Ulysses Found Author:Ernle Bradford "This book is the record of a quest," says Ernle Bradford. "It is a piece of detective work, applied not to such simple problems as 'Who murdered X?' but to questions of geography, history, and ethnology, whose solution must be traced through the writings of men long ded, and through the geographical records of people who had no real conception... more » of latitude of longitude..." It seeks the answer to an age-old question: Must Homer's Odyssey be regarded as fiction or did it have some basis in fact?
Drawing on many sources--ancient lore, modern scholarship,his own deep knowledge of sailing in small boats all over the Mediterranean, and the evidence in the Odyssey itself--Bradford sailed the course of Ulysses from his departure from Troy to his arrival in Ithaca ten years later.
He visited all of the places Homer evoked, including the Land of the Lotus-Eaters, Circe's domain, and Calypso's island. He describes them as they are today and presents in fascinating detail the factual basis of the mythical sights and adventures recorded in Homer's epic. Describing the passage between Scylla and Charybdis, Bradford notes that it is still hazardous to boats as small as the "black ship" of Ulysses. It was much more so before an earthquake altered the sea bed, and he shows how the natural terrors of the rock and the whirlpool may well have given rise to the myth of the two monsters that inhabited them. Again, he demonstrates, out of his knowledge of winds and currents, that the courses of navigation set by Ulysses were authentic, and that the gales that carried him off these courses still blow in their seasons.
Ulysses Found is rich in the suspense of exploration and the excitement of sailing and it was written. as Mr. Bradford says, in honor of "Ulysses--the questing spirit of man; and of the Mediterranean--the cradle of Western Civilization."« less