PREFACE
The Greek Odysseus, sacker of cities, wily, resourceful Odysseus, great grandson of the Greek god
Zeus, after the fall of Troy city in a about 1,240 BCE (Before Christian or Common Era) with his fast black ship
manned by 50 fighting men with oars and a large sail should have been home in about a week.
All he had to do was cross the small Aegean sea, go round the south of Greece and up its west coast
to his home island of Ithaca, where he was king. But instead of a week he took 10 years. So what
went wrong? What did go wrong is told in the epic story of the Odyssey, supposedly by the classical
Greek poet Homer writing some 500 - 600 years later.
Conventional wisdom today has it that Odysseus (Ulysses to the Romans) spent the 10 years going
from place to place in the Mediterranean. But Edward Furlong (EF) doesn't think so. EF was at one time a navigating
officer in the Navy and after that while at Oxford lived on a 70 ft. boat for 4 years while
reconstructing it and 2 others, one for fishing and one for ferrying.
EF shows there's a palpable error in the text as we have it, and why this is so; gets expert opinion and
experience to back up his argument as to the speed of the penteconter used by Odysseus. EF went
to the Toronto Planetarium which the director kindly precessed back to 1,200 BCE, close to the
estimated time of the homecoming. Using star directions and other information given by Homer EF
shows that Odysseus would never have come even close to the correct landfall that Mediterraneanists
say he did, but must have been much further north and outside the Mediterranean. In the text there
is further evidence for more northerly voyaging which Mediterraneanists can't explain and gloss
over.
This is a fascinating detective story and was the starting point of EF's venture into ancient history.
It was the first of the four 2-hour documentaries EF authored and narrated for the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation radio network and provoked hundreds of enthusiastic letters by listeners.
Here we have a revised and updated version.