Island
Insula Itace
Ithake
Listen to the story
Insula Itace is Ithaca, the rocky island among the Ionian Islands off western Greece, long claimed as the home of Homer's Odysseus. In Hellenistic and Roman times the islanders cultivated that fame, holding games named after the Odyssey and worshipping Odysseus as a hero. Under the early emperors the island belonged to the province of Achaia, later to Epirus. On the map the name has badly faded, and older copies read it as Itace. Scholars disagree over the remaining letters: some see a final c followed by a stop, others an angular t with one more letter after the a.