Odysseus Returns

Did King Odysseus, the Trojan-horse-building genius in Homer's poem The Iliad, actually exist? In 1991, Makis Metaxas, a mayor on the Greek island of Kefalonia, discovers a 3000-year-old Mycenaean tomb. When Greece's leading archeologist, Lazaros Kolonas, begins to excavate, he unearths an object just like one described by Homer as a prized possession of Odysseus. But the people of Kefalonia's neighboring island, Ithaki, are angry at the prospect of losing their King of the Ithacans, and with him their major draw for tourism. Political rivalries between Ithaki and Kefalonia lead to the discovery languishing in a dusty museum storeroom. Now, after three decades of suppression, the evidence found in the tomb is at last coming to light. Makis and his wife, Hettie Metaxas-Putman Cramer, reveal how ancient clues in Homer's text led them to the tomb. And Lazaros Kolonas finally returns to the site to go on the record about whether this tomb really belonged to the legendary King Odysseus.