But I have wandered from our goal. I had expected to find in the remains near Stauros corroboration of my belief that here lay the Homeric city. For I had long supposed, with Leake of the older topographers, and Bursian, Partsch, and Lolling of the later ones, that it must be here. Here are massive walls, rock-cut steps, ancient cisterns, and the niches in the rock passing under the name of the "School of Homer." But at the close of the day, in order not to be unjust to the dissenters, I climbed Aëtos, and saw that the walls there, resembling those of Tiryns, had about as good claim as those at Stauros to be regarded as those of a Homeric fortress. The question where the Odyssey locates the city is not at present to be decided by remains, but by certain other indications which seem to point to the region of Stauros.
The suitors of Penelope, who wished to kill Telemachus on his return from "Sandy Pylos," lay in wait for him on an island called Asteris, "midway between Ithaca and rugged Samos." Opposite the northern end of the island, though much nearer to Samos (Kephallenia) than to Ithaca, is the only island in the whole strait, needing to be magnified a good deal to suit the story of the Odyssey; but what poet ever denied himself the right to magnify? And looking toward this little island is the only harbor on this (western) side of Ithaca, a deep indentation running far into the land, now called "Polis Bay," a reminiscence of the fact that a city once stood here. This name is a genuine survival from old times, and not a revamping of a classical name, as is the case with Mount Neriton. About this bay and up as far as Stauros, and even farther to the west and north, is the main smiling spot of the island. It was autopsy that I wanted more than anything else; and, as I stood on the rocks near Homer's school, autopsy forced upon me the conviction that here, and here only, must have been the important city of the island, the city from which the faithful Paladin of Agamemnon ruled not only Ithaca but also Kephallenia. Here, amid the remains of an ancient settlement, one looks into three harbors about equally distant, Polis on the west side of the island, a broader one on the east side, now called Phrikes, in which we saw a good-sized vessel anchored, and on the north end one still more capacious, probably the Reithron of the Odyssey. The situation was well adapted to a city ruling the island and possessing easy communication with the coast, east and west.