ABSTRACT
After twenty years of fighting and wandering, Odysseus has just returned to his homeland, Ithaca. He is disguised as a beggar, his true identity unknown even to his wife Penelope. She asks him who he is and whence he has come. Pretending to be of Cretan origin, he fondly describes to her the land of his alleged birth: ‘Out in the wine-dark sea there lies a land called Crete, a rich and lovely land, sea-girt and densely peopled, with ninety cities.’1
