FollowThere’s often a fine line between myth and legend here in Greece. As we pass the fort at Aktion I recall the schoolboy tale of Antony & Cleopatra, and wonder for a moment whether the story is true. Of course it is. Octavian beat them and sent them scuttling back to Egypt in 31BC.
Homer is a different story, if you’ll pardon the pun. References to ‘The Odyssey’ are everywhere, but of course it’s easy to forget that this was just a story! One guy who certainly forgot was a certain William Dorpfeld. He had a theory that the home of Homer’s Odysseus was in fact Lefkada, and not Ithaca as is generally believed. He set out to prove it.
Dorpfeld was a wealthy man, and he commissioned excavations around Nidri. Of course the locals thought he was nuts, but they went along with the scheme as it brought lucrative employment. The surprising thing is that Dorpfeld did succeed in finding Mycean remains here, which of course he regarded as evidence in support of his crazy Homeric theory.
The good people of Nidri were, of course, happy to endorse Dorpfeld’s conclusions, as they put Nidri ‘on the map’ – all publicity is good publicity and all that. Dorpfeld died here in 1940, and he is remembered by a statue on the seafront.
Here’s some of the stuff he found. The locals still value this – a groundsman was tidying up when we walked past today.
And here’s the man himself.
