An important ingredient of any odyssey has to be encounters with formidable women... and mine led to meetings with many: the Crazy Shop Woman of Andros, Oraia Eleni of Syros, Kiria Kapou of Patra, Dr Aimilia Dmitropoulou, Frau Hegelberger of Terracina, the Bikini Cousins of Ponza, my dear friend Z of Latina, Anastasia of Ithaca... (all are featured in An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague)...
And now last, but definitely not least, comes the remarkable Jane Cochrane, who contacted me after reading my odyssey article in The Oldie magazine.
She is the widow of the late Alec Kazantzis; together, they bought and renovated a ruined house on Ithaca in the 1980s and Jane still spends time there each year.
Since her husband's death in 2014, she has continued their work of exploring Homeric Ithaca and relating sites and paths there to scenes from The Odyssey, including of course the Palace of Odysseus site, north of Stavros, which I visited at the end of my own odyssey.
There has been a certain amount of scepticism in the past about the identification of that site as the location of the Palace. And the neighbouring and much larger island of Kefalonia has done its best to hijack the Odysseus legend for its own PR purposes – even going as far as to establish an Odyssey theme park.
But Jane Cochrane has written a book, Odysseus' Island, chronicling not only her life on Ithaca but also an irresistible case for the island (and its Palace site) being the true home of Odysseus.
I thoroughly recommend this book – and so does the respected historian and writer David Horspool.
Jane Cochrane did her research (and her footslogging on Ithaca) with seriousness and rigour. With the assistance of lauded classicist Professor Robin Lane Fox, she secured the help of eminent philologist and archaeologist Professor George Huxley. Now she has been able to comprehensively debunk the attempt of a few years ago to locate Homeric Ithaca on Kefalonia, and she has also consolidated the direct connections between Homer and modern Ithaca.
While Kefalonia has cashed in, Ithaca is strapped for funds (and so is the university that was carrying out work on the Palace site). Jane Cochrane now intends to campaign to raise money to continue the work there, protect the site, provide proper information for visitors, and bring together all the finds in a new, improved museum.
She is also putting together a hiker's guide to Odyssean walks on Ithaca.
Of course I am now a devout follower of Odysseus and therefore biased, but I feel her cause is a vitally important one. Read her book and I think you will probably agree.
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