It is not so very many years ago that general scepticism prevailed about Homeric topography. But now, just as one smiles, in listening to Dörpfeld's masterly exposition of the thoroughly excavated walls of Troy, at the thought that "if Troy ever stood" was catalogued by an almost contemporary poet with insoluble riddles, like "if Israel's missing tribes found refuge here," so, in passing over Ithaca with the Odyssey in hand, one smiles to think that not long ago Hercher could maintain that there was no agreement between the Ithaca of the Odyssey and the Ithaca of reality. It may be granted that Hercher knocked out the somewhat visionary Gell; but he did not touch Leake; indeed, it seems as if he had not read Leake at all. There is one passage in the Odyssey which seemed to support Hercher, in which Ithaca is spoken of as "a low island," and as "lying apart and farther to the west than Samos and Zakynthos." How the poet, be he the original poet of the Odyssey or an _epigonos_, ever happened to say this of Ithaca, the rugged island lying close up against the eastern shore of Kephallenia, no one has yet satisfactorily explained. But, apart from this Homeric crux, there is a most gratifying coincidence between "the Land and the Book." The topography of Ithaca has gained respect in proportion as attempts have been given up to force Corfu into identity with the land of the Phæacians. In respect to Schliemann's and Gell's acropolis on Mt. Aëtos at the narrowest part of the island, it must be granted that this was an important fortress of the Homeric period, controlling communication between the northern and southern halves of the island, as well as the nearest approach from Samos, which was probably always in antiquity the main city of Kephallenia. But that the main city of Ithaca was ever on this eagle's eyrie is in accordance neither with antecedent probability nor with the poet's story.