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Dulichium

Speculative6/12MediumIonian islandsHomeric name(s): Δουλίχιον

The island of Odysseus' kingdom that has simply gone missing. It sends more suitors than anywhere else and matches nothing on the modern map.

Dulichium supplies fifty-two of the hundred and eight suitors, so the poem imagines it as the most populous part of the kingdom. Antiquity could not agree on where it was, and neither can modern scholarship: Lefkada, the Echinades and stretches of the Acarnanian coast have all been proposed.

The failure is informative. It suggests either that the Ionian names shifted between the Bronze Age and the eighth century, or that Homer's western geography is assembled rather than surveyed.

Identifications proposed

  • Lefkada

    Proposed by: Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Alt-Ithaka (1927)

    Speculative6/12Medium

    One of the two standing candidates. Lefkada is large enough to supply the fifty-two suitors Dulichium sends, and Dörpfeld's work put Bronze Age material on the island — though he was arguing it was Ithaca, not Dulichium.

    38.7000, 20.7100· Island

    • ScholarshipWilhelm Dörpfeld, Alt-Ithaka (1927)
    • ScholarshipThe Echinades and Lefkada as candidates for Dulichium, discussed in the topographical literature on the Homeric Ionian
    • Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
    Confidence
    6/12 · Medium confidence
    Textual
    2
    Archaeological
    1
    Scholarly
    1
    Geographic
    2

  • The Echinades or a coastal district

    Proposed by: Strabo, Geography 10.2

    Speculative4/12Low

    Ancient and modern readers have also put Dulichium among the small islands off the Acheloos mouth, or on the Acarnanian coast. None of the candidates is large enough to be obvious, which is precisely the problem.

    38.4500, 21.1000· Area

    • ScholarshipThe Echinades and Lefkada as candidates for Dulichium, discussed in the topographical literature on the Homeric Ionian
    • Primary textStrabo, Geography 10.2
    Confidence
    4/12 · Low confidence
    Textual
    2
    Archaeological
    0
    Scholarly
    1
    Geographic
    1

Why this class

Speculative: two real candidates, neither with archaeological support tying it to the name, and no consensus in either antiquity or modern scholarship. The best score any hypothesis reaches here is 6/12.

What is disputed

Whether Dulichium was ever a real place under that name, whether it is a doublet of another island, and how much weight the Catalogue of Ships' western entries can bear.

Sources

  • Primary textHomer, Iliad (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1924)
  • Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
  • Primary textStrabo, Geography 10.2
  • ScholarshipWilhelm Dörpfeld, Alt-Ithaka (1927)
  • ScholarshipThe Echinades and Lefkada as candidates for Dulichium, discussed in the topographical literature on the Homeric Ionian