Dulichion

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Dulichion ( Greek  Δουλίχιον ), also Dulichium , is in Homer's epics the name of a place, probably an island, in the area of ​​the Ionian Islands or western Greece. While Dulichion is ruled by Meges according to the ship catalog of the Iliad , in the Odyssey it apparently belongs to the kingdom of Odysseus . The location of Dulichion has been controversial since ancient times and is still unclear today.

Homer's statements

According to the Iliad , Meges ruled Dulichion and took part in the Trojan War with 40 ships :

Οἳ δ 'ἐκ Δουλιχίοιο Ἐχινάων θ' ἱεράων
νήσων, αἳ ναίουσι πέρην ἁλὸς Ἤλιδος ἄντα,
τῶν αὖθ 'ἡγεμόνευε Μέγης ἀτάλαντος Ἄρηι
Φυλείδης, ὃν τίκτε Διὶ φίλος ἱππότα Φυλεύς,
ψορρ. ὅς ποτε Δουλίχιον δ 'ἀπενάσσατο πατρὶ χολωθείς ·
τῷ δ 'ἅμα τεσσαράκοντα μέλαιναι νῆες ἕποντο.
(Iliad 2, 625-630)
But those from Dulichion and from the holy islands,
Den Echinen, across the sea, opposite Elis, who
again led Meges, comparable to Ares,
which the Zeus-beloved horse-tamer
Phyleus, who went away to Dulichion, witnessed in anger at his father.
Forty black ships were in its wake.
(Translation after Roland Hampe )

In addition to Dulichion, the Echinen (Ἐχῖναι) called sacred islands belonged to the territory of Meges. The latter are usually equated with the Echinaden , a group of islands off the coast of Akarnania , at the Acheloos estuary.

In the Odyssey , Dulichion (meanwhile) belongs to the realm of Odysseus, together with the island of Same, which has also not been identified with certainty, as well as Ithaca , Zakynthos and parts of the Arcarnan mainland. However, a king Akastos on Dulichion is mentioned elsewhere. However, it is believed that he was a local ruler and subordinate to Odysseus. The mention of Akastos is likely based on a nonhomeric, competing saga tradition. From Dulichion came 52 of the total of 108 suitors who wooed Penelope while Odysseus was absent . Dulichion is described as rich in wheat (πολύπυρος) and rich in meadows (ποιήεις) and, like Same and Zakynthos, is said to be close to Ithaca. Furthermore, it emerges from the Odyssey (14.333ff.) That Ithaca was on the sea route from Thesprotien to Dulichion.

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo also names Dulichion together with Ithaca, Same and Zakynthos (verse 428).

Localization hypotheses

Already in ancient times it was disputed which island Homer called Dulichion. It was assumed that Zakynthos and Ithaca had kept its name since the time of Homer, so Dulichium and same with the remaining Ionian Islands - the two larger, Cephalonia (now Kefalenia) and Leukas (today Lefkada) were not later at Homer with their ancient names mentioned - to be identified. Much further north, Kerkyra (today Corfu ), which only started in the 8th century BC. BC was settled by Greeks, it was excluded. Strabo gives some localizations of older authors in his work Geography : Accordingly, Dulichion was mostly identified with Kephalonia ( Hellanikos ) or a part of this island ( Pherecydes ). Strabo himself, however, held Kephalonia for the Homeric seed and suggests an identification with one of the Echinaden islands, favoring Makri, a rocky island now uninhabited, which was then called Dolicha. Strabo justified this u. a. with the fact that Leukas was only around the middle of the 7th century BC Became an island through a channel dug by Corinthian settlers, so it could not have been considered an island before.

This tradition ensured that many later researchers ignored Leukas when locating the four Ionian islands named by Homer, so that only three larger islands (Kephalonia, Zakynthos and Ithaca) remain. This led to the fact that Dulichion was often equated in modern research with one of the islands of the Echinaden, but this is with the statements of Homer and others. a. about the large number of suitors who came from Dulichion is incompatible. Edward Dodwell even said at the beginning of the 19th century that Dulichion sank into the sea in an earthquake shortly after Homer's time. Assumptions that a larger former island off the coast of Akarnania is now connected to the mainland by silting up in the area of ​​the Acheron estuary have now been geologically refuted.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Wilhelm Dörpfeld contradicted the opinion that Leukas was before the 7th century BC. Was not considered an island. He represented against it - supported u. a. on geological research - the view that in the 7th century BC Only an existing strait between the mainland and Leukas was deepened to make it passable for large ships. Accordingly, Leukas would have been considered an island as early as Homer's time. He identified Dulichion with Kefalonia, although he equated the Homeric Ithaca with Leukas and the Homeric Seed with today's island of Ithaca. Dörpfeld's identification of the Homeric Ithakas with Leukas did not succeed in research, but after his publications Leukas was again increasingly considered as a potential candidate for one of the four islands named by Homer.

Already in 1921 Thomas William Allen thought, with detailed justification, an identification of Dulichion with Leukas as the most plausible possibility. Since then, a number of other researchers have also believed that Dulichion was equivalent to Leukas. Edzard Visser also follows - with some restrictions . For Visser, on the other hand, the description of the location of the Echines is "at least unusual", as they are referred to as the Elis opposite. He interprets this as an indication of a localization west of Elis, which does not apply to the Echinaden . John V. Luce joined the localization of Dulichion in his book The Landscapes of Homer when he identified the islands of Lefkada , Itháki , Kefallinia and Sakinthos with the Homeric Dulichion, Ithaca, Samos (Same) and Zakynthos . He also referred to the proximity of Lefkas (Lefkada) to the Echinades , the "sacred islands of the Echinai ", which are said to have belonged together with Dulichion to the kingdom of Meges .

In 2002 Vangelis Pantazis first put forward the theory that Dulichion is identical to Zakynthos. This localization is discussed in detail by Makis Metaxas and Hettie Putman Cramer. According to this, Zakynthos would have been called Dulichion by Homer, which would match some statements in the epics: u. a. was closest to Zakynthos Elis, which would explain why the native of Elis rules Meges Dulichion. The indirect statement in the Odyssey that Ithaca is on the way from Thesprotien to Dulichion would also be correct. According to this theory, the sacred islands of the Echines mentioned by Homer could no longer be equated with the Echinades. Therefore they are localized by Pantazis on the Strofades , south of Zakynthos. Another island would also have to have borne the name Zakynthos at the time of Homer's epics - the authors assume Leukas - and this must have passed on to the island so named today.

literature

  • Wilhelm Dörpfeld: Leukas. Two essays on Homeric Ithaca. Beck & Barth Athens, 1905, p. 3ff. ( online at archive.org ).
  • Thomas William Allen: The Homeric catalog of ships. Oxford University Press 1921, pp. 82-100 ( online at archive.org ).
  • Edzard Visser: Homer's Catalog of Ships . Teubner-Verlag, Stuttgart - Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-519-07442-7 . Pp. 574-598.
  • John V. Luce : The Landscapes of Homer. Klett-Glotta, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 193 ff., Especially pp. 198–205. - ISBN 3-608-94279-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ - (Ancient Greek original of the 2nd song of the Iliad). www.gottwein.de, accessed on April 15, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Edzard Visser: Homer's catalog of ships . Stuttgart - Leipzig 1997, pp. 583, 585 ff.
  3. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 14, 335f.
  4. ↑ Edzard Visser: Homer's catalog of ships . Teubner-Verlag, Stuttgart - Leipzig 1997, pp. 580, 582.
  5. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 16, 247ff. The remaining 56 suitors come from Same (24), Zakynthos (20) and Ithaka (12)
  6. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 14.335; 16,396f.
  7. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 8, 22ff.
  8. ^ Strabo, Geography , 10, 455ff.
  9. ↑ Strabo, Geography , 10.458.
  10. ↑ s. Dörpfeld's remarks on this problem and the resulting theses in research in: Wilhelm Dörpfeld: Leukas. Two essays on Homeric Ithaca , (Beck & Barth Athens, 1906) p. 3f.
  11. ^ Edzard Visser, Homer's Catalog of Ships , Teubner-Verlag, Stuttgart - Leipzig 1997, pp. 579f.
  12. ^ Edward Dodwell, A classical and topographical tour through Greece, during the years 1801, 1805, and 1806 , Volume 1, London 1819, pp. 107f.
  13. ↑ Armin Schriever: The development of the Acheloos delta. A paleogeographical-geoarchaeological study of the Holocene coastal change in northwest Greece. Diss. Marburg / Lahn 2007.
  14. ^ Thomas William Allen, The Homeric Catalog of Ships. , Oxfort 1921, pp. 98ff. especially pp. 86-88.
  15. ↑ Among others, R. Hope Simpson, JF Lazenby, The Cataloque of ships in Momer's "ilias" , New York, Oxford University Press 1970, p. 101 .; Alan Wace , Frank Henry Stubbings (Eds.): A Companion to Homer. Macmillan London 1962, pp. 403 f .; John V. Luce: The Landscapes of Homer. Klett-Glotta, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 193 ff., Especially pp. 198–205.
  16. ^ Edzard Visser, Homer's Catalog of Ships , Teubner-Verlag, Stuttgart - Leipzig 1997, pp. 580ff., Esp. 580, note 11 with reference to Hope Simpson and Allen.
  17. ↑ Edzard Visser: Homer's catalog of ships . Stuttgart - Leipzig 1997, pp. 586-587 .
  18. ^ John V. Luce : The Landscapes of Homer . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-608-94279-3 , The Homeric Ithaka: Geography and Archeology, p. 204 (English: Celebratung Homer's Landscapes. Troy and Ithaca Revisited . New Haven / London 1999. Translated by Karin Schuler).
  19. ↑ Vangelis Pantazis, Η ομηρική Ζάκυνθος. Οι «ιερές» Εχίνες και το μυστήριο του χαμένου Δουλιχίου
  20. ^ Hettie Putman Cramer & Makis Metaxas: The Lost Kingdom of Homer's Doulichion. In: homericithaca.blogspot.de. Retrieved February 4, 2016 .