1. Contexts and Concepts -- 2. Sailing and Colonizing in the Sea of Returns -- 3. Ithaca and the Cult of Odysseus -- 4. The Odyssey's Alternatives: Ethnicity and Colonization in Epirus -- 5. Pithekoussai, Odysseus, and the Etruscans -- 6. Odysseus and Italy: A Peripheral Vision of Ethnicity -- 7. The Other Nostoi: Nestor, Epeios, Philoktetes, Trojan Siris -- 8. The Other Nostoi: Diomedes -- App. Homeric Issues
Summary
Irad Malkin contributes here to the current lively discussion of encounters among Greeks and non-Greeks. Through the prism of myths, he argues, notions of ethnicity and collective identity were articulated. Focussing in particular on myths about Odysseus and other heroes who visited foreign lands on their mythical voyages homeward after the Trojan War, he shows how these Return-myths influenced actual encounters during the time of early exploration and colonization in the western Mediterranean
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-313) and index
