What Happened at Ismarus?

Ismarus is Odysseus’ first stop after Troy. There his men sack the city of the Cicones, disobey the order to withdraw and suffer the first major losses of the homeward journey. But the same episode leaves another legacy: the wine Maron gives Odysseus will prove decisive against Polyphemus.

The war is not quite over

Troy has fallen, but the war does not stop at once. The first action of the nostos is neither an encounter with a monster nor a storm without human cause: it is a military action. The Cicones already appear in the Trojan Catalogue of the Iliad: Euphemus leads their contingent among Troy’s allies (Iliad 2.846–847). That reference does not turn the sack of Ismarus into a historically reconstructable operation, but it allows a clear narrative reading: Odysseus does not arrive among a people wholly detached from the conflict he has just left behind.

The men know how to conquer, take booty and celebrate a victory. They still have to learn another discipline: to leave the place of victory in time if they are to return home. Ismarus opens the tension between war and nostos that will run through the journey.

The sack of Ismarus

A wind carries the fleet from Troy to the Cicones at Ismarus. Homer presents it as a city of that people. Odysseus takes it, kills the men and captures women and much wealth from the city (Odyssey 9.39–42). These are not “provisions” obtained during a stop: this is a military sack.

The booty is then distributed so that none of the men is deprived of an equal share. The detail shows organisation and a responsibility of command; it does not absolve Odysseus of the violence he has directed. The expedition is still acting according to a warrior logic of conquest, distribution and reward.

Odysseus orders a withdrawal

Once the booty has been distributed, Odysseus gives an unequivocal order: they must flee at once. He understands that remaining exposes the fleet to retaliation, a danger his men either do not share or refuse to heed. His narrative advantage does not lie in being free of blame, but in recognising the risk before the crew does.

His companions do not obey. They remain on the shore, drink heavily and slaughter sheep and cattle. The poem does not explain their behaviour through a single psychology. There is enjoyment of victory, overconfidence, indiscipline and delay; to speak only of greed would oversimplify a scene in which warriors fail to abandon the habits of victory.

Feasting, delay and counterattack

The Cicones call on other Cicones from the interior, more numerous and more formidable. Homer says that they know how to fight from chariots and, when necessary, on foot. They do not attack the newcomers without cause: they are responding to the sack of their city and the killing of their men.

The fighting takes place beside the ships. During the morning the Achaeans hold out and drive back their enemies despite being outnumbered. When the hour comes to unyoke the oxen — that is, when the working day ends — the Cicones prevail.

Homer then gives a precise figure: six companions from each ship are killed. The Odyssey had already said that Odysseus left Troy with twelve ships; from this comes the calculation of seventy-two dead. “Six from each ship” is the Homeric figure; seventy-two is a modern arithmetic inference and should be presented as such.

Before leaving, Odysseus does not allow the ships to sail on until they have called three times to each companion killed in the field. The gesture acknowledges the dead and closes the shore of Ismarus with mourning, not with the simple continuation of an adventure.

The sequence also complicates the contrast between Odysseus and his men. The leader sees sooner that they must leave, but the successful sack itself is the work of the expedition he commands. Defeat does not descend from outside upon innocent sailors: it grows out of an initial action that has given them booty, food and reason to believe they can remain without consequences.

Maron and the wine that will reach Polyphemus

Ismarus also leaves behind a resource that will transform the next episode. Odysseus later says that he spared Maron, son of Euanthes and priest of Apollo, together with his wife and children. He did so out of reverence for the god; Maron repaid him with gifts: gold, a silver mixing bowl and twelve amphorae of unmixed wine (Odyssey 9.197–211).

The wine is stored so carefully that only Maron, his wife and the housekeeper know where it is kept. It is strong and fragrant, and one measure of wine requires twenty measures of water. It is an extraordinary wine, not a magical substance or a phármakon. Precisely because it remains wine, it belongs to the world of gifts, banqueting and hospitality, even though its strength is exceptional.

Odysseus will use this reserve to intoxicate Polyphemus. Ismarus thus produces two opposite consequences: it causes the fleet’s first serious losses and provides the material instrument of a future escape. The object that comes from a sacked city becomes, in the Cyclops’ cave, part of Odysseus’ mētis.

There is no need to turn the relationship with Maron into a complete theory of xenia. The poem allows us to speak more cautiously of respect for a priest of Apollo and reciprocity through gifts. That exchange contrasts with the general sack of the city without erasing the violence of its context.

Who were the Cicones?

The Cicones belong to the Thracian horizon of the poems. The Iliad places them among Troy’s allies; the Odyssey presents them as inhabitants of Ismarus and as a force capable of summoning reinforcements from the interior. They are not a fantastic people or an empty name: they belong to a human geography that the poem associates with Thrace.

That does not justify turning them into a modern nation or describing them as “barbarians”. Homer does not organise the episode through that opposition. What matters is the balance of forces: a city is sacked, its inhabitants summon their neighbours, and an army succeeds in striking back.

Where was Ismarus?

Ismarus still belongs to a more recognisable geography than Aeolia, Aeaea, the Sirens or Thrinacia: its association with the Thracian coast of the Cicones is strong. But Homer gives no coordinates and does not identify the place with historical Maroneia, a later Greek city in the same region. A recognisable region is not the same as an archaeological site that can be located without doubt.

Strabo reports that Ismarus, later called Ismara, was a city of the Cicones near Maroneia and also records a local memory of Maron there. The Maroneia known from archaeology was founded by settlers from Chios in the mid-seventh century BC, later than the legendary horizon of the Trojan War. That memory helps explain the association with Maron and his wine, but it does not prove that the city sacked by Odysseus was precisely Maroneia, nor does it turn the Homeric priest into a historical founder.

The scale of certainty should remain clear:

Homer: Ismarus and the Cicones.
Historically recognisable: the Thracian and Ciconian setting of the northern Aegean coast.
Later tradition: specific links between Ismarus, Maroneia and the local memory of Maron.
Open question: the exact archaeological site of the city Odysseus sacked.

From the recognisable world to the uncertain journey

After Ismarus, Zeus raises a storm; the fleet sails south, reaches Cape Malea and begins to lose the possibility of following a recognisable route. How Far Did Homer’s World Extend? explains this change of register; Odysseus’ Wanderings places Ismarus between Troy and Malea, still within a recognisable geography.

Ismarus is not merely a brief stop. It is the first warning that returning home does not consist in continuing to accumulate victories. The men have left Troy, but they have not yet entirely left the war behind; their delay turns an apparently successful sack into the first great loss of the homeward journey.