The name Ithaca (Iτthcη), like Utica, has been explained by pl∏V, a “colony,” which would point to a Phoenician connexion. It has remained attached to the island from the very earliest times with but little interruption of the tradition; though in Brompton’s travels (12th century) and in the old Venetian maps we find it called Fale or Vai de Compar, and at a later date it not unfrequently appears as Little Cephalonia. This last name indicates the general character of Ithacan history (if history it can be called) in modern and indeed in ancient times; for the fame of the island is almost solely due to its position in the Homeric story of Ulysses. Ithaca, according to the Homeric epos, was the royal seat and residence of King Ulysses, and within its narrow limits lies the scene of much of the poem. The island is incidentally described with no small variety of detail, picturesque and topographical; but the very apparent definiteness of the description has rendered the process of identification peculiarly perplexing, and the coincidences between the Ithaca of the Odyssey and the Ithaca of the present day are sometimes as puzzling as the points of disagreement. The phraseology in which the position of the island is indicated is of doubtful interpretation, and the important word χθαμαλή would have naturally been rendered “low-lying” if stress of present fact had not forced the commentators to find or fancy such significations as “with low shores” (the shores after all being rather unusually high ) or “slanting downwards.” The Homeric localities for which counterparts have been sought are Mount Neritos, Mount Neion, the harbour of Phorcys, the town and palace of Ulysses, the fountain of Arethusa, the cave of the Naiads, the stalls of the swineherd Eumaeus, the orchard of Laertes, and the Korax or Raven Cliff. The master site may be said to be that of the town; and several of the minor points may be at once dismissed as hopeless of all certainty of recognition. Among the “identificationists” there are two schools, one placing the town at Polis on the west coast in the northern half of the island (Leake, Gladstone, &c. ), and the other at Aeto on the isthmus. The latter site, which was advocated by Sir William Gell {Topography and Antiquities of Ithaca, London, 1807), has received a great accession to its probability as opposed to the rival theory by the excavations of Dr Schliemann carried on in 1873 and 1878 (see Schliemann, Ithaque, le Péloponnèse, Troie, Paris, 1869, also published in German; his letter to TheTimes, September 26, 1878; and the author’s life prefixed to Ilios, London, 1880). He. found that the valley called Polis or city has never been the site of a town, and that the apparent ruins on a neighbouring height supposed to be the acropolis are really a group of castellated rocks. Remains of Cyclopean structures at the spot known as Homer’s school (a name of the most modern origin) were the only evidence in favour of the existence of a town in the northern part of the island. On the ridge of Mount Aeto, on the other hand, he found vast Cyclopean walls built of stones even larger than those of Mycenae and Tiryns; and within the area which they enclose there may have been, he calculates, 2000 houses similar to those which he actually made out to the number of 190. Fragments of pottery of a Trojan type, of tiles with impressed ornaments, and of a curious handmill were the only relics of the former inhabitants. “In the south-eastern extremity of the island are a number of rooms like stables, averaging 35 feet in length and 10 feet in breadth, partly rock-cut, partly formed by Cyclopean walls of very huge rudely wrought stones, and in their immediate vicinity thousands of very common but most ancient potsherds.” Mr Buubury {Hist. of Ancient Geography, vol. i. p. 83) is disposed to consider this evidence conclusive as to the site of the capital.

See, besides the works already refeιτed to, the separate works on Ithaca by Schreiber, Leipsic, 1829; Riihle von Lilienstern, Berlin, 1832; N Karavias Grivas ('Ιστορία τής νήσου Ιθάκης), Athens, 1849; Bowen, London, 1851; and Gandar, Paris, 1854; Hercher, in Hermes, 1866; Leake’s Northern Greece·, Mare's Tour in Greece; Bursian's Geogr. von Griechenland; Gladstone, “The Dominions of Ulysses," in Macmillan s Magazine, 1877. A history of the discussions will be found in Buchholz, Die Homerische Realien, Leipsic, 1871.

ITHACA, the chief town of Tompkins county, New York, U.S., is prettily situated in a township of the same name on the Cayuga Inlet, 1⅛ miles from the southern end of Lake Cayuga, and 142 miles west by south of Albany. It is at the junction of several railways, has gas and water works, and carries on some commerce, of which the shipping of coal from the Pennsylvanian anthracite district forms an important constituent. The manufactures include agricultural implements, paper, glass, leather, and machinery. On an eminence to the north-east rise the handsome buildings of Cornell university, chartered in 1865 and opened in 1868, in which a marked characteristic is the prominence given to the study of agriculture and the mechanical arts. Sage College was presented to the university by the Hon. H. W. Sage, on condition that women should have the same advantages for education as men. The public library of Ithaca was built and stocked at a cost of £13,000 by the same munificent citizen whose endowment of the university is commemorated in its name. The neighbourhood of Ithaca is remarkable for the number of its waterfalls, of which Ithaca Fall, 160 feet high by 150 feet broad, is the chief. The population of the town in 1880 was 9864.