[drjimmy]

Something I don't understand is the ancient Greeks knew where Ithaca was. An island around two miles NE of Cephalonia. It was but one of the Islands ruled by Odysseus. Are they saying they didn't know where it was?

There is scholarly debate over whether there even was a "Homer" who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. The stories come from an oral tradition, and the first written versions of those stories didn't even come into being until hundreds of years after the events depicted. Of course those events include gods and goddesses, cyclops, sirens, men being turned into swine, etc. So while the ancient Greeks may indeed have known where their own island of Ithaca/Ithaki was, there's a lot standing in the way of knowing whether it and the place depicted in what we know as "The Odyssey" are one and the same.

[yarddog]

Yes, I know there is debate about Homer but the basic facts of the Illiad and Odyssey seem to stand up to archaelogical study.

I know that Schliemann used the Iliad to locate Troy by using a phrase which showed certain alignment between geographical features. It proved to be accurate.

Also Homer describes the small city state of Thisbe as being a place of pigeons. I recall an expedition which located it's ruins and surprise, it was still full of pigeons.

[night reader]

There is scholarly debate over whether there even was a "Homer" who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey.

From what I have read, the Odyssey and the Iliad were not composed by Homer, but by another blind Greek poet with the same name.