The next mention of Ithake occurs in a Greek document of 1264, in which
Count Matthew’s son and successor, “the most high and mighty Richard,
palatine count and lord of Cephalonia, Zakynthos, and Ithake,” confirms
the possessions of the Latin bishopric of Cephalonia[379]. Here Ithake is
called by its classical name, which was not confined to Greeks, for we
find it used in a Venetian document of 1278, where the island is again
mentioned as the scene of piracies[380]. Later on, in 1294, a document in
the Angevin archives at Naples mentions the promise of Count Richard to
bestow “the castle of Koronos”—a name still given to part of the island
of Cephalonia—“or the island of Ithake” (_sive vellent castrum Corony
de dominio suo, sive vellent insulam Ythace_) upon his son John I, on
the occasion of the latter’s marriage with the daughter of Nikephoros I,
despot of Epeiros[381]. Richard, in spite of the repeated remonstrances
of Charles II of Naples, who, in virtue of the treaty of Viterbo, was
suzerain of Achaia, and accordingly of Cephalonia, failed to carry out
this promise. We next hear of Val di Compare in the above-mentioned
Venetian document of 1320, in which Count John I’s son, Nicholas, who had
two years earlier murdered his nephew, the last Despot of Epeiros of the
house of the Angeloi, and had made himself Despot, is reminded that his
ancestor Matthew had done homage, as he was now offering to do, for the
three islands of Cephalonia, Zante, and Val di Compare to the Venetian
republic.