Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/539

 I T H I T I 517 ITHACA (Wa.Kr)), vulgarly Thiaki (ta/oj), is next to Pasco the smallest of the seven Ionian Islands, with an area of about 44 square miles. It forms an eparchy of the nomos of Cephalonia in the kingdom of Greece, and its population, which was 9873 in 1870, is given by the census of 1879 at 12,222, of whom 6305 were males. The island consists of two mountain masses, connected by a narrow isthmus of hills, and separated by a wide inlet of the sea known as the Gulf of Molo. The northern and greater mass culminates in the heights of Anoi (2066 feet), and the southern in Hagios Stephanos, or Mount Marovugli (2135 feet). Vathy (BaOv), the chief town and port of the island, lies at the northern foot of Mount Stephanos, its whitewashed houses stretching for about a mile round the deep bay in the Gulf of Molo, to which it owes its name (cf. Dieppe and such Dutch names as Hollands Diep). As there are only one or two small stretches of arable land in Ithaca, the inhabitants are dependent on commerce for their grain supply ; and olive oil, wine, and currants are the principal products obtained by the cultivation of the thin stratum of soil that covers the calcareous rocks. Goats are fed in considerable number on the brushwood pasture of the -hills ; and hares (in spite of Aristotle s supposed assertion of their absence) are exceptionally abundant. The island.is divided into four districts: Vathy, Aeto (or Eagle s Cliff), Anoge (Anoi) or Upland, and Exoge (Exoi) or Outland. The name Ithaca (ITUKTJ), like Utica, has been explained by piny, a &quot;colony,&quot; 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 Val de Compiir, 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 scat and residence of King Ulysses, and within its narrow limits lies the scene of mnch 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 pecu liarly 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 posi tion of the island is indicated is of doubtful interpretation, and the important word x^^aAij would have naturally been raidered &quot; low- lying &quot; if stress of present fact had not forced the commentators to find or fancy such significations as &quot;with low shores&quot; (the shores after all being rather unusually high) or &quot;slanting downwards.&quot; The Homeric localities for which counterparts have been sought are Mount Neritos, Mount Xeion, 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 &quot; identificationists &quot; there are two schools, one placing the town at Polis on the west coast in the northern half of the island (Leake, Gladstone, &e. ), and the other at Aeto on the isthmus. The latter site, which was advocated by Sir William Cell (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, Ithaquc, le Peloponnesc, Troie, Paris, 1869, also published in Ger man ; his letter to T/te Times, 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. Eemains 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 nvimber 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. &quot;In the south-eastern ex tremity 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.&quot; Mr Bunbury (Hist, of Ancient Geography, vol. i. p. 83) is disposed to consider this evidence conclusive as to the site of the capital. Sec. besides the works already referred to, the separate works on Ithaca by Schreiber, Leipsic, 1829 ; Ruble von Lilienstern, Berlin, 1832 ; N Karavias Grivas ( loropi a rrjs vrja-ov Iflaiojs), Athens, 1849; 15owen, London, 1851; and Gandar, Paris, 1854; Hercher, in Hermes, 18G6 ; Lcake s Northern Greece; Mure s Tour in Greece; Bursian s Geogr. von Griec/ien/and ; Gladstone, &quot;The Dominions of Ulysses,&quot; in Macmillaris Magazine, 1877. A history of the discussions will be found in Buchholz, Die Ilomensche Realien, Leipsie, 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, 1- 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 agri cultural implements, paper, glass, leather, and machinery. On an eminence to the north-east rise the handsome build ings 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. V. 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 endow ment 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. ITINERARIUM. This Latin word, equivalent to road-book, is more particularly employed to designate the descriptions still extant of the ancient Roman roads and routes of traffic, with the stations and distances. It is usual to distinguish two classes, Itineraria Adnotata or Scripta and Itineraria Picta, the former having the character of a book, and the latter being a graphic indica tion of the route in the form of a chart. Of the Itineraria Scripta the most important are : (1) It. Antonini (see ANTONINI ITINERAKIUM and ANTONINUS), which consists of two parts, the one dealing with roads in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the other with familiar sea-routes, the distances usually measured from Rome (the better MSS. probably represent a revision dating from the time of Dio cletian ; edited by Tobler, St Gall, 1863); (2) It Iliero- solymitanum or Burdigalense, which belongs to the 4th century, and contains the route from Bordeaux to Jeru salem and from Heraclea by Rome to Milan (see Pindar in Verliandl. of the Berlin Academy, 1860; A. de Bar- the le my in Revue Archeol., 1864 ; Aures, Concordance des voies apollinaircs, &amp;lt;kc., Mmes, 1868); (3) It. Alexandra, containing a sketch of the march-route of Alexander the Great, mainly derived from Arrian and prepared for Constantius s expedition in 340-345 A.D. (first ed. by Mai, Milan, 1817, since by C. Miiller in Diibner s Arrianus, Paris, 1846, and by D. Volkmann, Naumb., 1871; see Kluge, De itin. Alexandri, Berlin, 1861). A collected edition of the ancient itineraria was issued by Fortia d Urban, Paris, 1845. Of the Itineraria Picta only one great example has been preserved. This is the famous Tabula Peutingeriana, which, without attending to the shape or relative position of the countries, represents by straight lines and dots of various sizes the roads and towns of the whole Roman world. The best edition is by Desjardins, Paris, 1868. ITIUS PORTUS, a place of no importance in itself, has a kind of factitious interest as the point whence Julius Ceesar sailed from Gaul to Britain. Although Caesar does not mention the Portus in speaking of his first expedition