[yarddog]

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?

I have read that Homer's description fits the Island of Leukas better than Ithaca, but would have to go with the traditional name.

[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.