Big Olive Tree

Cave Naiads

The blue line of same distance

Next we have to tackle the mystery of the olive tree and as you can imagine, finding a big olive tree on an island clothed in olive trees is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, or rather a piece of hay in a haystack. So far, Homer has given us manageable clues to figure out where to find the harbour of Odysseus' return, but this 'big olive tree' is a bit of a stumper.

Cape Lougi

Odyssey Book 13 line 112-113 Barry B Powell

Rouda Bay

They drove in to the harbor, knowing it from before.

A little further on lies Rouda Bay, which is more in the open so perhaps a bit riskier, and the Phaeacians most probably didn't even discover the third harbour, called Syvota Bay, which is hidden behind the headland of the presumed olive tree. I went to inspect the situation from a sailor's point of view.

This opens up the possibility that Odysseus is to be dropped off at the wrong harbour. Perhaps it didn't occur to them it was the wrong harbour or they didn't think it mattered all that much, because they simply had to escort Odysseus to a harbour in the south of his island Ithaca, which they undeniably do. Of course, the south of Ithaca fits the story of Mentes and Telemachos I described earlier.

Syvota Bay

Olive tree?

The Phaeacians must have had the same problem, though they didn't bother to wake up Odysseus or ask what in heaven's name he meant. Homer never mentions the Phaeacians using this route before, but he does suggest here that they're already familiar with it.

There are three available harbours: a small harbour at Cape Lougi called Kypos, one deeper inland at Rouda bay called Mikros Yialos and one at Syvota bay.

Kypos Beach is the closest to the blue line and the north-south route the Phaeacians must have used before, for instance to bring home Rhadamanthos. It's very secluded, so to the Phaeacians, who were basically foreigners to the Ithacans and probably not very welcome, as they weren't part of the Mycenaeans and didn't fight in the Trojan War, it might have seemed a safer place to beach.

Kypos beach

Mikros Yialos