Ithaca

**That is the traditional identification, but it is an old and continuing argument.** ✅ **The prevailing position**: **modern Ithaca is Homer's Ithaca** — believed since antiquity, **and the name itself never lapsed**. ⚠ **The difficulty**: **Homer's description does not match the geography precisely**. The Odyssey calls Ithaca **«furthest towards the west»** and low-lying — ⚠ **whereas the present Ithaca lies east of Kefalonia and is mountainous**. **The contradiction was known in antiquity** and debated by geographers. ✅ **The alternatives**: scholars have proposed that Homer's Ithaca was **Lefkada**, or **the Paliki peninsula of western Kefalonia** — **with a geological hypothesis** that it was a separate island later joined by earthquake infill. ⚠ **Nothing is settled**: excavations on present-day Ithaca have found **genuine Mycenaean sites** (around Stavros in the north) ⚠ **but no conclusive evidence** naming a palace of Odysseus. ✅ **The sober position**: **Odysseus is a mythical figure**, **and the Odyssey is poetry, not a map** — ✅ **and the island is worth visiting on its own terms**.