The Odyssey, traditionally attributed to Homer and composed around the 8th–7th century BCE, recounts the decade-long journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he attempts to return home after the Trojan War. Although set in a recognizable Mediterranean world, the epic blends myth, memory, and geography in ways that resist literal mapping. Since antiquity, readers have tried to situate Odysseus’ wanderings, from the land of the Cyclopes to the island of Circe, on a real-world map, but the poem functions less as a travelogue and more as a narrative of human resilience, identity, and the testing of heroic virtue. Efforts to anchor these events in actual locations reflect a broader impulse to reconcile mythic storytelling with emerging historical and geographical inquiry in the ancient Greek world.
