I

The distance

nautical miles, Troy to Ithaca as the crow flies

That is about 1,046 kilometres. A Bronze Age galley running before the wind at five knots could cover it in six days to two weeks. A modern cruise ship does it overnight.

Homer takes ten years.

A week by galley. Ten years by Homer.

Each gridline is a longer unit of time: a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade.

Sources: Harry Mount in BOAT International; Tim Severin, The Ulysses Voyage; Hal Roth, We Followed Odysseus.

II

Where the years went

Open the Odyssey expecting a decade of storms and monsters and the arithmetic surprises you. Odysseus spends a year with the sorceress Circe, then seven with the nymph Calypso.

The adventures everyone remembers, the Cyclops and the Sirens and Scylla, fit inside one sailing season. Tim Severin showed it in 1985, taking a replica galley from Troy to Ithaca in three to four months.

Eight of the ten years are two islands

Each square is one month, grouped by where it went rather than in order.

Source: durations as stated in the Odyssey; vizmaya-data, timeline allocation.

Told out of order

Homer hides the arithmetic by telling the story backwards. The poem opens in year ten, with Odysseus already stuck on Calypso’s island.

The monster tales of Books 9 to 12 are a flashback, told by Odysseus himself at a banquet, to strangers he needs a ship from.

So the map every reader builds was drawn from memory, by the man who got lost.

The route, as tradition draws it

• Excavated anchor
• Real, mappable place
• Tradition only
• Rival identifications

Solid line: places we can find. Dashed: everything after Cape Malea. Coordinates are traditional associations, not proven sites.

III

The hinge

Up to a point Odysseus is a real sailor on a real coast. He leaves Troy, the mound at Hisarlik, and raids Ismaros, almost certainly Maroneia in Thrace. Then a north wind catches him off Cape Malea and the map dissolves.

These are the last clearly identifiable places in O.’s wanderings. After this he leaves the sphere of Geography and enters Wonderland.

Five schools, five Mediterraneans

How far west each reconstruction carries him after Cape Malea.

Severin keeps every landfall near Greece. Bérard sends him to Gibraltar. The fringe sails off the edge of the map.

Sources: Strabo; Bérard, 1929; Bradford, 1963; Severin, 1987.

IV

The cost

Twelve ships and about 720 men leave Troy.

man comes home

Homer counts the losses, not the survivors, so the running headcount on the next page is a reconstruction at about 60 men a ship.

One harbour cost more men than the rest of the voyage

At the Laestrygonians’ harbour, cannibal giants sink eleven of the twelve ships.

Source: loss events from Odyssey Books 9–12; headcount reconstructed.

The losses Homer names

By the time he reaches Calypso he is alone, and he stays alone for seven years.

V

Was it ever real?

• Troy, at Hisarlik in Turkey Excavated; undisputed
• Ismaros, at Maroneia in Greece Excavated; a strong identification
• Ithaca, at Ithaki in Greece The anchor still under debate

Robert Bittlestone argued in 2005 that Homer’s Ithaca is Paliki, once a separate island. In 2026 James Diggle and John Underhill answered that Paliki was no island in the Bronze Age, and that Homer never says Ithaca was one.

VI

The wine-dark sea

Oînops póntos, the wine-faced sea, appears seventeen times in the Iliad and Odyssey. In 1858 Gladstone asked why wine, and not blue.

A colour we can all picture and none of us can quite name.

Sources and method

1. Homer, Odyssey, Books 5 and 9–13, for every duration, fleet number and loss.
2. Geography of the Odyssey, for identifications and the history of the debate.
3. W. B. Stanford’s 1947 commentary; Strabo’s Geography for Eratosthenes.
4. Victor Bérard (1929), Ernle Bradford (1963), Tim Severin (1987).
5. Harry Mount in BOAT International and Hal Roth for sailing times.

Method: men aboard are reconstructed at about 60 per ship; Homer gives the loss events only. Places after Cape Malea are traditional associations, not proven sites.