The cattle of the Sun
The crew's last mistake. Warned twice by name, trapped a month by contrary winds and starving, they kill the Sun's immortal cattle while their captain sleeps.
In the poem
Tiresias and Circe both name Thrinacia and both say the same thing: leave the cattle alone and you may still get home, harm them and you lose the ship. The wind pins them for a month; the food runs out; Eurylochus argues that starving is the worse death.
The hides crawl and the meat lows on the spits. Six days later they sail, and Zeus breaks the ship with a thunderbolt. Odysseus alone survives, and reaches Ogygia on the keel.
Why it matters for the atlas
It is the end of the crew and the last stop before the poem's two most unlocatable places. Its identification rests on a single name.
Competing theories
- Speculative
Sicily, via the name Trinacria
Proposed by: Ancient identification via the name Trinacria · Antiquity
Plausible philology, no evidence about the episode. The island of the Sun's cattle is defined by what happens on it, not by where it is.
Thrinacia- Primary textThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 6.2
- Primary textStrabo, Geography 6.2
What is disputed
Whether Thrinacia and Trinacria are the same word, and whether an island defined by a taboo can be located at all.
Questions
- Where is Thrinacia?
- Ancient tradition equates it with Sicily on the strength of the name Trinacria. The atlas records this as speculative at 6/12.
- Is this the crew's fault?
- The poem is explicit that they were warned by name and did it anyway, and it opens by saying they died 'through their own blind folly'. It is also explicit that they were starving.
Sources
- Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
- Primary textThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 6.2
- Primary textStrabo, Geography 6.2