Same

Same is one of the four islands whose chieftains besiege Penelope as suitors, a fixed point in the geography of Odysseus's kingdom and a recurring symbol of the external pressure that drains his estate while he is absent. Alongside Dulichium, Zacynthus, and Ithaca itself, Same supplies a steady stream of young noblemen who feast in Odysseus's halls, court his wife, and consume his livestock year after year. The island's name appears in the poem's most formal statements of the suitors' origin and in the personal histories of characters who move between it and Ithaca, marking it as a real, inhabited place within the world of the poem rather than a mere legendary name.

Identity and Geography

Same is one of the islands that lie near Ithaca. When Telemachus, in his first public speech to the assembly of Ithaca, lists the suitors' homelands, he names "the chiefs from all our islands, Dulichium, Same, and the woodland island of Zacynthus, as also all the principal men of Ithaca itself" . Odysseus himself, when he finally reveals his identity to the Phaeacians, 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 formulaic grouping of these three islands with Ithaca establishes Same as a constituent part of the realm over which Odysseus once ruled, and which the suitors now treat as their own.

Role in the Suitors' Siege

The suitors from Same are among the most persistent and aggressive of Penelope's wooers. In the same assembly speech, Telemachus accuses them of "eating up my house under the pretext of paying their court to my mother" . The poet later specifies the numbers: from Same come twenty-four young men, a substantial contingent that, together with the fifty-two from Dulichium, the twenty from Zacynthus, and the twelve from Ithaca itself, makes up the hundred and eight suitors who devastate Odysseus's household (E00104–E00105). Among these, Ctesippus of Same stands out for his particular insolence: during the final banquet before the contest of the bow, he throws a heifer's foot at the disguised Odysseus, an act of gratuitous violence that Telemachus immediately denounces (E01116–E01117). Ctesippus is later killed by the stockman Philoetius during the slaughter of the suitors, who taunts him with the memory of that insult .

Connections to Characters and Events

Same is also the destination of Ctimene, the younger sister of Odysseus. The swineherd Eumaeus, recounting his own life story, mentions that when he and Ctimene grew up, "they sent Ctimene to Same and received a splendid dowry for her" . This detail places Same within the marriage network of Odysseus's family and suggests that the island was considered a suitable match for a princess of Ithaca. The name of the island thus carries connotations of both threat and kinship: it is a source of enemies who consume Odysseus's wealth, yet also a place where his own sister found a home.

Narrative Significance

Same functions in the Odyssey as a geographical and thematic counterpoint to Ithaca. It is near enough to be a constant presence—its young men can sail over easily to feast and plot—yet it is separate, a foreign shore from which trouble comes. The repeated pairing of Same with Dulichium and Zacynthus in formal catalogues gives the poem's world a coherent political geography, one in which Odysseus's authority once extended over a small archipelago and in which his absence has allowed those very islands to become the base for a siege against his house. The island's name, never developed into a full scene of its own, nevertheless anchors the suitors' threat in a concrete, named place, lending weight to the economic and social crisis that drives the poem's central conflict.