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Same

Plausible9/12MediumIonian islandsHomeric name(s): Σάμη · Σάμος

The second island of Odysseus' kingdom, generally taken to be Kefalonia — the largest island in the group and the one with the most Mycenaean graves and the fewest Mycenaean buildings.

Same supplies twenty-four suitors, the largest contingent, which implies a substantial population. Ancient tradition and the surviving town name point at Kefalonia, and the island's chamber-tomb cemeteries confirm it was populous in the Late Bronze Age.

Every rival reconstruction of Ithaca has to say something about Same, because the two are defined against each other in the text. That is why the entry carries a second hypothesis: it is not an independent claim, it is the shadow of the Ithaca question.

Identifications proposed

  • Kefalonia (the ancient Same)

    Proposed by: Strabo, Geography 10.2

    Plausible9/12Medium

    Strabo identifies Same with the island later called Kefalonia, where a town of Sami still carries the name. Kefalonia has the richest Mycenaean cemeteries in the Ionian, which fits a populous island supplying suitors; what it lacks is a palace.

    38.2500, 20.6000· Island

    • Primary textStrabo, Geography 10.2
    • ArchaeologyMycenaean chamber-tomb cemeteries on Kefalonia, notably around Poros and Lakkithra
    • Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
    Confidence
    9/12 · Medium confidence
    Textual
    2
    Archaeological
    2
    Scholarly
    3
    Geographic
    2

  • Eastern Kefalonia, if Paliki is Ithaca

    Proposed by: Robert Bittlestone, James Diggle & John Underhill (2005)

    Speculative5/12Low

    Bittlestone's reconstruction requires Same to be the rest of Kefalonia east of a former sea channel. The hypothesis is internally consistent and depends entirely on that channel having existed.

    38.2500, 20.6500· Area

    • ScholarshipRobert Bittlestone, James Diggle and John Underhill, Odysseus Unbound: The Search for Homer's Ithaca (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
    • Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
    Confidence
    5/12 · Low confidence
    Textual
    2
    Archaeological
    0
    Scholarly
    1
    Geographic
    2

Why this class

Plausible rather than accepted: the ancient identification is strong and the archaeology is real, but no excavated centre ties the island to the poem, and the Ionian names may not have been stable between the Bronze Age and Homer.

What is disputed

Whether Homer's four-island geography is coherent at all, and whether Same, Dulichium and Ithaca named the same places in the Bronze Age that they named in the eighth century.

Sources

  • Primary textHomer, Iliad (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1924)
  • Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
  • Primary textStrabo, Geography 10.2
  • ScholarshipRobert Bittlestone, James Diggle and John Underhill, Odysseus Unbound: The Search for Homer's Ithaca (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
  • ArchaeologyMycenaean chamber-tomb cemeteries on Kefalonia, notably around Poros and Lakkithra