Dulichium

Dulichium is one of the four island kingdoms whose chieftains besiege Penelope as suitors, and its contingent forms the largest single bloc among the men eating out Odysseus' estate. The island's fixed role as a source of aggressive, well-organized suitors—led by Amphinomus, the most moderate of the wooers—makes it a key component of the political geography that drives the crisis in Ithaca.

Identity and Geography

Dulichium is named alongside Same, Zacynthus, and Ithaca itself as one of the islands whose principal men are courting Penelope. Telemachus, in his first public speech before the assembly of Ithaca, lists the suitors' origins: "the chiefs from all our islands, Dulichium, Same, and the woodland island of Zacynthus, as also all the principal men of Ithaca itself." When Odysseus finally reveals his identity to the Phaeacians, he describes his homeland in similar terms: "I live in Ithaca, where there is a high mountain called Neritum, covered with forests; and not far from it there is a group of islands very near to one another—Dulichium, Same, and the wooded island of Zacynthus." The island is consistently grouped with the other Ionian islands that lie close to Ithaca, forming a tight archipelago. Samuel Butler, in his preface to the translation, argued that the poem was written at Trapani on the west coast of Sicily and that the Ithacan geography was drawn from that region; he identified Dulichium with one of the nearby islands, though the traditional identification in Homeric scholarship has varied.

The Dulichian Contingent Among the Suitors

Dulichium supplies the largest single group of suitors. When Telemachus gives his father a detailed count of the men besieging their house, he reports: "There are fifty-two chosen youths from Dulichium, and they have six servants." This contingent of fifty-two, plus attendants, far outnumbers the twenty-four from Same, the twenty from Zacynthus, and the twelve from Ithaca itself. The Dulichians thus constitute nearly half of the suitors' total fighting strength, making their presence decisive in the balance of power that prevents Telemachus from expelling the wooers by force. The sheer size of the Dulichian party underscores how thoroughly Odysseus' estate is being consumed: the island's young nobles have committed substantial resources to the prolonged courtship, and their numbers make any direct confrontation by Telemachus alone impossible.

Amphinomus: The Dulichian Leader

The most prominent Dulichian among the suitors is Amphinomus, son of Nisus, who is described as "foremost among all the suitors from the wheat-growing and well-grassed island of Dulichium." He is distinguished from the other wooers by his character: "his conversation, moreover, was more agreeable to Penelope than that of any of the other suitors, for he was a man of good natural disposition." When the suitors debate whether to murder Telemachus on his return from Pylos, Amphinomus alone speaks against the plot, urging them to "first take counsel of the gods" and declaring that he will only join the killing "if the oracles of Jove advise it." His words please the assembly, and the plan is temporarily abandoned. Later, when Odysseus—still disguised as a beggar—warns Amphinomus directly that Odysseus will soon return and that the suitors "will not part bloodlessly," Amphinomus walks away "serious and bowing his head, for he foreboded evil." Yet the narrative immediately adds: "But even so he did not escape destruction, for Minerva had doomed him to fall by the hand of Telemachus." Amphinomus is killed during the slaughter of the suitors when Telemachus strikes him from behind with a spear, the weapon passing between his shoulders and through his chest.

Narrative Significance

Dulichium functions as the primary source of the suitors' numerical strength, and its leader Amphinomus provides the poem's most nuanced portrait of a wooer—a man who is fundamentally decent yet fatally complicit in the collective injustice. The island's wheat-growing fertility, mentioned in Amphinomus' epithet, contrasts with Ithaca's rugged goat-pasture and underscores the disparity between the suitors' abundant homelands and the wasting of Odysseus' more modest estate. The Dulichian contingent's size makes the suitors' overthrow a genuinely improbable feat, heightening the sense of Odysseus' triumph when he and his allies—with Athena's aid—destroy them all.