The next day Ulysses set sail in the Phaeacian vessel, and in a short time arrived safe at Ithaca, his own island.  When the vessel touched the strand he was asleep.  The mariners, without waking him, carried him on shore, and landed with him the chest containing his presents, and then sailed away.

Neptune was so displeased at the conduct of the Phaeacians in thus rescuing Ulysses from his hands that on the return of the vessel to port he transformed it into a rock, right opposite the mouth of the harbor.

Homer’s description of the ships of the Phaeacians has been thought to look like an anticipation of the wonders of modern steam navigation.  Alcinous says to Ulysses: 

    “Say from what city, from what regions tossed,
    And what inhabitants those regions boast? 
    So shalt thou quickly reach the realm assigned,
    In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind;
    No helm secures their course, no pilot guides;
    Like man intelligent they plough the tides,
    Conscious of every coast and every bay
    That lies beneath the sun’s all-seeing ray.”

    —­Odyssey, Book VIII.

Lord Carlisle, in his “Diary in the Turkish and Greek Waters,” thus speaks of Corfu, which he considers to be the ancient Phaeacian island: 

“The sites explain the ‘Odyssey.’  The temple of the sea-god could not have been more fitly placed, upon a grassy platform of the most elastic turf, on the brow of a crag commanding harbor, and channel, and ocean.  Just at the entrance of the inner harbor there is a picturesque rock with a small convent perched upon it, which by one legend is the transformed pinnace of Ulysses.

“Almost the only river in the island is just at the proper distance from the probable site of the city and palace of the king, to justify the princess Nausicaa having had resort to her chariot and to luncheon when she went with the maidens of the court to wash their garments.”

FATE OF THE SUITORS

Ulysses had now been away from Ithaca for twenty years, and when he awoke he did not recognize his native land.  Minerva appeared to him in the form of a young shepherd, informed him where he was, and told him the state of things at his palace.  More than a hundred nobles of Ithaca and of the neighboring islands had been for years suing for the hand of Penelope, his wife, imagining him dead, and lording it over his palace and people, as if they were owners of both.  That he might be able to take vengeance upon them, it was important that he should not be recognized.  Minerva accordingly metamorphosed him into an unsightly beggar, and as such he was kindly received by Eumaeus, the swine-herd, a faithful servant of his house.