The Odyssey, traditionally attributed to Homer and composed around the 8th–7th century B.C., recounts the ten-year journey of Odysseus (also known as Ulysses), king of Ithaca, as he attempts to return home after the Trojan War.
Although set in the Mediterranean world, this epic blends myths, memories, and geography in a way that defies literal cartography.
Since antiquity, readers have attempted to locate Odysseus’s 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 than as a narrative about human resilience, identity, and the testing of heroic virtue.
Efforts to anchor these events in real places reflect a broader desire to reconcile mythical narrative with new historical and geographical research on the ancient Greek world.
Map created by Simeon Netchev
to illustrate the narrative flow of Homer's Odyssey
Attempts to map the *Odyssey* gained momentum in the early modern era, notably with Abraham Ortelius’s 1597 map, the first known cartographic representation of Odysseus’s journey.
“Ulyssis Errores,” by Abraham Ortelius, in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, c. 1608.
Real geography, both transposed and not, is colored red on Gladstone’s map. “Map of the World According to Homer,” by W.E. Gladstone, in Studies on Homer and Homerica Age, Vol. 3 (1858).
Over the centuries, scholars, statesmen, and philologists—including figures such as British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone—have proposed competing interpretations, but no consensus has emerged, thus revealing the poem’s fundamentally symbolic geography.
Modern studies, such as classicist Peter T. Struck’s analysis (2000) from the University of Pennsylvania, highlight how the epic’s spatial logic serves its narrative themes rather than a strict topography.
This map draws on these ideas, illustrating not a definitive itinerary, but the enduring fascination with situating Homer’s imaginary world within the broader Mediterranean region.
illustrateur ; Théo Schmied (1901-1985), graveur Provenance
BnF, département Réserve des livres rares, VELINS-1248
BnF, département Réserve des livres rares, VELINS-1248
Links :
- Lapham : The geography of the Odyssey
- Cartonumerique : Le voyage d'Ulysse. Comment cartographier un mythe ?
- Peter Struck’s Odyssey
- The Odyssey interactive map / Journey / Odysseus journey / Open Culture
- The Conversation : Can we map The Odyssey? How ancient geographers and modern researchers have traced Odysseus’s travel
- Britannica : Geography of Homer’s Odyssey: Mapping Odysseus’s Epic Voyage
