Places Draft
A gazetteer for the Iliad and Odyssey. Each entry cites its anchoring passage(s); these curated citations are not an exhaustive concordance.
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Abydos
Ἄβυδος certainOn the Asian shore at the Hellespont's narrowest crossing, Trojan-allied territory under Asius (2.836); Democoon comes 'from Abydos, from the swift mares' (4.500).
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Adramyttium
certainNot named in the Iliad. An Aeolian city on the Karataş peninsula at Ören, Balıkesir province, included here because Strabo measures Homeric Thebe from it (60 stadia) — the anchor for a whole cluster of southern-Troad identifications.
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Adrasteia
Ἀδρήστεια traditionalTroad-Propontis town giving its name to the plain of Adrasteia and, later, to the epithet of Nemesis/Adrasteia.
Tradition: Plain and town near modern Karacabey/Erdek area, southern Propontis coast (Strabo 13.1.13)
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Aeaea
Αἰαίη traditionalIsland of the enchantress Circe, who transforms Odysseus's men into swine. Roman-era tradition (Theophrastus HP 5.8.3; later Latin poets) locates it at Monte Circeo on the Italian coast.
Tradition: Monte Circeo (ancient Circeii), Italy (Theophrastus HP 5.8.3; Roman literary tradition)
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Aegialus (Achaea)
Αἰγιαλός certain"The coastland": Homer's name for the whole Corinthian Gulf shore later called Achaea.
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Aegialus (Paphlagonia)
Αἰγιαλός speculative"The coastland" of Paphlagonia; a generic descriptive name shared with the Achaean-side Aegialus (Il. 2.575).
Tradition: Paphlagonian coast, 'the shoreland,' homonymous with the Achaean Aegialus in this Catalogue; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Aegilips
Αἰγίλιψ speculative"Rugged" place in Odysseus's kingdom that Strabo could not identify with confidence.
Tradition: Cephallenian/Ithacan territory, exact site unknown (Strabo 10.2.10); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Aegina
Αἴγινα certainSaronic Gulf island-city; modern Aegina preserves the name over the ancient site.
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Aegium
Αἴγιον certainChief city of Achaea, meeting-place of the Achaean League; modern Aigio occupies the ancient site.
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Aeolia
Αἰολίη traditionalFloating island home of Aeolus, keeper of the winds, who gives Odysseus the bag of storm-winds. Ancient tradition (Thucydides 3.88) identifies it with the Aeolian (Lipari) Islands.
Tradition: Aeolian/Lipari Islands off Sicily (Thucydides 3.88)
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Aesepus (river)
Αἴσηπος certainRiver of the northern Troad flowing from Ida past Zeleia; the modern Gönen Çayı. This record duplicates the fuller river entry at 'aisepos' and is kept only because the ship-catalogue's Zeleian contingent references it by this id; it carries no independent coordinate — the Aesepus is a river, drawn as a line at 'aisepos', not a point, and the coordinate formerly attached here was Zeleia's town point, copied here in error.
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Aethices
Αἴθικες speculativeMountain people on Thessaly's western fringe, near the Perrhaebians and Pindus; territory only vaguely fixed.
Tradition: A people/district on the western Thessalian-Epirote border, near Mt Pindus, exact bounds unknown (Strabo 9.5.11); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Aetolia
Αἰτωλοί certainRegion of west-central Greece around Calydon; named as the homeland of a man who deceived Eumaeus with a false report about Odysseus.
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Aipy
Αἰπύ speculative"Steep" town in Triphylian territory; Strabo notes only the descriptive name, not a firm site.
Tradition: Triphylia, 'the steep town,' exact site unknown (Strabo 8.3.24); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Alesium
Ἀλήσιον speculativeElean landmark Strabo tentatively connects with a hill called Alesiaeum; unconfirmed.
Tradition: Elis, possibly a hill near Amphidolis, exact site unknown (Strabo 8.3.10); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Alope
Ἀλόπη speculativeSmall Achaea Phthiotis town grouped with Alus and Trachis; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: Achaea Phthiotis, near Alus, exact site unknown (Strabo 9.5.8); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Alus
Ἄλος traditionalAchaea Phthiotis town near the Malian Gulf; site associated with modern Almyros/Halos.
Tradition: Thessalian coastal town near modern Almyros, on the Malian Gulf road (Strabo 9.5.8)
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Alybe
Ἀλύβη speculativeNamed only for its silver; ancient scholarship already treated its location as an open, much-debated problem.
Tradition: "Birthplace of silver": among the most famously unlocated Homeric place-names, disputed since antiquity (Strabo 12.3.20-27)
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Amphigeneia
Ἀμφιγένεια speculativeTriphylian town with a sanctuary of Leto per Strabo; precise site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Triphylia, near the Hypsoeis river, exact site unknown (Strabo 8.3.25); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Amyclae
Ἀμύκλαι certainExcavated sanctuary of Apollo south of Sparta; the pre-Dorian settlement absorbed into Lacedaemon.
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Amydon
Ἀμυδών speculativePaeonian city on the Axius, already legendary/vanished by the time of later Greek geography.
Tradition: Paeonia, on the lower Axius, said destroyed before historical times (Strabo 12.3.20, fr.); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Anemoreia
Ἀνεμώρεια speculative"Windy" Phocian settlement Strabo says was later renamed Anemolea; precise site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Windy pass site near Delphi, later called Anemolea per Strabo 9.3.15; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Anthedon
Ἀνθηδών traditional"Farthest-lying" Boeotian coastal town facing Euboea; site located near modern Loukisia.
Tradition: Coastal site near modern Loukisia, East Boeotia (Strabo 9.2.13; Paus. 9.22.5)
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Antron
Ἄντρων traditionalCoastal Achaea Phthiotis town facing Euboea across the strait; approximate site near modern Glypha.
Tradition: Achaea Phthiotis coast opposite Euboea, near modern Glypha (Strabo 9.5.14)
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Apaesus
Ἄπαισος speculativeSmall Propontis-coast town Strabo says was later called Paesus; precise site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Propontis coast near Adrasteia, later renamed Paesus/Apaesus, exact site unknown (Strabo 13.1.19); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Araethyrea
Ἀραιθυρέη speculative"Lovely" district Strabo identifies with the later city of Phlius; precise Homeric-era site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Sicyonian territory, later called Phlius per Strabo 8.6.24; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Arene
Ἀρήνη speculativeTown Strabo could not confidently place, near the Minyeius in Triphylia; disputed since antiquity.
Tradition: Messenia/Triphylia, near the Minyeius river, exact site disputed (Strabo 8.3.19); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Argissa
Ἄργισσα traditionalLapith town on the Peneius near later Larissa; Strabo notes some identified it with Argura.
Tradition: On the Peneius, near modern Larissa, Thessaly, sometimes identified with Argura (Strabo 9.5.19)
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Argos
Ἄργος certainCity of the Argolid; Homer also uses 'Argos' loosely for the wider Peloponnese/Achaea, a usage noted since antiquity.
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Arisbe
Ἀρίσβη traditional'Shining Arisbe' on the Selleeis, Asius's home city: he brings his horses from here (2.838, 12.96), Axylus lived here (6.13), and Lycaon was sold on and sent 'to shining Arisbe' (21.43).
Tradition: Possible identification with modern Musaköy, after Anaximenes of Lampsacus (Strabo 13.1.21 places it on the Propontis coast between Abydos and Lampsacus, colonized in tradition from Mytilene)
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Arne
Ἄρνη speculativeBoeotian city Strabo says may have been swallowed by Lake Copais; identification disputed since antiquity.
Tradition: Possibly submerged under Lake Copais or identified with Acraephnium (Strabo 9.2.34-35); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Ascania (Phrygia)
Ἀσκανίη traditionalDistrict named for a lake in northwest Phrygia/Bithynia, generally identified with modern Lake İznik.
Tradition: Region around Lake Ascania in northwest Phrygia, modern Lake İznik (Strabo 12.4.5, 14.5.29)
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Asine
Ἀσίνη certainExcavated Argolid coastal town near modern Tolo/Asini; Swedish excavations from 1922.
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Aspledon
Ἀσπληδών traditionalMinyan town paired with Orchomenus; Strabo places it a short distance north of Orchomenus.
Tradition: Near modern Pyrgos, north of Orchomenus, Boeotia (Strabo 9.2.26)
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Asterium
Ἀστέριον speculativeThessalian town Strabo pairs with the white-peaked Titanus; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: Thessaly, near Mt Titanus, exact site unknown (Strabo 9.5.18); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Athens
Ἀθῆναι certainCity of Attica, Athena's own city, visited by the goddess herself in the Odyssey.
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Augeiae (Laconia)
Αὐγειαί speculativeLaconian town of the same name as one in East Locris; unlocated.
Tradition: Laconia, exact site unknown, distinct from the Locrian Augeiae; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Augeiae (Locris)
Αὐγειαί speculativeLocrian town of the same name as one in Laconia; vanished by Strabo's day, unlocated.
Tradition: East Locris, exact site unknown, distinct from the Laconian Augeiae; already lost by Strabo's time (9.4.5); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Aulis
Αὐλίς certainBoeotian harbor where the Achaean fleet gathered before Troy; site of the portent Odysseus recalls.
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Axius (river)
Ἀξιός certainMajor Macedonian river reaching the Thermaic Gulf; the modern Vardar.
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Batieia, the barrow of Myrine
Βατίεια speculative'There is before the city a steep mound out in the plain, standing clear with a way round it on either side, which men call Batieia but the immortals the barrow of much-leaping Myrine' (2.811-814) — the double naming, men's word against the gods', marks old material in the poem. It is where the Trojan and allied contingents muster before the battle begins. Hainsworth holds that the Catalogue of Ships works from a different topography of the plain from the battle books, referring for it to the notes on 2.793 and 2.811-815 (Commentary III, 243) - and 2.811-815 is this record's only Homeric position, as 2.793 is the tomb of Aesyetes'. The schematic anchor stands where the poem's own words put it, in the plain in front of the city and clear of everything round it, with the warning attached rather than the anchor moved.
Tradition: A tumulus on the Trojan plain, discussed among the tombs of the plain since Strabo (13.1.36-37); no ancient or modern survey, including Leaf (1912), matches a surviving mound to it
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Beşik Bay
certainA bay on the Aegean coast southwest of Troy, facing Tenedos. Kraft, Rapp, Kayan and Luce 2003 read it as a harbor: the Beşik embayment 'always provided a place of shelter for ships' against the Dardanelles current, an important roadstead even after the Troian bay had silted. Korfmann's 1982-87 excavation found a cemetery of roughly 100 graves here in which Mycenaean and Mycenaeanising LH IIIB fine ware runs to about a third of the wares — against under 1% at Troia VI/VII itself — making it the strongest archaeological candidate for a working Late Bronze Age port. No survey coordinate for the bay as a whole; the sheet letters it as a water name over the modern sea, anchored from Beşik Tepe at the bay's north end, 39.9171 / 26.1591.
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Beşik-Sivritepe, claimed tomb of Achilles
traditionalA conical tumulus at the north end of Beşik Bay, about 2 km SSW of Yeniköy; its present cone is Hellenistic (Rose and Körpe 2016). The town of Achilleion was the Mytileneans' base in their war with Athens over Sigeion (Herodotus 5.94) and, by Pliny's account, their foundation (Natural History 5.125). The rival localization is at Cape Sigeion: Strabo puts a temple and monument of Achilles near Sigeion (13.1.32), and from Lechevalier's map of 1791 the travelers marked the tomb on a tumulus there (Burgess), which this sheet does not draw. Arrian has Alexander garland the tomb of Achilles (Anabasis 1.12.1) but does not say which mound.
Tradition: One of the rival tombs of Achilles (Burgess, "Tumuli of Achilles"): the tumulus beside Achilleion, the town Pliny puts next to the tomb (Natural History 5.125), with Achilleion placed on the neighboring cape of Beşika Burnu and its mound, Beşik-Yassıtepe (Pleiades 550401)
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Bessa
Βῆσσα speculative"Wooded glen" Locrian town, likewise vanished by antiquity per Strabo; unlocated.
Tradition: East Locris, exact site unknown; also lost by Strabo's time (Strabo 9.4.5); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Boagrius (river)
Βοάγριος traditionalTorrent-river at Thronium in East Locris; Strabo notes it also went by the name Manes.
Tradition: The stream by Thronium, East Locris, called Manes/Boagrius in antiquity (Strabo 9.4.4)
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Boebe
Βοίβη speculativeSmall Thessalian town giving the nearby lake its name; precise site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Thessaly, on Lake Boebeis, exact site unknown; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Bryseiae
Βρυσειαί speculativeMinor Laconian town paired with Augeiae in the Catalogue; no confirmed site.
Tradition: Laconia, exact site unknown; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Buprasium
Βουπράσιον traditionalDistrict/town of northeast Elis bordering Achaea; already partly deserted by Strabo's time.
Tradition: Northeast Elis, between the Larisus and the sea (Strabo 8.3.7)
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Calliarus
Καλλίαρος speculativeLocrian town Strabo says had vanished by his own day; no confirmed site.
Tradition: East Locris, exact site unknown; already lost by Strabo's time (Strabo 9.4.5); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Callicolone, 'Fair Hill'
Καλλικολώνη traditionalA rise beside the Simoeis where Ares rallies the Trojans (20.53) and the pro-Trojan gods take their seats to watch the battle of the gods (20.151), the Trojan counterpart to the Achaean wall where the pro-Greek gods sit (20.144-148). Pinned at Kara Tepe (editorial ruling, 2026-07-30): the surveyed peak 8.5 km east of Troy, elevation 207 m — Spratt's own 680 ft, per Cook 110 — carrying the Spratt/Forchhammer identification Cook defends and Luce adopts; the support is judged overwhelming and the tier raised accordingly. Leaf instead proposed Ophrynion, on the plain's opposite side, and stays in the record as the named dissent; Strabo's forty stades sit between the two positions.
Tradition: Kara Tepe, roughly 8.5 km east of Troy near the Simoeis: identified by Spratt and Forchhammer (19th c.), defended by J. M. Cook (1973, 110-13) working from Strabo's stade-figures (13.1.35: 40 stadia from Ilium, 5 from the Simoeis), and adopted by Luce (1984) — the consensus tradition; Leaf (1912, 44) instead proposed Ophrynion, on the plain's opposite side
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Calydnae Islands
Καλύδναι traditionalSmall island group near Cos; Strabo and later tradition identify them chiefly with Kalymnos.
Tradition: Islets near Cos, identified with modern Kalymnos and the smaller Leros group (Strabo 10.5.19)
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Calydon
Καλυδών certainAetolian city at the center of the Meleager story told by Phoenix in his appeal to Achilles.
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Camirus
Κάμειρος certainExcavated west-coast Rhodian city, one of the island's three pre-synoecism cities.
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Cape Lekton
Λεκτόν certainModern Cape Baba, the westernmost point of Asia Minor. Named once: Hera and Sleep 'came to Lekton, where first they left the sea' and went on over dry land to Ida (14.284) — one of Homer's very few precisely verifiable coordinates.
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Cape Malea
Μάλεια certainSoutheastern promontory of the Peloponnese; wave, current, and north wind drive Odysseus off course as he rounds it.
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Caria
Καρία certainRegion of southwest Anatolia; Nastes and Amphimachus lead its 'foreign-speaking' contingent.
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Carpathus
Κράπαθος certainLarge Dodecanese island between Rhodes and Crete; modern Karpathos preserves the ancient name (Homeric Crapathus).
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Carystus
Κάρυστος certainSouth Euboean city famed for its marble quarries; modern Karystos occupies the ancient site.
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Casus
Κάσος certainSmall island south of Carpathos; modern Kasos preserves the ancient name.
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Cephisus (river)
Κηφισός certainRiver draining Phocis into the Copaic basin of Boeotia; the modern Kifisos still bears the name.
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Cerinthus
Κήρινθος traditionalSmall coastal Euboean town on the Aegean side, near modern Mantoudi/Kerinthos.
Tradition: Coastal North Euboea near modern Mantoudi (Strabo 10.1.3)
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Chalcis (Aetolia)
Χαλκίς traditionalAetolian coastal town on the gulf, distinct from Euboean Chalcis named in the same Catalogue.
Tradition: Aetolian coastal town near modern Vasiliki, homonymous with Euboean Chalcis (Strabo 10.2.4)
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Chalcis (Euboea)
Χαλκίς certainChief city of Euboea on the Euripus strait; modern Chalkida occupies the same site.
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Charybdis
Χάρυβδις traditionalWhirlpool opposite Scylla that swallows the sea three times a day. Thucydides (4.24.5) identifies the strait as the Strait of Messina.
Tradition: Strait of Messina, Sicilian shore (Thucydides 4.24.5)
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Chryse
Χρύση speculativeThe town of Chryses, priest of Apollo, whose daughter Agamemnon seizes and whose anger opens the poem. Already lost by Strabo's day: he places Homer's Chryse at the ancient, deserted town near Thebe, and treats the Chrysa near Hamaxitos — where the cult of Apollo Smintheus was later re-established — as the view of "those less acquainted with ancient history". The Barrington Atlas carries both candidates, the Chrysa on the Gulf of Adramyttium near Thebe and the Smintheion site, plus a third entry that is simply unlocated.
Tradition: Strabo 13.1.63 locates Homer's Chryse at the ancient, by-then-deserted town near Thebe, not at the later Chrysa near Hamaxitos to which the temple of Apollo Smintheus was transferred after the Cilicians were driven out; Strabo names the Hamaxitos identification the view of "those less acquainted with ancient history"
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Cilla
Κίλλα speculativeSacred to Apollo, paired with Chryse in the priest's prayer formula (1.38 = 1.452). A Mount Killaios (probably modern Adatepe) and a Killaios river survive nearby, but neither is the town itself, and no site has ever been proposed for it.
Tradition: Troad, near Thebe under Placus; Barrington Atlas map 56 lists it unlocated
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Cleonae
Κλεωναί certainArgolid city between Corinth and Argos; site excavated near modern Archaies Kleones.
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Copae
Κώπαι traditionalLake-shore town giving Copais its name; site at modern Kastro on the drained lake's edge.
Tradition: Identified with the site at modern Kastro/Topolia on the former Lake Copais shore
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Corinth
Κόρινθος certainIsthmus city commanding two seas; the classical/Roman site underlies modern ancient Corinth.
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Coroneia
Κορώνεια traditionalSite of the federal Boeotian sanctuary of Athena Itonia; modern Koroneia preserves the name.
Tradition: Modern village of Koroneia, Boeotia, on the site of the ancient city (Paus. 9.34)
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Cos
Κῶν certainDodecanese island, Eurypylus's kingdom before the Catalogue's own Cos-contingent leaders; modern Kos.
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Crete
Κρήτη certainLarge island south of the Aegean, called "hundred-citied" in this line; Idomeneus's and Minos's traditional realm.
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Crete (Cnossus)
Κνωσός certainIdomeneus's kingdom and, in the Odyssey, Cnossus is named as Minos's great city; also the setting of Odysseus's recurring false Cretan identity.
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Crisa
Κρῖσα traditionalCity on the height above the Crisaean/Cirrhaean plain, the harbor-district of Delphi.
Tradition: Excavated site above the Crisaean plain near Delphi, Phocis (Strabo 9.3.3)
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Crocyleia
Κροκύλεια speculativeStrabo himself calls this and Aegilips obscure places within Odysseus's realm; unlocated.
Tradition: Cephallenian/Ithacan territory, exact site unknown (Strabo 10.2.10, calls it obscure); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Cromna
Κρῶμνα speculativePaphlagonian coastal town Strabo groups with Cytorus and Sesamus without a precise site.
Tradition: Paphlagonian coast, exact site unknown, near Cytorus and Sesamus (Strabo 12.3.10); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Cynus
Κῦνος traditionalHarbor-town of Opus on the Euboean Gulf; located near modern Livanates.
Tradition: Port of Opus near modern Livanates, East Locris (Strabo 9.4.2)
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Cyparisseeis
Κυπαρισσήεις traditionalMessenian coastal town; modern Kyparissia preserves the ancient name in the same region.
Tradition: Near modern Kyparissia, Messenia (Strabo 8.3.24-25)
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Cyparissus (Phocis)
Κυπάρισσος traditionalPhocian town near Delphi; Strabo connects the name to later Anticyra on the Corinthian Gulf.
Tradition: Identified with Anticyra or its vicinity on the Corinthian Gulf, Phocis (Strabo 9.3.13)
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Cyphus
Κῦφος speculativeGouneus's home town in Perrhaebian territory; Strabo does not fix a precise site.
Tradition: Northwest Thessaly/Perrhaebia, exact site unknown (Strabo 9.5.19); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Cyprus
Κύπρος certainIsland named among the far shores of Menelaus's wandering and, elsewhere, as Aphrodite's own.
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Cythera
Κύθηρα certainIsland south of the Peloponnese past which the north wind and current drive Odysseus's ships off course.
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Cytorus
Κύτωρος traditionalPaphlagonian coastal town famed for boxwood; near modern Gideros on the Turkish Black Sea coast.
Tradition: Black Sea coast near modern Gideros/Kidros, Paphlagonia (Strabo 12.3.10)
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Dardania
Δαρδανίη traditionalAeneas's genealogy gives the Troad its own foundation story in three lines: Zeus fathered Dardanus, 'and he founded Dardania, since sacred Ilios was not yet built as a city of mortal men on the plain, but they still lived on the slopes of many-fountained Ida' (20.216-218).
Tradition: Near modern Çanakkale, south of Abydos, Strabo 13.1.25-33
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Daulis
Δαυλίς traditionalPhocian city of the Procne/Philomela myth; modern Davleia preserves the name over the ancient site.
Tradition: Modern village of Davleia/Daulis, Phocis, on the ancient site (Paus. 10.4.7)
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Delphi (Pytho)
Πυθώ certainSanctuary of Apollo at the foot of Parnassus, named for its treasuries in both epics.
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Dium (Euboea)
Δῖον speculative"Steep" Euboean town near Cape Cenaeum at the island's northwest tip; precise site unconfirmed.
Tradition: North Euboea near Cape Cenaeum, exact site unknown; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Dodona
Δωδώνη certainOracular sanctuary of Zeus in Epirus, consulted in Odysseus's false tale to learn whether to return openly or in secret.
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Dorium
Δώριον traditionalSite where the Muses blinded Thamyris; often linked with the Bronze Age site of Malthi in Messenia.
Tradition: Messenia/Triphylia, site of the Thamyris myth, near modern Malthi (Strabo 8.3.25; Paus. 4.33.3)
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Dulichium
Δουλίχιον speculativeFourth island of Odysseus's realm, supplying the largest single contingent of suitors. Its identity was already disputed in antiquity.
Tradition: Possibly the Echinades group or an island near Cephallenia; disputed since antiquity (Strabo 10.2.19)
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Echinades Islands
Ἐχινάδες certainSmall island group off the Acarnanian coast at the Achelous's mouth; modern Echinades retain the name.
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Egypt
Αἴγυπτος certainLand and river of the Nile; destination of Menelaus's wandering and of Odysseus's Cretan false tales.
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Eilesium
Εἰλέσιον speculativeMinor Boeotian village grouped with Harma and Erythrae; no confirmed modern site.
Tradition: East Boeotia, exact site unknown; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Eionae
Ἠϊόνες speculativeSmall Argolid port Strabo says was later abandoned, its people moving to Argos; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: Argolid coast near Epidaurus, exact site unknown (Strabo 8.6.14); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Eleon
Ἐλεών traditionalBoeotian town excavated since 2011 by the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project near modern Arma.
Tradition: Excavated at the site called Ancient Eleon near modern Arma/Dritsa, East Boeotia (excavations from 2011)
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Elis
Ἦλις certainRegion of the northwest Peloponnese, home of the Epeans, named in Nestor's account of a cattle-raid.
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Elone
Ἠλώνη speculativeThessalian town Strabo says was later called Leimone; precise original site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Thessaly, later renamed Leimone per Strabo 9.5.19; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Eneti
Ἐνετοί speculativePeople whose homeland the Romans later linked to the Italian Veneti; Strabo could not fix their Paphlagonian location precisely.
Tradition: Paphlagonian coast, origin-point of the later Veneti migration legend, exact location disputed since antiquity (Strabo 12.3.8, 12.3.25)
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Enispe
Ἐνίσπη speculative"Windy Enispe" became the ancient scholiasts' stock example of a Homeric place no one could locate.
Tradition: 'Windy Enispe': proverbial in antiquity for an unfindable place (Strabo 8.8.2); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Ephyra
Ἐφύρη speculativeAstyocheia's city, captured by Heracles; Strabo catalogues rival Homeric Ephyras and cannot fix this one.
Tradition: One of several Homeric Ephyras (also claimed for Corinth and Thesprotia); this one on the river Selleeis, location disputed since antiquity (Strabo 8.3.5, 7.7.9); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Epidaurus
Ἐπίδαυρος certainArgolid city famed for the sanctuary of Asclepius; modern Palaia Epidavros occupies the ancient site.
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Erembi
Ἐρεμβοί speculativePeople named in Menelaus's summary list of the lands he wandered through before reaching home (Od. 4.83-85), alongside Cyprus, Phoenicia, Egypt, the Ethiopians, the Sidonians, and Libya. No fixed site: not pinned on the map (CLAUDE.md apparatus honesty).
Tradition: Unresolved since antiquity: Strabo (1.2.34), reporting Poseidonius, favors identifying the Erembi with the Arabians (on a conjectured textual/etymological link), while noting a rival ancient view that Homer means the Troglodytae; no consensus location exists, ancient or modern.
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Eretria
Εἰρέτρια certainExcavated Euboean city (Homeric "Eiretria"); modern Eretria sits on the ancient site.
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Erythini
Ἐρυθῖνοι speculative"Red" coastal cliffs of Paphlagonia named as a landmark; no confirmed modern site.
Tradition: Paphlagonian coast, 'the red cliffs,' exact site unknown (Strabo 12.3.10); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Erythrae (Boeotia)
Ἐρυθραί speculativeBoeotian village distinct from Ionian Erythrae; no confirmed modern site.
Tradition: East Boeotia, near Mycalessus; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Eteonus
Ἐτεωνός speculative"Many-ridged" Boeotian village; Strabo says it was later called Scarphe. Site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Cithaeron foothills, later renamed Scarphe per Strabo 9.2.25; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Euboea
Εὔβοια certainLong island off the eastern coast of central Greece; Nestor's route home runs past it via the open sea crossing.
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Eutresis
Εὔτρησις traditionalBoeotian village excavated by Hetty Goldman (1924-27) near modern Leuktra; continuous Bronze Age habitation.
Tradition: Excavated Bronze Age site near modern Leuktra, Boeotia (Goldman excavations, 1924-1927)
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Gargaron, the topmost peak of Ida
Γάργαρον traditionalZeus's own seat: 'Gargaron, where he has his precinct and his fragrant altar' (8.48); Hera comes to 'topmost Gargaron' (14.292) to win him over there, and he sleeps and wakes there (14.352, 15.152). Not to be confused with the historical coastal town of Gargara below it.
Tradition: Identification with the summit of Mount Ida / Kaz Dağı, following Strabo 13.1.5
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Geraistos
Γεραιστός certainHarbor/cape at the southern tip of Euboea (modern Porto Kastri) where Nestor's and Menelaus's ships made landfall after the open-sea crossing from near Chios/Lesbos, sacrificing to Poseidon for the safe passage (Od. 3.177-179).
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Glaphyrae
Γλαφύραι speculativeMinor Thessalian town in Eumelus's territory near Pherae and Iolcus; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: Thessaly, near Pherae, exact site unknown; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Glisas
Γλισᾱς speculativeVillage near Teumessus at the foot of Mt Hypatus per Strabo/Pausanias; precise site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Foot of Mt Hypatus, East Boeotia (Strabo 9.2.34; Paus. 9.19.3); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Gonoessa
Γονόεσσα speculative"Steep" Achaean town Strabo could not securely place; sometimes emended to Donoessa.
Tradition: Achaean coast near Aegira, exact site unknown; possibly = Donoessa (Strabo 8.7.5); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Gortyn
Γόρτυν certainMajor Cretan city, later Roman provincial capital; extensively excavated site survives near modern Gortyna.
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Graea
Γραῖα speculativeStrabo equates Graea with Tanagra, but the identification is his own inference, not certain.
Tradition: Possibly Tanagra or Oropus area, East Boeotia (Strabo 9.2.6, identifies it with Tanagra); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Gyrton
Γυρτώνη traditionalLapith city in northeast Thessaly, associated in tradition with Peirithous's family.
Tradition: Northeast Thessaly near modern Aghia, home of the Perrhaebian/Lapith Peirithous line (Strabo 9.5.19)
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Haliartus
Ἁλίαρτος traditionalBoeotian city on Lake Copais's south shore, destroyed 171 BC; modern Aliartos preserves the name.
Tradition: Excavated site near modern Aliartos, Boeotia (Paus. 9.33)
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Halizones
Ἁλιζῶνες speculativeOne of the most disputed Catalogue peoples; Strabo surveys and rejects several rival ancient theories of their location.
Tradition: Location disputed since antiquity: candidates range from inland Anatolia to the Black Sea coast (Strabo 12.3.20-27 devotes an extended digression to the dispute); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Harma
Ἅρμα speculativeVillage near Mycalessus and Tanagra; Strabo links its name to Amphiaraus's chariot. Unconfirmed site.
Tradition: Near modern Kastro, East Boeotia, associated with lightning omens (Strabo 9.2.11); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Helice
Ἑλίκη certainAchaean city submerged by earthquake/tsunami in 373 BC; site located offshore near modern Rodia/Elike.
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Hellas
Ἑλλάς certainHomer's original, narrow 'Hellas': a district of Achaea Phthiotis, not yet the whole Greek world.
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Hellespont
Ἑλλήσποντος certainThe modern Dardanelles, the northern edge of the Troad and of the Achaeans' world; the Odyssey later sets Achilles' own barrow on a headland 'by the broad Hellespont, so as to be visible far off from the sea' (Od. 24.80-84).
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Helos (Laconia)
Ἕλος traditionalCoastal marsh-town at the Eurotas's mouth; ancient tradition derives 'helot' from its conquest.
Tradition: Marsh town near the Eurotas mouth, Laconia, later giving 'helot' its name (Strabo 8.5.4; Paus. 3.20.6)
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Helos (Messenia)
Ἕλος speculativeMessenian coastal town sharing its name with the Laconian Helos in the same Catalogue; unlocated.
Tradition: Messenia, exact site unknown, distinct from the Laconian Helos; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Hermione
Ἑρμιόνη certainArgolid coastal city; modern Ermioni occupies the ancient site on its own peninsula.
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Histiaea
Ἱστίαια traditionalNorth Euboean city; classical Histiaea/Oreus is generally located near modern Oreoi.
Tradition: North Euboea, near modern Oreoi (Strabo 10.1.3-4)
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Hyampolis
Ὑάμπολις traditionalNortheast Phocian town near the excavated Kalapodi sanctuary; site attested by Pausanias.
Tradition: Near modern Exarchos/Kalapodi, Phocis (Paus. 10.35.5; excavations at the Kalapodi sanctuary)
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Hyle
Ὕλη speculativeVillage by the lake Strabo calls Hylica (a Copais inlet); precise site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Shore of Lake Copais/Hylica, Boeotia (Strabo 9.2.20); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Hyperesia
Ὑπερησίη traditionalAchaean coastal town, later renamed Aegira; site near modern Aigeira on the Gulf of Corinth.
Tradition: Later renamed Aegira, on the Corinthian Gulf, Achaea (Strabo 8.7.5; Paus. 7.26.1)
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Hypothebae
Ὑποθῆβαι traditional"Lower Thebes": the Catalogue names this, not ruined Thebes itself, per the tradition that the Epigoni sacked Thebes one generation before Troy.
Tradition: The Theban settlement re-founded after the Epigoni destroyed seven-gated Thebes (schol. Il. 2.505; Paus. 9.8.4-9.5)
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Hyria
Ὑρίη speculativeNamed once in the Boeotian contingent of the Catalogue of Ships, paired with 'rocky Aulis': 'those who dwelt in Hyria and rocky Aulis' (2.496). Strabo places it opposite Aulis. No excavated site is firmly identified with it — the coordinate here follows Simpson and Lazenby's siting in their Catalogue commentary, and the identification should be read as contested, not certain.
Tradition: Coastal Boeotia opposite Aulis (Strabo 9.2.12); siting follows Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970), contested
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Hyrmine
Ὑρμίνη speculativeElean coastal village Strabo says had disappeared, its name surviving in the nearby fort Hormina.
Tradition: Elis coast, vanished village later refounded as the fort Hormina (Strabo 8.3.10); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
I
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Ialysus
Ἰηλυσός certainNorthwest Rhodian city near modern Trianta/Ialysos; one of the island's three pre-synoecism cities.
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Imbros
Ἴμβρος certainModern Gökçeada, 'rugged Imbros' on Poseidon's route to Troy (13.33) and in Iris's dive to fetch Thetis (24.78); Hera and Sleep leave 'the city of Lemnos and Imbros' behind on their way to the Troad (14.281).
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Iolcus
Ἰαωλκός certainJason and the Argonauts' port city; excavated Bronze Age site near modern Volos.
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Island of the Sirens
Σειρῆνες traditionalUnnamed island where the Sirens' song lures sailors to death; Odysseus sails past bound to the mast. Strabo (1.2.12, 5.4.8) locates it off the Sirenusas near Sorrento.
Tradition: Sirenusas (Li Galli islands) off Sorrento, Italy (Strabo 1.2.12, 5.4.8)
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Ismarus
Ἴσμαρος traditionalCity of the Cicones sacked by Odysseus's men on leaving Troy. Ancient tradition (Strabo 7 fr. 44) locates it near Maroneia on the Thracian coast.
Tradition: Thracian coast near Maroneia (Strabo 7 fr. 44; Barrington Atlas lists as unlocated)
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Ithaca
Ἰθάκη traditionalOdysseus's home island, ruled by continuity of name with the modern island of Ithaki since antiquity (Strabo 10.2.10-13).
Tradition: Identified since antiquity with the island of Ithaki (Strabo 10.2.10-13). A minority 'Paliki thesis' (Bittlestone, Diggle & Underhill, Odysseus Unbound, 2005) argues Homer's Ithaca is instead the Paliki peninsula of Kefalonia, once a separate island; the Ithaki identification remains the mainstream tradition.
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Ithome (Thessaly)
Ἰθώμη speculative"Craggy" Thessalian town near Tricca, homonymous with the far better-known Messenian Ithome; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: West Thessaly near Tricca, 'craggy,' exact site unknown, distinct from the famous Messenian Ithome; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Iton
Ἰτών traditional"Mother of flocks": site of the Thessalian federal sanctuary of Athena Itonia.
Tradition: Site of the federal Thessalian sanctuary of Athena Itonia, near modern Philia (Strabo 9.5.14)
K
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Kesik Tepe (St. Demetrius' Tepe), the travelers' tomb of Antilochus
traditionalA conspicuous mound on the coastal ridge south of Yenişehir, near the low waist of the ridge at Taşlı Burun. The Greeks of the district called it St. Demetrius' tepe after a chapel at its foot. Forchhammer and Ulrichs judged the mound natural. Schliemann took it for the tomb of Festus in 1868, then probed it with Virchow and Burnouf in 1879 and found "a natural tertiary hump with never more than 5 ft. of earth on top" (Cook 1973, 165–66). The coordinate is from Vici.org and has not been checked against a published survey plan.
Tradition: The travelers' tomb of Antilochus (Cook 1973, 165–66), after Strabo 13.1.32, who names monuments of Patroclus and Antilochus near Sigeion
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Kum Tepe
certainA settlement mound at the foot of the Sigeion ridge near the Hellespont entrance, on the shoreline of the mid-Holocene Kumtepe embayment — occupied from the Neolithic, millennia before the poem's horizon, and long on dry ground by the Late Bronze Age (the embayment's marine phase dates to 5500-7000 BP). A trial excavation in 1934 established the prehistoric settlement (Sperling 1976). The coordinate is from Vici.org and OpenStreetMap and has not been checked against an excavation plan.
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Laas
Λάας traditionalLaconian town on the Mani coast; Pausanias locates its ruins near a hill by the same name.
Tradition: South Laconia near modern Passava/Kyparissos (Paus. 3.24.6-8)
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Laestrygonia (Telepylus)
Τηλέπυλος traditionalHarbor city of the cannibal Laestrygonians, where all of Odysseus's ships but one are destroyed. Roman tradition (Horace, Odes 3.17) places it at Formiae, Italy.
Tradition: Formiae, Italy (Roman literary tradition, Horace Odes 3.17; Homer's own text suggests a near-polar 'land of the long day', Od. 10.82-86)
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Lake Boebeis
Βοιβηίς certainThessalian lake by Pherae; the modern (much reduced) Lake Karla/Boibeis.
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Lake Gygaea
Γυγαίη certainLake in Maeonia/Lydia below Mt Tmolus; identified with the modern Marmara Gölü.
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Land of the Cicones
Κίκονες traditionalThracian coastal people allied to Troy here; the same Cicones whose city Ismarus Odysseus later sacks.
Tradition: Aegean-Thracian coast around modern Maroneia, homeland of the Ciconian allies (Strabo 7 fr. 44)
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Land of the Cimmerians / entrance to the underworld
Κιμμέριοι mythicalSunless land at the edge of Ocean where Odysseus performs the nekyia. Homer gives no real-world geography; no ancient tradition fixes a location.
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Land of the Cyclopes
Κύκλωπες traditionalLand of the lawless, one-eyed Cyclopes where Polyphemus imprisons Odysseus and his crew, who blind him. Ancient tradition (Thucydides 6.2.1) locates the Cyclopes in Sicily.
Tradition: Sicily, near Mount Etna (Thucydides 6.2.1; Euripides' Cyclops)
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Land of the Ethiopians
Αἰθίοπες mythicalDistant people 'sundered in twain' at the world's edge whom Poseidon visits at the poem's opening. Homer's own geography is schematic, not a fixed real-world location.
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Land of the Lotus-eaters
Λωτοφάγοι traditionalCoast where three of Odysseus's men eat the lotus and lose all wish to return home. Ancient tradition (Polybius, Pliny NH 5.41) locates it at Meninx/Djerba off Tunisia.
Tradition: Meninx/Djerba, Tunisia, called Lotophagitis in antiquity (Polybius ap. Pliny NH 5.41)
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Larisa (Troad)
Λάρισα speculativePelasgian city, homonymous with the Thessalian Larisa; Strabo records several rival candidate sites near the Troad/Aeolis coast.
Tradition: Aeolis/Troad, exact site disputed since antiquity; candidates include a site near Cyme (Strabo 13.3.2-3, 13.1.70); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Lemnos
Λῆμνος certainWhere Hephaestus fell after Zeus threw him from Olympus (1.593), where Achilles sold Lycaon into slavery (21.40, 21.79), and where Philoctetes was marooned (2.722) — the Achaeans' rear base and wine market throughout the siege.
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Lesbos
Λέσβος certainLarge island off the Aeolian coast where Nestor's and Menelaus's homebound squadrons debate the safer sea-route to Euboea (Od. 3.169-175) before striking out for Geraistos. In the Iliad it is where Achilles took captives — seven Lesbian women are part of Agamemnon's offer of reconciliation (9.129 = 9.271), and Diomede of Lesbos shares his bed (9.664) — and Priam's realm is bounded by 'Lesbos above, seat of Macar' (24.544). Coordinate is a representative point on the island, not a single settlement.
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Libya
Λιβύη certainNorth African coast west of Egypt, named among the wonder-lands of Menelaus's wandering and Odysseus's false tales.
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Lilaea
Λίλαια traditionalTown at the Cephisus's source on Parnassus; modern Lilaia preserves the ancient name and site.
Tradition: Modern village of Lilaia, Phocis, at the springs of the Cephisus on Mt Parnassus (Paus. 10.33.4)
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Lindus
Λίνδος certainEast-coast Rhodian city with its acropolis sanctuary of Athena Lindia; modern Lindos occupies the site.
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Locris
Λοκροί certainHomeland of the Locrians under the lesser Ajax, on the Greek mainland opposite Euboea.
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Lycastus
Λύκαστος speculativeCretan city Strabo lists among those absorbed by Cnossus or Gortyn well before his own day.
Tradition: Crete, exact site unknown, already vanished by Strabo's time (Strabo 10.4.14); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Lycia
Λυκίη certainRegion of southwest Anatolia; Sarpedon and Glaucus lead its distant Trojan-allied contingent.
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Lyctus
Λύκτος traditionalOld Cretan city, a Spartan colony per tradition; modern Lyttos village preserves the name nearby.
Tradition: East-central Crete near modern Xidas/Lyttos village (Strabo 10.4.14)
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Lyrnessus
Λυρνησσός speculativeWhere Achilles took Briseis (2.690-691, 19.60) and once chased Aeneas down off Ida (20.191). The coordinate above is Pleiades 550703, itself only a Barrington 1:500,000 representative point, not a surveyed site; Pleiades also carries a second, unrelated Lyrnessos (652355), flagged outright as unlocated.
Tradition: Southern Troad / Gulf of Adramyttium region, following Strabo 13.1.60-70, who already calls the site uncertain
M
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Maeander (river)
Μαίανδρος certainAnatolian river proverbial for its winding course, reaching the sea near Miletus; the modern Büyük Menderes.
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Maeonia
Μηονίη certainRegion of west Anatolia later called Lydia; Mesthles and Antiphus lead its contingent.
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Magnesia (Thessaly)
Μαγνῆτες certainCoastal district comprising the Pelion peninsula and lower Peneius valley, Thessaly; Prothous's contingent.
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Mantinea
Μαντινέη certainCentral Arcadian city, site of major classical battles; excavated remains near modern Mantineia.
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Mases
Μάσης speculativeSmall Argolid port Strabo says was a dependency of Hermione by his own time; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: Argolid coast near Hermione, already absorbed by Hermione in Strabo's day (Strabo 8.6.15); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Medeon (Boeotia)
Μεδεών traditionalBoeotian coastal town, distinct from Phocian Medeon; excavated remains near modern Kastraki.
Tradition: Identified with the excavated site near modern Kastraki on the Gulf of Corinth (Boeotian Medeon)
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Meliboea
Μελίβοια traditionalMagnesian coastal town famed later for a purple dye; modern Melivoia village preserves the name.
Tradition: Magnesian coast of Thessaly near modern Kato Ollympos/Melivoia (Strabo 9.5.15)
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Messe
Μέσση speculative"Many-doved" Laconian town Strabo could not confidently locate; possibly related to Messa on the gulf.
Tradition: Laconia, possibly = later Messa on the Messenian Gulf (Strabo 8.5.3); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Methone (Thessaly)
Μηθώνη traditionalMagnesian coastal town in Philoctetes's realm; homonymous with an unrelated Methone in Messenia.
Tradition: Magnesian coast of Thessaly, near modern Nea Agchialos/Volos area, homonymous with Messenian Methone (Strabo 9.5.18)
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Midea (Boeotia)
Μίδεια speculativeBoeotian town distinct from Argive Midea; Strabo places it near Lake Copais without precision.
Tradition: Copaic basin, Boeotia, exact site unknown (Strabo 9.2.35); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Miletus (Anatolia)
Μίλητος certainMajor Ionian/Carian coastal city, homonymous with the Cretan Miletus named earlier in this Catalogue.
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Miletus (Crete)
Μίλητος traditionalCretan city sharing its name with Anatolian Miletus named later in this Catalogue's Trojan half.
Tradition: South-central Crete, near modern Miletos village, homonymous with Anatolian Miletus (Strabo 10.4.14)
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Mount Cyllene
Κυλλήνη certainHighest mountain in the Peloponnese, birthplace of Hermes; modern Mt Ziria/Kyllini.
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Mount Ida
Ἴδη certain'Many-fountained Ida,' modern Kaz Dağı: Zeus's vantage point for the war from Book 8 on, and the source of the eight rivers that later erase the Achaean wall (12.19-22). Dardanus's people lived on its lower slopes before Ilios was ever built on the plain (20.218).
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Mount Mycale
Μυκάλη certainCoastal mountain of Ionia opposite Samos, site of the 479 BC battle; the modern Dilek Dağı.
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Mount Pelion
Πήλιον certainWooded mountain of the Magnesian peninsula, Thessaly, home of Chiron in myth; modern Pilio.
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Mount Phthires
Φθιρῶν ὄρος speculative"Louse mountain," a landmark near Carian Miletus; no confirmed identification with a modern peak.
Tradition: Caria, near Miletus and the Maeander, exact peak unidentified; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Mount Tereia
Τηρείη speculativeHill-landmark Strabo places between Lampsacus and Zeleia; precise peak unidentified.
Tradition: A hill on the Propontis coast between Lampsacus and Zeleia (Strabo 13.1.19); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Mount Tmolus
Τμῶλος certainMountain of Maeonia/Lydia overlooking Sardis; the modern Bozdağ range.
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Mycalessus
Μυκαλησσός traditional"Wide-lawned" Boeotian town on the road to Chalcis; the Thucydidean massacre site near Ritsona.
Tradition: Near modern Ritsona, East Boeotia (site of the Thucydides 7.29 massacre; Paus. 9.19.4)
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Mycenae
Μυκήνη certainAgamemnon's citadel, the wealthiest of the Achaean cities; identified with the Bronze Age site excavated by Schliemann from 1874.
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Myrsinus
Μύρσινος traditionalElean coastal village on the road from Elis to Dyme, near a sacred myrtle grove per Strabo.
Tradition: Elis coast near modern Agios Ilias, on the road to Dyme (Strabo 8.3.10)
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Mysia
Μυσία certainRegion of northwest Anatolia south of the Troad and Propontis; Chromis and Ennomus lead its contingent.
N
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Neritum
Νήριτον traditional"Leaf-quivering" mountain of Ithaca named alongside the island itself; traditionally the island's main ridge.
Tradition: Ithaca's principal mountain, traditionally Mt Neriton/Anogi (Strabo 10.2.10)
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Nisa
Νῖσα speculativeStrabo himself questions whether a Boeotian Nisa existed, suggesting the line may name Isus instead.
Tradition: Site disputed; Strabo doubts a Boeotian Nisa existed and proposes emending the text (Strabo 9.2.14); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Nisyros
Νίσυρος certainVolcanic Dodecanese island; modern Nisyros preserves the ancient name.
O
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Ocalea
Ὠκαλέη speculativeVillage Strabo places on the road between Haliartus and Alalcomenae; site unconfirmed.
Tradition: Midway between Haliartus and Alalcomenae, Boeotia (Strabo 9.2.27); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Oechalia
Οἰχαλίη speculativeEurytus's city; already in antiquity Strabo lists rival Thessalian, Messenian, and Euboean claimants to the name.
Tradition: Named at Il. 2.596 (Messenia, home of Eurytus) and 2.730 (Thessaly); ancient sources dispute whether one or several places bore the name (Strabo 9.5.17; 10.1.10); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Oetylus
Οἴτυλος certainMani-coast Laconian town; modern Oitylo preserves the ancient name on the same site.
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Ogygia
Ὠγυγίη mythicalRemote island of the nymph Calypso, where Odysseus is detained seven years. No ancient source offers a real-world identification commanding consensus; kept unlocated.
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Olenian Rock
Ὠλενίη πέτρη speculativeRock-landmark in Elis, not the Aetolian city of the same root name; Strabo notes the identity was disputed.
Tradition: Elis, a rock landmark of disputed location, distinct from Aetolian Olenus (Strabo 8.3.10); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Olenus (Aetolia)
Ὤλενος speculativeAetolian city Strabo reports as already razed and its territory absorbed by neighbors; unlocated.
Tradition: Aetolia, already destroyed and deserted by Strabo's time (Strabo 10.2.6); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Olizon
Ὀλιζών traditionalSouthern Magnesian coastal town in Philoctetes's realm; approximate site near modern Milina.
Tradition: Southern tip of the Magnesian peninsula, Thessaly, near modern Milina (Strabo 9.5.15)
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Oloosson
Ὀλοοσσών traditional"White" Thessalian town in Perrhaebian territory; located near modern Elassona.
Tradition: Northwest Thessaly near modern Elassona (Strabo 9.5.19)
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Olympus
Ὄλυμπος certainSeat of the gods in both the Iliad and the Odyssey; the historical mountain stands on the Thessaly–Macedonia border (modern Ólympos). Homer also idealizes the peak as a divine dwelling free of wind, rain, and snow (Od. 6.42–46).
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Onchestus
Ὀγχηστός traditionalGrove and sanctuary of Poseidon on the road from Haliartus to Thebes, still visible in antiquity.
Tradition: Sanctuary of Poseidon located near modern Steni/Haliartos, Boeotia (Paus. 9.26.5; Strabo 9.2.33)
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Opus
Ὀπόεις traditionalChief city of the Opuntian Locrians and, in tradition, Patroclus's birthplace.
Tradition: Modern town of Atalanti area, East Locris, capital of the Opuntian Locrians (Strabo 9.4.2)
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Orchomenus (Arcadia)
Ὀρχομενός certain"Sheep-rich" Arcadian city, distinct from the Boeotian Orchomenus in the same Catalogue; excavated near modern Kalpaki.
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Orchomenus (Minyan)
Ὀρχομενός certainWealthy Boeotian city, invoked by Achilles as a byword for riches he will refuse from Agamemnon.
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Ormenium
Ὀρμένιον traditionalThessalian town at the foot of Pelion in Eurypylus's realm; Strabo places it near the Magnesian border.
Tradition: Thessaly/Magnesia border, near modern Ormenio or the foot of Mt Pelion (Strabo 9.5.18)
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Orneiae
Ὀρνειαί traditionalArgolid town between Sicyon and Phlius; Strabo notes it later stood deserted.
Tradition: Between Sicyon and Argos, Argolid, near modern Sterna/Kaparelli (Strabo 8.6.24)
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Orthe
Ὀρθη speculativeThessalian town Strabo tentatively equates with the citadel of Phalanna; unconfirmed.
Tradition: Thessaly, possibly the acropolis of Phalanna per Strabo 9.5.19; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Paeonia
Παιονίη traditionalRegion on the Axius river, north of Macedon; Pyraechmes leads its Trojan-allied archers.
Tradition: Region along the middle Axius valley, north of Macedonia (Strabo 7 fr. 4, 11)
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Panopeus
Πανοπεύς traditionalSmall Phocian city on the border with Boeotia; Pausanias describes its walls as still standing.
Tradition: Excavated walls near modern Agios Vlasios, Phocis (Paus. 10.4.1-4)
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Paphlagonia
Παφλαγονία certainBlack Sea coastal region of north-central Anatolia; Pylaemenes leads its Trojan-allied contingent.
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Parrhasia
Παρρασίη traditionalDistrict/town-group of southwest Arcadia, later absorbed into the synoecism of Megalopolis.
Tradition: Southwest Arcadian district around modern Megalopolis basin (Strabo 8.8.1)
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Parthenius (river)
Παρθένιος certainPaphlagonian coastal river; the modern Bartın Çayı.
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Pedasus (Troad)
Πήδασος speculative'Steep Pedasus on the Satnioeis' (21.87), sacked alongside Lyrnessus (20.92). The river is the anchor Homer and Strabo agree on, not a site — see 'satnioeis' — so no coordinate is given here; the site itself is unrecovered. Not to be confused with two Homeric namesakes: the Messenian Pedasos of Agamemnon's offer (9.152, 9.294), or Achilles' trace-horse Pedasos (16.152, 16.467).
Tradition: On the Satnioeis, following Strabo 13.1.50; site unrecovered
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Pelasgian Argos
Ἄργος Πελασγικόν traditionalHomonym of Peloponnesian Argos; ancient tradition places this 'Pelasgian Argos' in the Thessalian plain, Achilles's realm.
Tradition: Identified with the plain of Thessaly (not the Peloponnesian Argos of the same name), per ancient scholiasts and Strabo 9.5.6
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Pellene
Πελλήνη traditionalEasternmost of the twelve Achaean cities; site near modern Pellini, above Xylokastro.
Tradition: Achaean city near modern Pellini/Zougra (Strabo 8.7.5; Paus. 7.26-27)
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Peneius (river)
Πηνειός certainPrincipal river of Thessaly, running through the Vale of Tempe; the modern Pineios.
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Percote
Περκώτη traditionalOn the Hellespont northeast of Troy, in Asius's realm. Iphidamas was reared here and left his ships at home before coming overland to Troy (11.229) — a rare glimpse of the allies' own logistics.
Tradition: Barrington Atlas 51 H4, c. 4 miles east of Umurbey (Strabo 13.1.19 places it on the Propontis coast between Abydos and Lampsacus, without a precise point)
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Pergamos (the citadel of Troy)
Πέργαμος traditionalHomer's name for Troy's citadel: Apollo's temple stands there (5.446), and he and Ares watch the fighting from it. Equated, since Dörpfeld, with the excavated mound at Hisarlık.
Tradition: Standard equation of Homeric Pergamos with the Hisarlık citadel, from Dörpfeld onward
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Peteon
Πετεών speculativeMinor Boeotian village; Strabo places it on the road from Thebes toward the coast.
Tradition: Between Thebes and the coast, Boeotia (Strabo 9.2.28); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Phaestus
Φαιστός certainMajor Minoan palatial site in the Messara plain, south-central Crete; extensively excavated.
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Pharis
Φᾶρις speculativeLaconian town Strabo groups with Amyclae as later absorbed into Sparta's territory; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: Laconia, near Amyclae, exact site unknown (Strabo 8.5.3); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Pharos
Φάρος certainIsland off the Egyptian coast where Menelaus, becalmed, ambushes Proteus for sailing directions home.
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Pheneus
Φενεός certainNorthern Arcadian city in its own mountain basin; excavated site near modern Fonia/Pheneos.
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Pherae
Φεραί certainMajor Thessalian city on Lake Boebeis, later home of the tyrant Jason of Pherae; near modern Velestino.
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Pherae
Φηραί traditionalHome of Diocles son of Ortilochus, where Telemachus and Peisistratus break their overland journey from Pylos to Sparta, spending the night before pressing on the next day (Od. 3.488-497).
Tradition: Identified since antiquity with the settlement near modern Kalamata, Messenia (Pausanias 4.30.2, who explicitly glosses Od. 3.488's 'house of Diocles' as 'the city of Pherae in Messene'); distinct from the better-known Thessalian Pherae (home of Admetus).
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Phrygia
Φρυγία certainCentral Anatolian region; Phorcys and Ascanius lead its Trojan-allied contingent.
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Phthia
Φθίη traditionalAchilles' homeland in Thessaly, whose exact site (Spercheios valley, near Pharsalus/Halos) is disputed among ancient and modern geographers.
Tradition: Spercheios river valley, Thessaly, near ancient Halos/Pharsalus (disputed; Strabo 9.5.6)
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Phylace
Φυλάκη traditionalProtesilaus's city in Achaea Phthiotis; Strabo places it in the same coastal district as Phthiotic Thebes.
Tradition: Achaea Phthiotis, near modern Nea Anchialos/Phthiotic Thebes (Strabo 9.5.8)
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Pityeia
Πιτύεια speculative"Pine" town on the Propontis coast; Strabo connects the district with later Lampsacus.
Tradition: Propontis coast, later identified with Lampsacus's territory (Strabo 13.1.19); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Pınarbaşı
traditionalThe Kirk Göz ('forty springs') at Pınarbaşı, called Bounarbachi in the eighteenth century: Lechevalier's 1785 identification of Homer's two springs (Il. 22.147-152) and of Ballı Dağ as Troy, the favored site until Calvert and then Schliemann dug at Hisarlık in the 1860s and 1870s. Cook records that more than a dozen travelers with thermometers found no appreciable difference between the 'warm' spring and the 'cold' ones (Cook 1973, 144). Wolkersdorfer et al. 2021 measured 18 of the 40 springs at 17.4–18.5 °C, ordinary groundwater, and could not verify Lechevalier's pair. The coordinate 39.8880 / 26.2715 is a modern-village proxy from OSM/Nominatim for Pınarbaşı (Ezine), noted as such in RESEARCH-PALEOGEOGRAPHY.md — not a surveyed spring-head.
Tradition: Lechevalier's identification (1785) of the Kirk Göz springs at Bunarbashi as Homer's two springs, and of Ballı Dağ as Troy — the favored site until Calvert's and Schliemann's excavations at Hisarlık in the 1860s and 1870s
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Planctae (Wandering Rocks)
Πλαγκταί mythicalColliding rocks that only the Argo has ever passed safely; Circe advises Odysseus to avoid them for Scylla's strait instead. Ancient scholiasts disagreed on location, some conflating them with the Symplegades.
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Plataea
Πλάταια traditionalBoeotian city of the 479 BC battle; modern Plataies preserves the name over the excavated remains.
Tradition: Excavated site near modern Plataies, Boeotia, below Mt Cithaeron (Paus. 9.1-4)
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Pleuron
Πλευρών traditionalAetolian city of the Meleager saga; the Classical-era city was refounded near the original Homeric site.
Tradition: Old Pleuron near modern Gyphtokastro, Aetolia; refounded nearby after the Homeric site's destruction (Strabo 10.2.4)
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Practius (river)
Πράκτιος traditionalRiver Strabo places between Percote and Abydos; also the name of a nearby town in later sources.
Tradition: Small stream between Percote and Abydos, Propontis coast (Strabo 13.1.19-21)
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Pteleos (Messenia)
Πτελεός speculativeMessenian-area town, homonymous with a Thessalian town in the same Catalogue; unlocated.
Tradition: Triphylia/Messenia, exact site unknown, distinct from the Thessalian Pteleos (Strabo 8.3.25); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Pteleos (Thessaly)
Πτελεός traditionalThessalian coastal town whose name modern Pteleos village preserves; homonymous with a Messenian town in this Catalogue.
Tradition: Achaea Phthiotis coast near modern Pteleos village, homonymous with the Messenian Pteleos (Strabo 9.5.14)
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Pylene
Πυλήνη speculativeAetolian town Strabo says was moved to higher ground and renamed Proschium; original site unlocated.
Tradition: Aetolia, relocated and renamed Proschium per Strabo 10.2.6; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Pylos
Πύλος traditionalNestor's 'sandy Pylos' in Messenia, identified by most archaeologists with the excavated Bronze Age palace at Ano Englianos (Blegen, from 1939). Already in antiquity three homonymous towns (Messenian, Triphylian, and Elean) claimed Nestor's Pylos; Strabo (8.3.7) reports the proverb of a Pylos before Pylos and argues for the Triphylian candidate.
Tradition: Ano Englianos, Messenia (Blegen's excavations from 1939, identifying the 'Palace of Nestor')
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Pyrasus
Πύρασος traditionalCoastal town with a precinct of Demeter; later absorbed into/near Phthiotic Thebes per Strabo.
Tradition: Site of a Demeter sanctuary, near modern Nea Anchialos, Achaea Phthiotis (Strabo 9.5.14)
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Rhipe
Ῥίπη speculativeStrabo explicitly says these three towns, and their location, could not be found even in his day.
Tradition: One of a trio of Arcadian names (with Stratie, Enispe) already unlocatable to ancient scholars (Strabo 8.8.2); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Rhodes
Ῥόδος certainDodecanese island later unified from three cities (Lindus, Ialysus, Camirus); Tlepolemus's kingdom.
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Rhoiteion
Ῥοίτειον certainNot named in the Iliad. An Archaic-to-Hellenistic city on the Baba Kale spur of Çakal Tepe, its Aeantion promontory serving as a harbor in Roman times — the traditional eastern headland of the Achaean beach, paired with Sigeion.
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Rhytium
Ῥύτιον traditionalSmall Cretan town Strabo lists as a dependency of Gortyn; near-namesake modern Rotasi village.
Tradition: South-central Crete near modern Rotasi, subject to Gortyn (Strabo 10.4.14)
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Salamis
Σαλαμίς certainIsland home of Telamonian Ajax, named in his own prayer before facing Hector in single combat.
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Same
Σάμη traditionalOne of the islands in Odysseus's kingdom, alongside Ithaca, Dulichium, and Zacynthus (Odyssey 1.246, 9.24). The Iliad's Catalogue of Ships names it in the older form Σάμος (2.634); identified with modern Kefalonia.
Tradition: Identified with the island now called Cephalonia (Kefalonia), whose principal town Sami preserves the ancient name. In Homer 'Same' names one island in Odysseus's realm; it is distinct from 'Cephallenians' (Κεφαλλῆνες, Iliad 2.631), the ethnonym covering Odysseus's whole people across Ithaca, Same, Dulichium, Zacynthus, and the mainland opposite.
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Scamander (Xanthus)
Σκάμανδρος / Ξάνθος certainThe Trojan plain's principal river, called Xanthus by the gods and Scamander by men (20.74) — Homer gives it both names in a single line, and its god fights Achilles the length of Book 21. Modern Karamenderes; its Bronze Age channel ran further west than today's, into the since-silted embayment north of the site.
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Scarphe
Σκάρφη traditionalEast Locrian coastal town on the road to Thermopylae, near modern Molos.
Tradition: Near modern Molos, East Locris, on the coast road (Strabo 9.4.6)
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Scheria (Phaeacia)
Σχερίη traditionalIsland home of the seafaring Phaeacians, who ferry Odysseus to Ithaca. An ancient tradition identifies Scheria with Corcyra (Corfu); already in Thucydides 1.25.4 the Corcyraeans themselves boast that the Phaeacians once occupied their island—not an identification asserted in Thucydides' own voice.
Tradition: Corcyra (modern Corfu); ancient tradition already reflected in Thucydides 1.25.4 (Corcyraeans' appeal to prior Phaeacian occupation)
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Schoenus
Σχοῖνος speculativeBoeotian village on the Theban-Anthedon road per Strabo; site not confirmed archaeologically.
Tradition: Near Thebes on the road to Anthedon (Strabo 9.2.24); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Scolus
Σκῶλος speculativeVillage below Cithaeron that Strabo calls a rough, hardly livable place; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: Foothills of Cithaeron near Thebes (Strabo 9.2.23; Paus. 9.4.4); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Scylla's rock
Σκύλλη traditionalSix-headed monster inhabiting a cliff opposite Charybdis, who seizes six of Odysseus's men. Thucydides (4.24.5) identifies the strait as the Strait of Messina.
Tradition: Strait of Messina, Italian shore (Thucydides 4.24.5)
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Selleeis (river, by Ephyra)
Σελλήεις speculativeRiver Strabo could not securely place; a namesake Selleeis also flows past Arisbe in the Troad half of this Catalogue.
Tradition: River by the Ephyra of Tlepolemus's mother's capture, unlocated, distinct from the Troad river of the same name (Strabo 8.3.5); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Selleeis (river, Troad)
Σελλήεις speculativeRiver by Arisbe from which Asius's horses come; a second, unrelated Homeric river Selleeis is named for Rhodes's Ephyra.
Tradition: Stream by Arisbe in the Troad, unlocated precisely, distinct from the river of the same name near Rhodian Ephyra; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Sesamus
Σήσαμος traditionalPaphlagonian coastal town later refounded as Amastris; near modern Amasra, Turkey.
Tradition: Black Sea coast near modern Amasra, Paphlagonia, later called Amastris (Strabo 12.3.10)
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Sestos
Σηστός certainOn the European shore opposite Abydos, named once in the Trojan Catalogue alongside Percote, Practius, Abydos, and Arisbe (2.835-836) — the alliance's one foothold in Europe.
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Sicyon
Σικυών certainCity of the Corinthian Gulf coast, Adrastus's first kingdom per Homer; excavated near modern Vasiliko.
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Sidon / Phoenicia
Σιδών certainPhoenician city and coast; source of the traders and the ornate silver bowl given to Menelaus.
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Sigeion
Σίγειον certainNot named in the Iliad. A later Greek city on the ridge at Yenişehir, near the mouth of the Scamander; the promontory below it forms the northwest corner of the Troad and the traditional western headland of the Achaean beach. The dot is the city's Pleiades point.
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Simoeis
Σιμόεις traditionalThe Scamander's partner river, coming down off Ida; the fighting on the plain runs 'between the streams of Simoeis and Xanthus' (6.4). The river is certain; its equation with the modern Dümrek Su is Strabo's tradition, not an excavated fact.
Tradition: Identification with the Dümrek Su, following Strabo 13.1 and accepted by Leaf, Cook, and Luce
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Sounion
Σούνιον certainThe 'sacred cape of the Athenians' (Od. 3.278) at the southern tip of Attica, where Menelaus's helmsman Phrontis died at the tiller and was buried, delaying the fleet. The Poseidon temple whose ruins stand there today is later (5th c. BC) than the epic setting, but the headland is the same real cape (Pleiades 580108).
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Sparta (Lacedaemon)
Σπάρτη certainMenelaus and Helen's home in Laconia, Telemachus's second stop on his journey for news of his father.
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Spring Hypereia
Ὑπερείη traditionalNamed spring Strabo locates in the middle of Pherae itself, not a separate town.
Tradition: Spring at Pherae, Thessaly, per Strabo 9.5.18
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Stratie
Στρατίη speculativePaired with Rhipe and Enispe as a byword for an untraceable Homeric place already in antiquity.
Tradition: Unlocated Arcadian town, grouped with Rhipe and Enispe by ancient scholars (Strabo 8.8.2); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Stymphalus
Στύμφηλος certainNortheast Arcadian city by its namesake lake, home of the mythical Stymphalian birds; excavated site survives.
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Styra
Στύρα traditionalSouth Euboean town between Carystus and Eretria; modern Nea Styra preserves the name nearby.
Tradition: South Euboea near modern Nea Styra (Strabo 10.1.6)
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Styx
Στύξ mythicalRiver of the underworld by which the gods swear their most solemn oath; ancient tradition placed its earthly outlet at Nonacris in Arcadia.
Tradition: Localized in antiquity at the waterfall of Nonacris, Arcadia, called Mavroneri (Herodotus 6.74; Paus. 8.17.6-18.6)
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Syme
Σύμη certainSmall Dodecanese island between Rhodes and the Carian coast; Nireus's kingdom, modern Symi.
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Tarphe
Τάρφη traditionalWooded Locrian town, later called Pharygae per Strabo, near the modern Kalapodi sanctuary area.
Tradition: Later renamed Pharygae, near modern Kalapodi/Mendenitsa, East Locris (Strabo 9.4.6)
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Tegea
Τεγέη certainMajor southeast Arcadian city; excavated sanctuary of Athena Alea near modern Tegea village.
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Tenedos
Τένεδος certainModern Bozcaada, off the mouth of Beşik Bay, under Apollo's protection (1.38) and sacked by Achilles (11.625); Poseidon strides past it 'midway between Tenedos and rugged Imbros' (13.33). Nestor's homeward contingent sacrifices here on the way out of the war.
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Thaumacia
Θαυμακίη speculativeSmall Magnesian coastal town in Philoctetes's realm; no confirmed modern site.
Tradition: Magnesian coast of Thessaly, exact site unknown; Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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The Achaean camp and ships
κλισίαι καὶ νῆες Ἀχαιῶν speculativeThe poem is exact about the camp's shape even where it will not fix its ground: the ships were drawn up in rows because the beach, wide as it was, could not hold them all, and they 'filled the whole long mouth of the shore, as much as the headlands enclosed' (14.31-36) — a beach between two headlands. The traditional headlands are Sigeion and Rhoiteion; Beşik Bay is the archaeological alternative. On the schematic sheet the camp is built out of the order the poem gives and nothing else: one extremity (Ajax), the middle at Odysseus's ships where the assembly-ground, the place of judgment and the gods' altars stand (8.222-226 = 11.5-9; 11.806-808), the other extremity (Achilles), with the ships in receding ranks because one line of beach could not hold them (14.31-36). The ends are named by who holds them, never by a hand. The axis is drawn from the Greek side, following Aristarchus and Janko (Commentary IV, 130-31); Hainsworth reads Asius's 'left of the ships' at 12.118 from the attacker's side and reverses it (Commentary III, 313-14), which is why the sector placements stay speculative.
Tradition: Position fixed by the poem's own spatial logic (14.31-36), not by any excavated trace
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The Achaean wall and ditch
τεῖχος καὶ τάφρος speculativeBuilt in a single day round the pyre-barrow: a wall with high towers and chariot-wide gates, and beyond it a deep, wide ditch set with stakes (7.436-441). The poem provides for its own disappearance, which is exactly why nothing of it has ever been found.
Tradition: Erased inside the poem itself — Poseidon and Apollo turn the eight Idaean rivers against it after the war (12.17-24); Aristotle already noted this as the poet's own device (ap. Strabo 13.1.36)
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The Aesepus river
Αἴσηπος certainModern Gönen Çayı, the eastern limit of Trojan-allied territory: Pandarus's Zeleians 'drink the dark water of Aesepus' (2.825), and it is one of the eight Idaean rivers Poseidon and Apollo turn against the Achaean wall (12.21). Pleiades records it as a line, not a point, and so does this gazetteer. See also 'aesepus', a duplicate record kept for a single catalogue reference.
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The assembly and law-place, with the gods' altars
ἀγορή τε θέμις τε certainThe poem states it outright: Antilochus runs to the ships of godlike Odysseus, ἵνά σφ' ἀγορή τε θέμις τε ἤην, τῇ δὴ καί σφι θεῶν ἐτετεύχατο βωμοί — assembly, place of judgment and the gods' altars, all at Odysseus's ships (11.806-808). Read with 8.222-226, which puts that ship in the very middle of the line, the camp's civic center stands at its midpoint. What is conjectural on this sheet is the whole camp's position on the ground, not the assembly's position within it.
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The barrow of old Aesyetes
τύμβος Αἰσυήταο speculativeThe Trojans' own watch-post: Polites sits on its summit, 'trusting in his swiftness of foot, waiting for when the Achaeans should set out from the ships' (2.793-794). Function is all that fixes it: the post must see the ships, and Polites is chosen for speed because the warning has to be run home. Leaf set it mid-plain beside the tomb of Ilos, 'half way between the armies', and the schematic anchor follows him. One caution travels with it. Hainsworth holds that the Catalogue of Ships works from a different topography of the plain from the battle books (Commentary III, 243, referring to the notes on 2.793 and 2.811-815) - and 2.793 is this record's only Homeric position, as 2.811-815 is Batieia's. Both anchors may therefore sit in a frame the rest of the sheet does not share.
Tradition: Position fixed by function alone — high enough to see the camp, close enough to run home (Leaf 1912); no mound identified
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The Bay of Troy (the silted embayment)
certainNot named by Homer, but the single most important thing to get right on the map. A marine embayment once reached roughly 10 km south of Hisarlık at maximum Holocene transgression (Kraft, Kayan, and Erol 1980); the ria intruded some 17 km up the lower Karamenderes valley by 7000–6000 BP (Kayan); progradation had carried the coast west of Troia by c. 4000 BP; and a 2–2.5 m Late Bronze Age sea-level fall left a shallow lagoon behind a wide sandy barrier, with swamp over much of the delta. The modern coast lies about 6 km north of the site.
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The camp of Rhesus and the Thracians
εὐναὶ Θρῃκῶν speculativeThe camp of Rhesus, king of the Thracians: newest come to Troy and posted apart from the rest, ‘outermost of all’ (10.434) — the position the captured Dolon gives away under interrogation, along with a boast about Rhesus's gold-and-silver chariot and horses whiter than snow (10.435-441). Odysseus and Diomedes go straight there: Diomedes kills Rhesus and twelve sleeping Thracians while Odysseus drags the bodies clear so the panicked horses will not shy at them, and the two drive the horses back to the ships (10.469-514). On the schematic sheet they sit beyond the far end of the allied array Dolon lists - the contingents toward the sea against those toward Thymbra (10.428-431) - because that is what ἔσχατοι ἄλλων gives them. Which flank is theirs the poem does not say.
Tradition: Position fixed only by the poem's own relative description — the newest-arrived of Troy's allies, camped apart, outermost of all (10.434) — not by any excavated trace or an absolute site.
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The chariot gate
speculativeThe chariot gate — the one the returning teams use, where Asius drives at the line and finds the doors unbarred (12.118–23) and where Idomeneus kills him (12.117; 13.384–88). Placed at Ajax's end (John's ruling, after Pope's plate and TROAD-CARTOGRAPHY §'Draw Pope's plate again' item 3). LABELLED BY THE EVENT, NEVER BY A HAND: whose left 12.118's ἀριστερά is remains disputed — Janko IV, 130–31 reads it from the Greek side, Hainsworth III, 313–14 from Asius's, and the poem does not choose (C-9). The gates are plural (7.438; 12.120) against Aristarchus's single-gate reconstruction, which both Leaf and Hainsworth reject.
Tradition: Position fixed by the poem's own spatial logic (7.438–39; 12.118–19), not by any excavated trace
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The confluence of Simoeis and Scamander
speculativeῥοὰς Σιμόεις συμβάλλετον ἠδὲ Σκάμανδρος, 'where the Simoeis and Scamander join their streams' (5.774): Hera unyokes her horses here, and Book 6 sets the fighting between the two rivers at the same place (6.4). The poem gives the confluence as a landmark but does not fix it on a map -- 5.773-774 puts it close under the city, and nothing else in the text checks that against a coordinate. On this sheet's Bronze Age shoreline (2026-09-03, ruling 5's anchor review) the Simoeis and Scamander reach the bay through separate mouths, so there is no single point on the reconstructed rivers to put the pin on. The pin instead marks the head of the bay between the two mouths, the nearest point on land to where both would enter if they did meet -- a marker for the landmark 5.774 and 6.4 name, not a claim about where the rivers actually joined. The rivers' course has also shifted with the delta's six-millennia progradation (Kraft, Rapp, Kayan, and Luce 2003), so no fixed Bronze Age location is recoverable regardless. Tier stays speculative.
Tradition: Position shifts with the delta's six-millennia progradation (Kraft, Rapp, Kayan, and Luce 2003); no fixed Bronze Age location recoverable
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The Dardanian Gates
πύλαι Δαρδάνιαι traditionalA second named gate: Hector keeps darting toward it during the chase (22.194), and Priam is barely restrained from going out through it (22.413). Whether Homer means a gate distinct from the Scaean or an alternative name for it is disputed. On the schematic sheet it is placed at the excavated South Gate VI T, Dörpfeld's identification (1902, 2:630), followed by Tolman and Scoggin (1903). The alternative: no other excavated gate is proposed for the Dardanian Gates, but the same structure, VI T, is what site guides and popular tradition call the Scaean Gate instead, without a scholarly source for that swap.
Tradition: Dörpfeld 1902, 2:630 identifies the excavated South Gate VI T as Homer’s Dardanian Gate, arguing from the chase: it begins at the Scaean Gate on the north, so its far point lies on the south; Tolman and Scoggin 1903 follow him and add that Dardania lay toward Ida in the south-east
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The ford of the fair-flowing river
πόρος ποταμοῖο speculativeA fixed crossing, named by a repeated formula: 'but when they came to the ford of the fair-flowing river, eddying Xanthus, whom immortal Zeus begot' (14.433 = 21.1-2 = 24.692-693). It marks the seam between camp-side and city-side of the plain, and Achilles splits the rout there (21.3).
Tradition: Position unrecoverable; the delta has prograded past it (Luce 1998)
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The Granicus river
Γρήνικος traditionalOne of the eight Idaean rivers of 12.19-22 — later famous as the site of Alexander's first victory in Asia. Rose and Körpe surveyed the lower Granicus valley's tombs.
Tradition: Identification with the Biga Çayı, standard since antiquity
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The great tower of Ilios
πύργος μέγας Ἰλίου speculativeThe tower of the poem's civilian scenes: the elders and Helen on it (3.153–154), Andromache runs to it (6.386), Priam watches from it (21.526), Hector leans his shield against the jutting tower (22.97). From the wall by the tower Andromache sees Hector dragged toward the ships (22.462–65). Drawn beside the gate on the restored north-west wall; the surveyed towers VI g and VI h are not identified with it.
Tradition: Treated with the Scaean Gate as one work since Leaf (1912); drawn beside the gate on Dörpfeld's restored north-west wall, on the attackers' left as Tolman and Scoggin (1903) describe it; no surveyed tower is identified with it
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The ground of Patroclus's funeral games
εὐρὺς ἀγών speculativeImmediately after the barrow is closed, Achilles holds the people ‘right there’ (αὐτοῦ) and seats them in ‘a wide gathering-place’ for the games (23.257-258, εὐρὺν ἀγῶνα) — the same ground as the pyre and barrow, not a separate site; the poem gives it no other bearings, and calls the gathering itself an ἀγών again when it breaks up at the start of Book 24 (24.1, Λῦτο δ' ἀγών). Only the chariot race reaches beyond it: Achilles sets the turning-post ‘far off, in the level plain’ (23.358-359), a landmark Nestor describes only as either an old gatepost or ‘the grave-mound of some man dead long ago’ (23.331) — Homer leaves the marker's identity undetermined, and so does this record.
Tradition: Position fixed only by the poem's own spatial logic — the same ground as the pyre and barrow (23.257-258), with the chariot course running out into the level plain (23.358-359) — not by any excavated trace.
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The heaped-up wall of Heracles
τεῖχος Ἡρακλῆος mythicalThe pro-Greek gods' vantage point for the battle of the gods: 'the high heaped-up wall of divine Heracles, which the Trojans and Pallas Athena had made for him, so that he might escape the sea-monster when it drove him from the shore to the plain' (20.145-148) — paired with Callicolone, where the pro-Trojan gods watch, on the other side of the plain.
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The hut and ship of Nestor
κλισίη καὶ νηῦς Νέστορος speculativeNestor's ship and hut, reached three times at moments that turn the plot. Agamemnon convenes the council of elders that hears the destructive Dream ‘beside the ship of the Pylos-born king’ (2.53-54 = Νεστορέῃ παρὰ νηῒ Πυλοιγενέος βασιλῆος). On the night of the Doloneia, unable to sleep, Agamemnon goes to rouse Nestor for a second council and ‘finds him beside his hut and black ship’ (10.73-74). The wounded Machaon is driven there from the field; Achilles, watching from his own ship, sends Patroclus running the length of the camp to ask after him (11.599-618) — the errand that puts Patroclus in front of Nestor's long appeal on his return, the appeal that sets the rest of the poem in motion.
Tradition: Position not fixed by the poem's one passage that places Achilles, Ajax and Odysseus in the line of ships (8.222-226 = 11.5-9) — Nestor's ship is not named there — and no excavated trace exists; Patroclus reaches it at a run from Achilles's station at one end of the line (11.617), which puts it somewhere short of that end, but no more precise position is ever given.
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The hut of Achilles
κλισίη Ἀχιλλῆος speculativeThe camp's other extremity, opposite Ajax — the setting of the Embassy in Book 9 and of Priam's supplication in Book 24. Its distance from the center is a plot device: Achilles cannot see what is happening at the ships and has to send Patroclus to find out (11.599ff.). The sheet places his end toward the promontory later called Sigeion, on the same adopted reading of the camp's axis that puts Ajax at the opposite end: Aristarchus's, stated at first hand by Janko (Commentary IV, 130-31), against Hainsworth, who reads Asius's 'left of the ships' at 12.118 from the attacker's side and lands on the opposite end (Commentary III, 313-14). Neither headland is named in the Iliad. The poem itself says only 'at the ends', so the placement is speculative and the sheet names the ends by their holders rather than by a hand.
Tradition: Position fixed by the poem's own spatial logic (8.225-226 = 11.8-9), not by any excavated trace
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The hut of Agamemnon
κλισίη Ἀγαμέμνονος speculativeThe command tent, named directly and often: Zeus sends the destructive Dream 'to the hut of Agamemnon son of Atreus' to open Book 2 (2.9); the envoys of the embassy set out from it (9.178) and report their failure there on return (9.669); Agamemnon's reconciliation gifts are fetched from it (19.241); and the army gathers there after Patroclus's death (23.38). Homer never fixes it in the line of ships; it sits near the center only by implication.
Tradition: Position fixed only by implication — near the center — not by any excavated trace; named directly at several points across the poem (2.9, 9.178, 9.669, 19.241, 23.38)
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The huts of Ajax son of Telamon
κλισίαι Αἴαντος Τελαμωνιάδαο speculativeOne extremity of the camp: he and Achilles 'had drawn up their balanced ships at the ends, trusting in their manhood and the strength of their hands' (8.225-226 = 11.8-9). Which end is Ajax's and which Achilles' the poem never says. The schematic sheet has to put him somewhere, so it names the camp's ends by who holds them: this record sets Ajax at the end opposite Achilles, who holds the Sigeion end (see hut-of-achilles). That follows Aristarchus, and Janko states it outright: the 'left of the ships' is always seen from the Greek side, so the left is the eastern end where the Scamander ran and Telamonian Ajax lay, the right the western end toward Sigeion where Achilles was stationed (Commentary IV, 130-31, on 13.675). Hainsworth reads the same phrase at 12.118 from the attacker's side, which would swap the two ends (Commentary III, 313-14). Neither headland is named in the Iliad; both names are Strabo's. The placement is speculative for that reason, and the words left and right are kept off the sheet. In the fighting at the ships the Ajaxes are named defending the MIDDLE ships, not their own station — Idomeneus tells Thoas 'others are there to defend among the middle ships, both Ajaxes and Teucer' (13.312-13) — a passage about where they fight, not where they lie.
Tradition: Position fixed by the poem's own spatial logic (8.224-226 = 11.7-9), not by any excavated trace
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The Kesik basin / Kesik cut
certainA trough through the coastal ridge west of the plain, at the ridge's lowest point about 500 m south of Kesik Tepe; Cook puts its floor perhaps 12–15 m above sea level (Cook 1973, 166), and Kayan's survey puts the bedrock threshold at 13 m (Kayan 2009). East of the ridge lies the Kesik plain, the 'Lisgar' marsh of Spratt's map, which Cook found drained and cultivated (Cook 1973, 166). Drilling shows a small marine inlet there that had silted to swamp by about 4000–3500 BP, too early for a harbor in the time of Troia VI (Kayan 2009). Cook took the trough for an artificial drainage cut, offered the foundation of Constantine's new city as the occasion, and judged that 'the work was never completed' (Cook 1973, 167). Kayan's three studies agree that the cut was never a waterway. In 1995 Kayan judged that it probably began on a fault line and was then perhaps dug out by degrees by people who used it as a passage (Kayan 1995, 226–27). Kayan and his colleagues in 2003 took its shape to imply digging, called its purpose and date unknown, and offered either gradual opening by the people of Sigeion and later Yenihisar or an unfinished canal (Kayan et al. 2003, 399). In 2009 Kayan grants that its straight line looks artificial but finds no sign that it was dug and no spoil, and judges its most probable origin a fault line formed before the Holocene (Kayan 2009, 108–9, 123–25). Luce read the cut as the Achaean wall and ditch (Luce 1998); Kraft, Rapp, Kayan and Luce 2003 print that reading with a citation to Kayan 1995, which does not contain it. Zangger argues for artificial harbor works at Troy (Zangger, "Searching for the Ports of Troy"); with Mutlu he proposes, as a working hypothesis, a port basin linked to the Aegean by a slipway (Zangger and Mutlu 2015). Kraft, Kayan, Brückner and Rapp 2003 grant only that the embayments below the Sigeion ridge "had excellent harbor potentials." The schematic sheet does not draw or letter the feature.
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The lookout point
σκοπιή speculativeNamed once, paired with the fig tree on the chase-route: 'past the lookout and the windy fig tree, always out from under the wall, along the wagon-road' (22.145-146). Distinct from the tomb of Aesyetes, the Trojans' own watch-post over the ships (2.793).
Tradition: Fixed only by the poem's own narrative geography (Luce 1998); whether a natural rise or a built watch-post is not said
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The lower city of Troy
traditionalNot a name Homer uses. Korfmann's magnetometry found a substantial lower city south of the citadel, defended by a ditch, putting Bronze Age Troy at roughly ten times the area once assumed; Kolb argued the evidence would not bear that weight, and Jablonka and Rose answered him in the same issue of the AJA. Any drawing of its circuit belongs to Korfmann's reconstruction, not to an agreed fact.
Tradition: Manfred Korfmann and the Tübingen Troia project, 1988–2005
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The mound raised over Patroclus
σῆμα speculativeWhat the Iliad actually raises here. The Achaeans mark a circle round the pyre, lay the foundation, and heap the earth over it — τορνώσαντο δὲ σῆμα θεμείλιά τε προβάλοντο ἀμφὶ πυρήν· εἶθαρ δὲ χυτὴν ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἔχευαν (23.255-56) — and it is modest by Achilles's own order: not large, but such as fits, for the Achaeans who outlive him to make broad and high afterward (23.245-248). The great barrow shared with Achilles's own bones, on a jutting headland by the broad Hellespont, visible far out to sea, belongs to the Odyssey (24.80-84) and is not raised anywhere in this poem. This sheet draws what Book 23 builds.
Tradition: Position fixed only by the poem's own spatial logic — heaped where the pyre had burned, on the headland Achilles had marked out (23.125-126) — not by any excavated trace; the Troad's surviving 'tomb of Achilles' candidates are later cult sites, not burials (Rose and Körpe 2016)
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The oak tree
φηγός speculativeFormulaically bound to the Scaean Gate ('the Scaean Gates and the oak,' 6.237 = 9.354 = 11.170). Sarpedon is laid under 'the beautiful oak of aegis-bearing Zeus' (5.693), and Athena and Apollo perch in it as vultures to watch the single combat they have arranged (7.60).
Tradition: Fixed only by the poem's own narrative geography (Leaf 1912; Luce 1998); no physical tree survives to identify
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The pyre of Patroclus
πυρὴ Πατρόκλου speculativeWhere Achilles burns Patroclus. Wood cut on Ida is piled ‘on the headland, where Achilles had marked out a great mound for Patroclus and for himself’ (23.125-126); the pyre itself — named outright, ‘the pyre of Patroclus’ (23.192, πυρὴ Πατρόκλου) — is built a hundred feet square, loaded with sheep and cattle, jars of honey and oil, four horses, two of Patroclus's own dogs, and twelve captured Trojan youths, and burns through the night on winds Achilles prays down from Boreas and Zephyrus (23.163-225). At dawn the bones are gathered into a golden urn and Achilles orders a barrow raised over them — but only a modest one for now: ‘not very large, but such as fits; afterward let the Achaeans make it broad and high, whoever of you are left in the benched ships when I am gone’ (23.245-248). That later, far larger monument, shared in the end with Achilles's own bones, is the Odyssey's sequel and is catalogued separately as tomb-of-achilles-and-patroclus; this record is the pyre and the first, modest barrow Book 23 itself completes (23.255-257).
Tradition: Position fixed only by the poem's own spatial logic — piled on ‘the headland’ where Achilles had already marked out ground for the barrow (23.125-126) — not by any excavated trace.
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The Rhesus, Heptaporus, and Caresus rivers
Ῥῆσος, Ἑπτάπορος, Κάρησος speculativeThree more of the eight Idaean rivers, named in a single line (12.20) and nowhere else — honestly listed as unlocated Idaean streams, not guessed at.
Tradition: Already puzzling to ancient geographers; none securely identified with a modern watercourse (Leaf 1923)
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The Rhodius river
Ῥοδίος speculativeOne of the eight Idaean rivers, named once (12.20) and nowhere else in Homer.
Tradition: No secure modern identification; variously placed east of the Scamander since antiquity (Leaf 1923)
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The road to the ships
speculativeThe road the poem walks three times with the same waypoints in the same order (§3.5): out of Troy past the great tomb of Ilus, a halt at the river to water the animals, the ford, then the towers of the ships and the ditch, then Achilles' hut (24.349–51, 443, 448; return at 24.692–93); inbound in the rout of Book 11 past the tomb of Ilus, through the middle of the plain, past the fig tree, to the Scaean gates and the oak (11.166–70); the wounded Hector carried to the ford at 14.432–34. Drawn from the Scaean gate west across the dry fan, along the corridor between the delta swamp and the bay head, to the ridge foot. It is a DIFFERENT OBJECT from the ἀμαξιτός ring (C-7) and is labelled as inferred from the Book 24 waypoints. One honest gap: about 500 m between the river corridor and the ridge foot fall inside this sheet's wet-delta mask, whose own legend calls its margin indefinite; the road is drawn across it because the poem drives wagons and chariots along it.
Tradition: Fixed only by the poem's own narrative geography; the route is textual, not surveyed
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The Satnioeis river
Σατνιόεις traditional'The banks of fair-flowing Satnioeis' (6.34); Satnios is born there to a nymph and a herdsman (14.445), and 'steep Pedasus' stands on it (21.87).
Tradition: Identification with the Tuzla Çayı, following Strabo 13.1.50
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The Scaean Gate
Σκαιαὶ πύλαι speculativeThe gate of the poem: the elders sit at it and Helen comes to them on the tower (3.149–54), Hector meets Andromache there as he is about to go out (6.392–94), the fighting is around it all day (18.453), and the dying Hector foretells Achilles' death at it (22.359–60); always paired with the oak (6.237 = 9.354 = 11.170). On the schematic sheet it is drawn at the north-west corner of Dörpfeld's restored wall, with the great tower beside it, the placement Dörpfeld himself calls a conjecture (1902, 2:610) and Leaf supports from the ground (1912, 151–58). The alternatives: Dörpfeld's own second thought, the north-east gate beside tower VI g (2:609, 630); and, against him, the surviving South Gate VI T, which he identifies with the Dardanian Gates and which site guides call the Scaean without a scholarly source. The north and north-west wall is destroyed, so no gate found on the ground can be this one.
Tradition: Placed at the north-west corner of the citadel after Dörpfeld's restored plan (1902, 2:610, Fig. 470, marked by him as conjectural) and Leaf (1912), who argues from the view over the plain for the north-west angle; no excavated gate is agreed to be it
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The Scamandrian plain
πεδίον Σκαμάνδριον certainThe battlefield itself: the Achaeans 'poured out onto the Scamandrian plain' and 'took their stand in the flowery Scamandrian meadow' (2.465-467). Kraft, Kayan, and Erol's geomorphology puts the usable Late Bronze Age plain south and west of Hisarlık — the reverse of the ground north of the site that most illustrations still use. This is the ground itself, not a place on it: the whole schematic sheet is the Scamandrian plain. It takes no anchor there for that reason - a pin would put the plain at one point of itself - a scene set here is best shown as the whole sheet, unzoomed. The sheet carries it as a lettering zone instead, drawn by name and by nothing else.
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The ship and hut of Odysseus
νηῦς Ὀδυσσῆος certainἐν μεσσάτῳ — in the very middle. Agamemnon and Strife each take their stand on Odysseus's black ship of vast hold γεγωνέμεν ἀμφοτέρωσε, to carry a shout both ways, to Ajax's huts at one end of the line and to Achilles' at the other (8.222-223 = 11.5-6, verbatim). The poem states the center; it is the one station in the camp that needs no inference.
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The ship of Protesilaus
νηῦς Πρωτεσιλάου speculativeThe ship that brought Protesilaus, drawn up beside Ajax's where the wall was built lowest, τεῖχος ἐδέδμητο χθαμαλώτατον (13.681–84); Hector grips its stern and fires it (15.704–8). Janko notes it 'is hauled furthest inland since he was first ashore' (IV, 131) — a depth claim, which is why it is set on the rear rank at the wall. ANCHORED ONCE, and the conflict is recorded rather than drawn twice: at 16.284–86 Patroclus, sallying from Achilles' ships at the far end, throws κατὰ μέσσον beside that same stern. Janko treats 16.284–92 purely as aristeia narrative and never reconciles it; no commentary answers this leg of C-3.
Tradition: Position fixed by the poem's own spatial logic (13.681–84; 15.704–8), not by any excavated trace
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The station of Idomeneus
speculativeIdomeneus's quarter, inboard of Ajax's end. Nestor pairs Idomeneus with Ajax as the two whose ships lie furthest from his own, οὐδὲ μάλ' ἐγγύς (10.112–13) — a distance from Nestor, not an end. What fixes the END is the poem's own chain: Asius drives at the sector where the teams come in and is killed ἔγχεϊ Ἰδομενῆος (12.117–19), the death itself narrated at 13.384–88. Hainsworth reaches the same sector from the other side: 'the quarters of Idomeneus which were on the Achaean left' (III, 314). THIS MOVES HIM FROM THE OLD SHEET, which put him inboard of Achilles and said in its own note that the placement was 'the plate's own guess and is not fixed by the text'.
Tradition: Position fixed by the poem's own spatial logic (12.117–19; 13.326, 13.384–88), not by any excavated trace
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The Thymbrios
traditionalNot named by Homer. A Scamander tributary identified with the Kemer Su (Cook 1973, 112–13, 'presumably the Kemer Su'), included as the anchor for locating Thymbra at their confluence. The label sits at the Thymbrios–Scamander confluence (Pleiades 550929, 39.8997 / 26.2933). The Kemer Su is not in the sheet's OSM river cache (build/basemap-cache/osm_plain-all.json; PLAIN_RIVERS in scripts/prep-troad-basemap.py names only karamenderes and dombrik/dumrek), so the channel is not drawn.
Tradition: Strabo 13.1.35
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The tomb of Ajax at İn Tepe (Aianteion)
Αἰάντειον traditionalA conical mound on a spur of the Rhoiteion promontory, west of İntepe village; Pliny names a town, Aianteion, founded by the Rhodians on the other horn of the coast, where Ajax was buried, 30 stades from Sigeion (Natural History 5.125). The tumulus was rebuilt and vaulted in the 2nd century AD. The only published point (Vici.org 39.9916 / 26.2420) places the mound at Kumkale, roughly 8 km west of İntepe, and is almost certainly an error. The label is therefore anchored at Rhoiteion's Pleiades point (40.010 / 26.303), the tradition's own site (Strabo 13.1.30: a tomb and temple of Aias on the low shore beside Rhoeteium), until a published survey of İn Tepe is found. This is Rhoiteion's coordinate, not a survey of the mound.
Tradition: Ancient hero cult of Ajax at Rhoiteion; Pliny, Natural History 5.125; Strabo 13.1.30
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The tomb of Hector
σῆμα Ἕκτορος speculativeThe last image of the poem: the bones laid in a hollow grave, covered with great close-set stones, the barrow heaped in haste with lookouts posted all round against an Achaean attack (24.797-801). The poem never says where the barrow stands. The lookouts are the only clue: a guard set against an Achaean sally puts the grave outside the walls and within reach of one, so the schematic anchor sits just outside the circuit on the plain side. That is an inference from 24.799, not a statement. Strabo 13.1.29 records a precinct of Hector near Ophrynium, which is a later cult site and a different place.
Tradition: No location given in the poem, and none claimed for it in antiquity — unlike the other Trojan War tombs, it never became a cult site in the Troad
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The tomb of Ilus
σῆμα Ἴλου speculativeThe barrow of 'ancient Ilus son of Dardanus,' out on the plain: Hector holds council beside it, away from the din (10.415); the routed Trojans stream past it (11.166); Paris shoots Diomedes from behind its grave-stele (11.371-372); and Priam's wagon passes it on the way to beg for Hector's body (24.349). Strabo (13.1.36-37) already treats the plain's tombs as an identification problem, not a solved one.
Tradition: Position fixed by narrative function alone (Leaf 1912); no mound at Hisarlık is matched to it
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The Trojan bivouac on the plain
πυρὰ Τρώων speculativeThe Trojans' one recorded night in the open. On Hector's order, flushed with the day's success, they camp on the plain beside the ships instead of withdrawing into Troy, ‘between the ships and the streams of the Xanthus’ (8.560). A thousand fires burn there, fifty men waiting by the light of each blaze for dawn and battle (8.562-563) — the image the poem holds a moment, comparing the fires to stars around a bright moon on a windless night (8.555-559), before returning to the horses standing in harness, watching for the throned Dawn (8.564-565). Three passages fix the position, and they agree: the assembly Hector holds away from the ships by the eddying river, in a clear space among the dead (8.489-491); the bivouac on the rise of the plain, ἐπὶ θρωσμῷ πεδίοιο, close to the ships with only a little ground left between (10.160-161, and the same phrase at 11.56 and 20.3); and the thousand fires between the ships and the streams of Xanthus, in front of Ilios (8.560-562). That is a band on the plain outside the Achaean ditch rather than a point, and the schematic anchor stands at its middle.
Tradition: Position fixed only by the poem's own relative description — ‘between the ships and the streams of the Xanthus’ (8.560) — not by any excavated trace or an absolute site.
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The two fair-flowing springs of the Scamander
κρουνὼ καλλιρρόω speculativeOne spring runs warm, steam rising 'as from a burning fire'; the other is cold as hail or snow even in high summer (22.149-152), on the wagon-road Achilles and Hector run past in the chase. The natural springs themselves — distinct from the man-made stone troughs beside them (see 'washing-troughs') — are what this record maps. The survey (field campaigns 2001-2006, published as Wolkersdorfer et al., CATENA 200 (2021)) measured the local candidates and found their temperatures nearly constant year-round — they only feel warm in winter and cold in summer.
Tradition: Hunted for since the 1st century BC; no thermal spring in the strict sense survives near Troy, but numerous Troad springs qualify in Homer's own relative sense (λιαρός, 'lukewarm') — the identification fails from a surplus of qualifying candidates, not their absence, and the hydrochemical survey (Wolkersdorfer et al., CATENA 200 (2021)) calls identifying Homer's spring(s) within the Troad "apparently not possible" and locating Troy by Il. 22.147-156 a likely "fruitless enterprise"
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The wagon-road
ἀμαξιτός speculativeThe chase-ring under the wall — the track Achilles and Hector run three laps of, out past the lookout, the fig tree, and the springs. Two roads are being run together on this plain, and the poem never joins them. The one road it calls ἀμαξιτός (22.146, its only occurrence) skirts the town a short way outside the wall - so Leaf reads it, and Richardson says the same without hedging (Commentary VI, 122) - carrying the chase past the lookout, the fig tree and the springs, which is how Hector and Achilles reach the springs once on every lap (22.208). The other road — the one Priam drives down to the ships, given only by its waypoints, the tomb of Ilos, the river, the ford, the towers and the ditch (24.349-351, 24.443) — is a different object, catalogued separately as road-to-the-ships. This record's anchor sits on the ring under the wall.
Tradition: Fixed only by the poem's own narrative geography (Luce 1998); the route is textual, not surveyed
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The wall of Troy
τεῖχος certainPoseidon built it for Laomedon, 'wide and very fair, so that the city should be unbreachable' (21.446-447), while Apollo herded cattle on Ida; Apollo himself later goes down to defend it, 'for he cared for the wall of the well-built city, lest the Danaans should sack it before its fated day' (21.516-517); Andromache knows its one weak point, by the fig tree (6.433-434). The Troy VI circuit survives at Hisarlık and is planned in Dörpfeld's 1902 report — one of the few Homeric structures with a real footprint underfoot. Poseidon resents that the Achaeans' new wall will be famous while men forget the one he and Apollo built for Laomedon (7.452-453).
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The washing-troughs
πλυνοὶ εὐρέες speculative'Broad washing-troughs, fine ones of stone, where the wives and fair daughters of the Trojans used to wash their shining clothes, in the time of peace before the sons of the Achaeans came' (22.153-156) — a built, man-made feature standing beside the two springs (see 'two-springs-of-scamander'), not the springs themselves. One of the poem's clearest images of the lost civilian world before the war. No coordinate is given: the hydrochemical survey (field campaigns 2001-2006, published as Wolkersdorfer et al., CATENA 200 (2021)) found no thermal pair in the strict sense near Hisarlık (numerous springs qualify in Homer's relative sense — the surplus problem); the paper never treats the washing-troughs as a separate question from the springs, so a point for troughs beside an unlocatable spring pair would be invented. That is a statement about the ground, and it stands. The schematic sheet carries positions of a different kind - the poem's own relations rather than survey - and there the troughs go where 22.153 puts them, beside the springs (ἐγγύς): a conjectural anchor on the sheet, never a coordinate.
Tradition: No thermal spring pair in the strict sense survives near Hisarlık, though many Troad springs qualify in Homer's own relative sense; the hydrochemical survey (Wolkersdorfer et al., CATENA 200 (2021)) found the description does not discriminate among candidates, so no coordinate is given for a built feature standing beside a spring pair that cannot itself be located
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The wild fig in the middle of the plain
ἐρινεός speculativeThe poem's OTHER fig tree: μέσσον κὰπ πεδίον παρ' ἐρινεόν (11.167), in the middle of the plain beside the tomb of Ilus, on the road the rout takes back to the city. Placed on the mid-plain road corridor next to the tomb. Drawn as a second feature, not as an alternative position for the first: the contradiction (C-1) is content. Strabo's tradition takes a third route again and makes Erineos a fig-covered district at the foot of the old site (13.1.35).
Tradition: Nicanor and both standard commentaries (Hainsworth III, 243; Richardson VI, 122) partition the poem's two figs: this one μέσσον κὰπ πεδίον beside the tomb of Ilus
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The wild fig tree
ἐρινεός speculativeAndromache tells Hector to post the army here, 'where the city is most scalable and the wall assailable' — the Achaeans have already tried it three times (6.433-434). It stands on the wagon-road out of the city, by the lookout, 'the windy fig tree' (22.145). A different fig, by the river, is where Achilles catches Lycaon cutting branches (21.37). The poem in fact sets a wild fig in two places, and they do not agree: under the wall at the scalable stretch (6.433-434) and on the chase-circuit beside the lookout (22.145), against the middle of the plain by the tomb of Ilos (11.166-167, see fig-tree-mid-plain). Nicanor already separated them - the fig by the city, the barrow mid-plain - and both standard modern commentaries follow that partition (Hainsworth, Commentary III, 243; Richardson, Commentary VI, 122). This record's anchor takes the tree under the wall; the disagreement is recorded rather than averaged away.
Tradition: Fixed only by the poem's own narrative geography (Leaf 1912); the tree itself is not a surviving landmark
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Thebe (under Placus)
Θήβη Ὑποπλακίη traditionalAndromache's home, ruled by her father Eetion over the Cilicians; Achilles sacked it, killed Eetion, and carried off both Chryseis (1.366) and Andromache's mother (6.414-416). Strabo's testimony is the only anchor: Thebe lay 60 stadia from Adramyttium (modern Edremit) and was already deserted in his own day; no excavated site answers to it, so this gazetteer gives no coordinate — the distance-and-direction relation to Adramyttium is what is actually known, not a point.
Tradition: Near Adramyttium (modern Edremit), Troad, Strabo 13.1.61-65
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Thebes (Boeotia)
Θήβη ἑπτάπυλος certainSeven-gated Boeotian city captured by the Epigoni; distinct from the Cilician Thebe of the Troad.
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Thespiae
Θέσπεια traditionalBoeotian city under Mt Helicon; modern Thespies preserves the name over the excavated remains.
Tradition: Identified with the excavated site near modern Thespies/Erimokastro, Boeotia (Paus. 9.26)
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Thesprotia
Θεσπρωτοί certainRegion of Epirus on the mainland; setting of several of Odysseus's false tales and home to King Pheidon.
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Thisbe
Θίσβη traditional"Many-doved" Boeotian town; modern Thisvi sits on/near the ancient site below Mt Helicon.
Tradition: Modern village of Thisvi, Boeotia, preserves the ancient name (Paus. 9.32.2-3)
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Thrace
Θρῄκη certainRegion north of the Hellespont and Propontis; homeland of Acamas's and Peirous's contingent.
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Thracian Samos (Samothrace)
Σάμος Θρηικίη certainPoseidon's vantage point: 'high on the topmost peak of wooded Thracian Samos, for from there all Ida was visible, and the city of Priam was visible, and the ships of the Achaeans' (13.12-14). Mount Fengari tops 1,600 m, and Ida is visible from it in clear weather.
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Thrinacia
Θρινακίη traditionalIsland of the Sun-god's cattle; the crew's slaughter of the sacred herd dooms them. Thucydides (6.2.2) connects the name to Sicily (Trinacria).
Tradition: Sicily, whose ancient name Trinacria echoes Thrinacia (Thucydides 6.2.2)
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Thronium
Θρόνιον traditionalLocrian town on the Boagrius river's banks, capital-adjacent to Thermopylae's approach.
Tradition: Near modern Kainourgio/Pikraki, East Locris, on the Boagrius (Strabo 9.4.4)
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Thryum
Θρύον traditionalNamed as "the ford of Alpheius"; Strabo locates it in Triphylia near the river crossing.
Tradition: The ford of the Alpheius in Triphylia, near modern Epitalio (Strabo 8.3.13)
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Thymbra
Θύμβρη traditionalNamed once, in Dolon's report of the allied dispositions: 'toward Thymbra the Lycians and the lordly Mysians drew their lot' (10.430). Later the site of the Thymbraion, Apollo's sanctuary, and by legend where Achilles ambushed Troilus. A district anchored on the Thymbrios (Kemer Su)–Scamander confluence, not a point — re-anchored to Pleiades 550929 (Thymbras Pedion), whose precise point gives that confluence directly, inside Strabo's fifty-stadia band; the earlier Pleiades 550927 carried only a rough rectangle centroid. In the Iliad it is not a settlement at all but a bearing: Dolon names it as the direction one wing of the allied camp lies toward, set against the wing that lies toward the sea (10.428-431). On the schematic sheet it is anchored at the inland end of that axis, and it means a direction.
Tradition: The Thymbrios–Scamander confluence, following Strabo 13.1.35; ancient sources disagree on whether Thymbra was a polis, a topos, or simply a pedion
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Tiryns
Τίρυνς certainBronze Age citadel of the Argolid, famed for its Cyclopean walls; excavated by Schliemann from 1884.
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Titanus
Τιτάνος speculative"White-peaked" hill Strabo describes as a mass of white earth near Asterium; unlocated precisely.
Tradition: Thessaly, a hill of white chalky earth near Asterium (Strabo 9.5.18); Simpson–Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (1970)
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Titaressus (river)
Τιταρησσός traditionalRiver said to flow atop the Peneius without mixing, as an offshoot of the Styx; identified with the modern Xerias.
Tradition: Tributary of the Peneius in northwest Thessaly, identified with the modern Xerias/Titarisios (Strabo 9.5.19-20)
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Tomb of Aepytus
Αἰπύτιον mythicalLandmark tomb of the legendary Arcadian king Aepytus; Pausanias reports a real tumulus was pointed out near Heraea.
Tradition: A tumulus near Heraea, Arcadia, was shown as Aepytus's tomb in antiquity (Paus. 8.16.3)
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Trachis
Τρηχίς traditionalTown below Oeta later refounded as Spartan-colonized Heraclea Trachinia; site near modern Ypati.
Tradition: Near modern Ypati at the foot of Mt Oeta, associated with Heraclea Trachinia (Strabo 9.4.13-17)
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Tricca
Τρίκκη certainThessalian city with the oldest sanctuary of Asclepius in Greek tradition; modern Trikala occupies the site.
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Troezen
Τροιζήν certainArgolid city, Theseus's traditional birthplace; modern Troizina preserves the name.
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Troy (Ilios)
Ἴλιος / Τροίη certainThe besieged city, the mound of Hisarlık, excavated since Schliemann's first campaign in 1870. Which level was Homer's Troy is the live question: Dörpfeld read the massive Troy VIh circuit as Mycenaean-scale and Homeric; Blegen reassigned VIh's destruction to an earthquake and made Troy VIIa — burned c. 1190–1180, arrowheads and sling stones in its debris — the city the poem remembers; Korfmann's team broadly confirmed that split. The site is certain, the level still argued.
Ü
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Üvecik Tepe
traditionalSouth of Troy on the road to Alexandria Troas, and the greatest of the Trojan tumuli (Cook 1973, 172). Not a heroic tomb: Schliemann's shafts found pottery he judged late Roman, and he took the mound for the tomb Caracalla, a great admirer of Achilles, built c. 214 AD for Festus — his favorite in Cook's account, his freedman in Leaf's and Pleiades'. Lechevalier and his followers had recognized it as the tomb of Aesyetes, from which Polites kept watch for the Trojans (Il. 2.791–94).
Tradition: Schliemann's identification (1879) of the mound as the tomb of Festus, Caracalla's freedman, from late-Roman sherds in his shafts (Cook 1973, 172; Leaf 1912, 26); Herodian tells of Festus' death at Ilium and his burning on a pyre in imitation of Patroclus' funeral but mentions no mound (Herodian 4.8.4–5); Lechevalier and his followers had taken it for the tomb of Aesyetes (Il. 2.793)
X
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Xanthus (river, Lycia)
Ξάνθος certainChief river of Lycia, distinct from the Trojan river Scamander/Xanthus named elsewhere in the epic; the modern Eşen Çayı.
Z
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Zacynthus
Ζάκυνθος certainWooded island in Odysseus's kingdom, south of Cephallenia; modern Zakynthos.
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Zeleia
Ζέλεια traditional'Under the lowest foot of Ida,' on the Aesepus (2.824-825), Pandarus's city; he twice vows a hecatomb on returning safe 'to the sacred city of Zeleia' (4.103 = 4.121), a vow the poem makes sure he never gets to pay.
Tradition: Aesepus valley, near modern Sarıköy, Strabo 13.1.9