The voyage of Odysseus—or Ulysses, to give him his more familiar name—posed one of the most tantalising riddles in history: was Homer's Odyssey entirely imaginary? or did Ulysses make a real voyage home from the siege of Troy to Ithaca? If so, where did he meet such extraordinary creatures as Circe the witch who turned sailors into pigs, or the Sirens who tried to lure them to doom by the sweetness of their song? Did Scylla and Charybdis and the Cyclops really exist in any form?
In a gripping modern detective story Tim Severin uses his replica of a Bronze Age galley to follow the clues which lead to a startling solution to the puzzle.
According to legend, Ulysses was nine years on his homeward journey, and over the centuries historians, classicists and archaeologists alike have tried to make sense of his wanderings. Every place that Homer mentions has been identified differently and no two investigators agree on all locations.
Now, for the first time, Ulysses' logical homeward route has been put to the practical test in a faithful replica of the type of ship used in Ulysses' era, and sailed by the rules of navigation of the time. The result is enthralling. Tim Severin overturns all the orthodox theories, and in a remarkable series of discoveries charts the likely position of the Clashing Rocks, reveals where the cave of the legendary Cyclops would have been, and establishes the origins of Ulysses' adventures,
The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey combines scholarship, adventure and detection with the mastery for which Tim Severin has become known, and is a splendid sequel to The Brendan Voyage, The Sindbad Voyage and The Jason Voyage: The Quest for the Golden Fleece. Thanks to Tim Severin, future generations will be able to read The Odyssey with new insight and understanding.
Did you find this review helpful?