Wednesday 23 November 2016

Odysseus Unbound Tour 2016


Since I was a kid I've been interested in Greek mythology. I remember going to the Odeon Theater in 1962 Saint John, NB, and watching The 300 Spartans, starring Richard Egan. That movie left an impression on this youngster. But one of my favorite movies ever is Jason and the Argonauts. It came out in 1963 and I remember it well although I was only nine. I Googled it recently and was not surprised to find that the fight against the skeleton warriors is still a marvel of animation. I still don't know how they did it, making those skeletons of dead soldiers rise out of their graves to fight.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)


Sometime later I read a book called Ulysses Found by Ernle Bradford. It was written by a retired English naval officer who had been stationed in the Mediterranean during WW2. He spoke of one calm midnight during his watch duty on deck that he thought he'd heard the Syrens singing. It was near a small lava island called Gali. After he left the navy he sailed his own boat around the Mediterranean and followed Homer's description of the Odyssey journey. I've reread that tattered paperback several more times over the years, mesmerized by his virtual tour of the old ancient story. That got me thinking about the truth behind the myths of the Argonauts and also the siege of Troy.

Since the Odyssey was treated as a myth, the heroes and places mentioned in the story were just fiction. Or so they thought...

Mycenae, the golden city of great King Agamemnon was discovered. The city Tiryns of “the Cyclopean walls” was discovered. Knossos was discovered. Even Troy itself was unearthed. And they were all found by following Homer's descriptions in his epics The Iliad and The Odyssey.

This led to questions about the reality of the heroes in Homer's accounts. Was he constructing these warriors to fill up his tragic tale? Did he make up a good yarn to convey moral values in a dangerous era?

There is good evidence that these warriors were real people. They lived and breathed. They fought and died, their names and deeds remembered.

Laertes was one of the Argonauts who helped Jason retrieve the golden fleece. It was Laertes' son who is the hero of The Odyssey. Odysseus (or Ulysses to the Romans) has always been of special interest to me and I've visited his island kingdom several times since 1976.

I have recently added another hero to my list although he isn't Greek or from Greek mythology. His name is Robert Bittlestone and his book is called Odysseus Unbound. Robert passed away in 2015 to my surprise as he was my age and his mission was unfinished on this earth. His book and search was to find the real island of Odysseus, hero of the Trojan War.

For a century, scholars have tried to locate the actual island that was described by Homer as the home of Odysseus. That island was described as the one in the group of Ionian islands which would be last to see the sunrise and was also last to see the sunset. Since that would place the island farthest to the west in the island group, the modern day Ithaca does not fit this basic description. It lies farther to the east, closer to the mainland. Robert Bittlestone's theory solves the riddle of Ithaca's location. He found the island of Odysseus. It is an amazing book and he was a very thorough investigator. He was painstaking in his procedures and surrounded himself with experts in their fields.

In May of 2016 I went to Greece to meet John Crawshaw, Project Coordinator of the Odysseus Unbound Project ( http://www.odysseus-unbound.org/ ). I'd been in contact with the project through emails because of my great interest in what they were trying to accomplish. John was kind enough to offer his time for a few days and take me on a tour of a place called Paliki on Kefalonia Island, of what was quite probably the actual site from Homer's tale.
Paliki area of Kefalonia Island, Greece



The terrain we covered on the island was anything but easy. John's Subaru SUV was a necessity to get up the rocky rutted paths and through goat pastures where he took me on the tour. There was even what appeared to be an ancient walled-in area where Odysseus' swineherd, Eumaius, would have minded the pigs. But I got chills when we arrived at what could have been the palace. As I walked through this place my head was full of thoughts about the dining hall where Odysseus, Eumaius and Telamachus killed a hundred of Penelope's suitors.

I was standing at the heart of The Odyssey at last. For a half century I'd dreamed of this place and I was here.

I'm working on a video of my Odysseus Unbound tour and will update here when it is done with a link.

Other videos of recent rides are available on www.motorcyclegreece.ca