What Would Odysseus Have Done With A SatNav?

When walking down the street have you ever noticed just how many people stride purposefully along with their eyes focused almost exclusively on the small screen of their smart phone held in front of them like some sort of medieval talisman warding off evil spirits? Oblivious to their surroundings they plough through crowds, sometimes straight into trees or lamp posts, as they tap furiously on the phone or check street signs to make sure the computer map is indeed sending them to Portobello Road and not Penzance.

Is this what we're coming to?

            It remains a mystery just what demands their constant, immediate attention. Remaining in touch with a friend they haven’t seen for at least 10 minutes? Checking their lottery number, finding the magic cure for Brexit, resolving the Syrian mess? Or perhaps they’re anxiously awaiting news on their Oscar nomination or Nobel prize announcement.

            While not wanting to appear like some old fogey technophobe I do sometimes wonder how the social value of recent ‘triumphs’ like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram improve our lives compared with the discovery of things like penicillin, polio vaccine, electricity. It’s interesting that in the search for clean energy we’re going back to the very basic wind or geothermal sources. Perhaps one day we’ll even figure out how to harness the tides or develop energy from water.

            One innovation that seems to cause as much confusion as enlightenment is satellite navigation or SatNav. How many stories have you heard about people relying on SatNav only to wind up in a remote refuse pit instead of in their friend’s driveway? Once we made the mistake of using SatNav to find a hotel in Normandy and spent hours creeping around back roads before discovering that the hotel was less than a mile from where the device had told us to turn off into the woods.

            That experience only reinforced my prejudice for proper maps. Now before any journey I spend very pleasant hours in Stanford’s map/travel shop in central London. There you can find beautiful, multi-coloured, accurate road maps, hiking maps,  ordinance survey maps for almost every location in the world – all of which you can study at your leisure without that irritating little voice telling you to turn left in 200 meters, turn right there, and announcing arrogantly that you have arrived at your destination when a glance out the window shows that you are instead far from any known destination. Perhaps SatNav developers should add a phrase like ‘You Can’t Get There From Here.’

            These thoughts were wandering through my head as a recent Greek ferry trip took us past the sometimes-turbulent strait between the islands of Evia and Andros. This strait is the most direct route to Troy on the coast of Asia Minor, and I wondered what Odysseus would have done with a Sat Nav for his famous trip home after the long war.  Having made the trip to Troy 10 years previously he should have known the direct route home to Ithaca. But the gods, mainly Poseidon, decided to make his life difficult. At least that’s what he ultimately told his long-suffering wife Penelope.

Think she'll buy the  faulty SatNav argument?

             In addition to the issues with Poseidon he decided to add to his problems by relying on the first-generation SatNav. Instead of the simple, direct route the SatNav directed him to  zig-zag around the Aegean and Ionian seas for 10 years constantly being told to turn at the next way point or that he had arrived at his destination. I wonder if the system would have warned him about spending several years with Calypso, the risk of the Sirens, the dangers of Polyphemus, or the problems of a reckless crew that opened the bag of winds. After many distractions and useless side trips the little, by now almost completely torn, checkered flag finally appeared at Ithaca. History does not record what the frustrated Odysseus did with the malfunctioning SatNav. But he probably did what most of us often think of doing – grind it underfoot before confronting the wife and son with an already tall tale.

            Perhaps now we can blame the trials of early travellers on a faulty SatNav. One can only speculate how travellers like  Columbus, Magellan, the Vikings and others would have reacted when their SatNav said it was ‘recalculating’ or that they had ‘arrived at their destination’. They would probably still be floating around the high seas wishing they had relied on tried and tested celestial navigation. At least the stars move in predictable patterns without constantly 'recalculating.'

Turn Left At Aristotle

The Hellespont. A name fabled in history, the narrowest point of the Dardanelles Straits separating Europe from Asia. The place where Xerxes with his Persian army of 300,000 in about 480 B.C. crossed into Europe on his way to Thermopylae and ultimately Salamis where his fleet was destroyed by  Themistocles. Frustrated at his initial failure to cross the straits Xerxes ordered his army to give the swiftly flowing passageway 300 lashes to show it who was boss. It must have worked because his huge force was able to cross on a hastily constructed bridge – the only time a bridge has crossed the Hellespont.

About 150 years later Alexander and his army of 30,000 tough Macedonians and their allies together with a cavalry of 5,000 had a smoother crossing on rented galleys. The crossing was unopposed and Alexander turned the transport over to his general Parmenion while he dashed off to nearby Troy to pay homage to Achilles. As his galley neared the Asian shore he hurled his spear onto the beach to declare his intention to conquer Asia. A few days later he began his long march to India  by crushing a much larger force of Persians and Greek mercenaries at the River Granicus. About a year later Alexander repeated  by this feat by destroying the Persian army once and for all at the Battle of Issus in what is now southern Turkey.

As we waited for the ferry near the 15^th century fortress of Kilit Bahir (Lock of the Sea) to Canakkale these images of ancient history suddenly seemed not so ancient. The landscape has not changed very much, and the area has been spared the worst of the unlovely development that plagues much of the Turkish coast. You can’t help thinking of people like Xerxes, Alexander, Leander and Hero, and Byron. After Bryon made the difficult swim across the straits in 1810 he admitted that he didn’t see how Leander had much energy left for his tryst with Hero after he repeatedly swam across the straits to be with her.

Friends had invited us to their home in Assos – just across from the Greek island of Mytilene – and told us to take a left at the statue of Aristotle, go past a defunct cheese shop and wind up at their house literally on top of the ancient city where Aristotle once taught. It’s a long drive from Istanbul, but, once beyond Tekirdag, the road goes through beautiful farm land with fields of sun flowers before winding down to the long Gallipoli peninsula separating the Dardanelles from the Gulf of Saroz.

Aristotle at the entrance to Assos

One reason the Gallipoli peninsula remains relatively free of development is that most of the area is a national park dedicated to the memory of the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915 when allied forces tried, and failed, to knock Ottoman Turkey out of World War I. The entire battle field is dotted with monuments and cemeteries – none more poignant than the one at a place called Lone Pine where hundreds of young Australian soldiers of the Light Horse Brigade are buried. I have often swum at ANZAC (Australia New Zealand) cove, looked up at the imposing cliffs and thought “They never had a chance against the Turkish forces perched on top.” It was curious sort of battle where the soldiers developed a grudging respect for each other. One monument captures this attitude well. A giant Turkish sergeant carries a wounded British soldier to the British trenches, puts him gently down and returns unmolested to his own side of the battle.

As the ferry pulls into Canakkale on the Asian side you can see a replica of the real hero of the naval operations at Gallipoli. Not some grand battleship bristling with guns, but a tubby little mine layer named Nusret. It was mines very cleverly placed by the crew of the Nusret that caused so much damage to the allied fleet that it gave up the idea of forcing the straits.

Once on the Asian side you wind up a steep hill and suddenly the plain of Troy opens in front of you. A small sign indicates a dusty road leading to the excavation of several layers of cities, once which could have been the fabled Troy of Homer’s epic poem. Perhaps, perhaps not. But it does not take a great deal of imagination to sit on the walls looking over the plain toward the sea and picture Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Priam, Patroclus, Odysseus and all the others involved in that long war more than 3,000 years ago.

One thing Homer, or other poets, got right was the description of the geography of the region. Our friends in Assos had descriptions of 19^th century British travelers who rode all over the Troad with their copies of the Iliad in one hand and a map in the other. According to them the descriptions in the Iliad of the hills, streams, islands, and distant mountains match almost perfectly with the current topography – at least the topography of the mid-19^th century.

In this part of the world ancient history is not ancient at all. It is with us every day as another bit of this history is uncovered by your door step. The feats Alexander should be considered part of the current affairs curriculum, not history.