶ ἄλλους
ἀνθρώπους πέμπουσιν, ὅ τίς σφεας εἰσαφίκηται.

Leading a heifer and fat goats for the suitors.
They had been brought across by ferrymen,
Who also ferry people, any who come.

So, there was a stretch of water which had to be crossed by a ferry. The ferry service will have been across the Gulf of Argostoli, that is, the strait separating Paliki from Cephalonia. A ferry crosses that strait today, from Argostoli on Cephalonia to Lixouri on Paliki.

There is a piece of linguistic evidence which supports this. The word used for “ferrymen” is πορθμῆες (porthmēes), which means “persons who provide transport across a πορθμός”. And a πορθμός (porthmos), to quote the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, is “a strip of water traversable by ferry, strait, channel.” This word πορθμός is used just twice in the poem, both times to describe the strait between Samos/Same (Cephalonia) and Ithaca (Paliki), ἐν πορθμῶι Ἰθάκης τε Σάμοιό τε παιπαλοέσσης, “in the strait / That lies between Ithaca and rugged Samos” (4.671, 15.29). The reference in this repeated line is to the strait in which the suitors lay their ambush for Telemachus – they lay it in the southern part of the strait (Gulf of Argostoli).

Sources:
James Diggle and John Underhill: Was Homer’s Ithaca an Island? in Antigone - 2026. See here.
Hans Goekoop: Op zoek naar Ithaka - 1990