Some scholars claim it was here Odysseus dallied for seven years with the goddess Calypso.

WSJ: The Produce-Packed Cuisine of Pantelleria

But it is also Odysseus himself, by his very example, who has seduced them into showing him such favours.

ECONOMIST: Homer

Odysseus eventually made it through the narrow straits between the two monsters, but not without losing six of his best sailors.

FORBES: Chuck Schumer, Scylla, Charybdis

Mr Armitage has penned a version of Homer's second epic which deals with the long-delayed homecoming of Odysseus from the Trojan wars.

ECONOMIST: Homer

"There is a second territory ... and that is secondary traumatic stress injury, " says Shay, the author of Odysseus in America and Achilles in Vietnam.

NPR: Chaplain Struggles with PTSD from Time in Iraq

Scott Huler retraces the travels of his literary inspiration, Homer's Odysseus.

NPR: Role of U.S. Changing in New World Order

Just over a year later, the good ship Hellas is not faring much better than Odysseus and his crew, veering from one near-disaster to the next.

FORBES: Owed, On a Grecian, Earned

Local legend has it that Odysseus loitered here for seven years before he decided he really ought to be getting back to his family on Ithaca.

BBC: The perfect trip: Croatia

It's a way of binding ourselves, much as, in The Odyssey, Odysseus asks his men to lash him to the mast so he can guide the ship past the Sirens.

FORBES: Bitter Money And Christmas Clubs

The fact is that Odysseus is befriended by gods who want him, in the end, to succeed, in order that he may return home to his beloved wife Penelope, so long neglected, and surrounded by such a crowd of baying, bestial suitors.

ECONOMIST: Homer