Voyage 3. IBERIA’S ODYSSEY
/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Περιήγηση 3η. ΙΒΗΡΟΥ ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙΑ
● Hellenes in Portugal ● Fado and Fate ● Odysseus
and Calypso in Lisbon; Their Son in Santarém
● Creto-Iberian Ties: Bull Worship and Bullfighting

The caption read: “Mosaic of a Phoenician trading ship”(!) Almost every word is a lie: the ship is neither Phoenician, nor trading;
and underneath we can read in BIG, Hellenic letters: ODYSSEY… (Inopportune comments of someone unable to read Greek)
“IN REMOTE TIMES, EVEN PRIOR TO THE 6TH CENTURY BC, the Greeks colonised what is now Portuguese territory, exploiting mines, founding and fortifying towns, especially along the coast and in the basins of the larger rivers.”

Fado has been proclaimed as Intangible Cultural Heritage. Rebetiko, too, after
several years: better late than never!
We have begun with a historical flashback from Augusto Mascarenhas Barreto’s bilingual (in Portuguese and English) book on Fado / Origens Líricas e Motivação Poética (Lyrical Origins and Poetic Motivation). It is the starting point of the first chapter (Identity and Origins), just after the preliminaries about fado: Portugal’s urban folk song was born in two of its oldest cities, Lisbon and Coimbra (with a distinct form in each); it’s Provençal in origin with Arabic melodic and poetic influence; it’s a way of life (like rebetiko, flamenco, blues, tango, or any other authentic folk mode of expression, however “humble”, or even “marginal”, it is considered in origin); it’s dominated by nostalgia, by saudade, a keyword in fado coming from the Arabs, as well, and found corrupt elsewhere: it is Cape Verde’s sodade characterizing its nostalgic song, morna.
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The Hellenes, says Mascarenhas Barreto, “mingled with the aboriginal inhabitants and with the Iberians, who inherited from them certain ethnic and cultural characteristics. It is presumed that the Iberians were a people originating in the East of Europe. Iberus was the ancient name of the River Ebro, in Spain.”
These homonymous toponyms are quite strange, indeed. It is not only the Ἕβρος (Hebrus or… Maritsa) in Thrace, the river dividing Greece and Turkey; it is also Caucasian Iberia, west of Caucasian… Albania (in today’s Azerbaijan), i.e. Georgia, in the hinterland of ancient Colchis, Medea’s homeland, with the Golden Fleece and Jason’s Argonauts. Logic says the Iberians’ cradle should have been there – but, on the contrary, most scholars show to the direction of North Africa, or the eastern Mediterranean.

North of the Greater Armenia, between the Black and Caspian Seas: Colchis, Iberia and Albania.
The Amazons were further north.
Among the cultural characteristics the Greeks bequeathed to Iberia (the Iberian Peninsula), the Portuguese researcher, writer and poet points out the Moeras:
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“The Hellenic Moira is to be found in the spirit of Fado… The word fado, derived from the Latin fatum, means fate, destiny – what has been foretold by the Oracle and which nothing can alter… Later, Moira became allied to Arab Fatalism.”
“The Hellenic Moira is to be found in the spirit of Fado”.
(Mascarenhas Barretο)
The foreigners, you see, attribute to Greeks cultural characteristics that the latter claim they are due to 400 years of Ottoman yoke…

Odysseus blinding Polyphemus, early Attic black
figured amphora (circa 7th century BCE)
MUCH MORE IMPRESSIVE is what Portuguese mythology says about the Iberian adventures of that “man of many ways”, “man for wisdom”, “of many wiles”, “of many turns”, “of twists and turns”, “of much resource”, the “skilled”, “ingenious” and “very resourceful” man,(a) Odysseus. Among others, they say, he founded and walled Lisbon (see Chronicle 16: Iberian “El Dorado”):
- (a) The… “polytropic” versions the Homeric word “πολύτροπος” (polytropos) was rendered into English by Richmond Lattimore, George Chapman, Alexander Pope, Allen Mandelbaum, Martin Hammond, Albert Cook, Robert Fagles, Robert Fitzgerald, Samuel Butler, Emil V. and D.C.H. Rieu.
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“Legend”, Barreto says, “attributes the building of the ancient walls of the city [of Lisbon] to the great Greek hero of antiquity, Ulysses, king of Ithaca and conqueror of Troy, who is supposed to have given the place the name of Ulissea – whence the word Ulissipo.(b) Anyway, what is certain is that Lisbon was inhabited by the Phoenicians about 600 BC, and they named it Alis Ubbo, meaning ‘Calm Bay’. It was certainly visited by Greeks and Carthaginians, who established trade relations with the primitive peoples inhabiting the country. These tribes, who had mingled with the Celts and the Iberians, formed an ethnic sub-group: the Celtiberians.”
“Legend attributes the building of the ancient walls of Lisbon to
the great Greek hero of antiquity, Ulysses”, i.e. Odysseus (Barretο)
- (b) Ulissea, i.e. Odyssey, from the Latin version of the hero’s name, Ulysses or Ulisses, hence Ulissípolis (Odysseupolis) > Ulissipo or Olisipo.

The “Snake God” found in Tavira – the only Portuguese town, next to Huelva, where the Phoenicians actually settled.
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● Ulysses’ Ulissipo is a “legend”, according to Barreto, but the Phoenicians’ Alis Ubbo is a “certainty”: it is the “classical” historical… science fiction. But how can he combine this conclusion with his starting point that “in remote times, even prior to the 6th century BC, the Greeks colonised what is now Portuguese territory”? Well, “what is certain is that”… if we are based on facts, neither the Hellenes, nor the Phoenicians or even the Punics ever settled in Portugal. This land could not compare with Andalusia that magnetized all the above due to its mineral wealth and strategic importance. The only area of Portuguese interest that drew their attention was the also mineral-rich Galicia. (By the way, I mean, of course, Galicia of Iberia and not that of Eastern Europe!)
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Alis (Allis) Ubbo (Ubo) is generally also interpreted as “Safe” (or “Pleasant”, “Enchanting”, “Serene”, “Delightful”) “Harbour” (or “Port”, “Haven”, “Gulf”, “Cove”, “Shore”, “Inlet”): all versions describe a good anchorage and, therefore, all have something to do with the sea. Demetris Michalopoulos, in an article about Mycenaean presence in Sardinia, wrote, inter alia:
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“In ancient times, Cagliari, the current capital of Sardinia, was called Caralis. In all likelihood, the toponym derives from the Semitic word car, which means ‘white rock’”.
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We assume that Caralis meant Bay (or Harbour, etc.) with a white rock, a toponym the omnipresent Phoenicians have certainly given. Can we associate the Semitic alis with the Indo-European root sal– (e.g. the English salt, and the Greek ἅλς (hals), meaning both salt and sea)? If so, Indo-European and Semitic languages should have had some common ground – at least on matters of common interest like navigation: this common ground was possibly formed through loan words from Mediterranean languages, such as the Minoan Cretan…

An English frigate in choppy waters in the Tagus passing the Belém Tower, by John Thomas Serres (1823)
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“During the Punic Wars – between Rome and Carthage – the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Romans and, in 205 BC the town – then called Olissipo – was raised to the category of a Roman municipium. In 100 AD it was named Felicitas Julia, in honour of Julius Caesar, and the name was a promise of good fortune. In the year 376, the Visigoths invaded the peninsula. In 404 the territory was still occupied by Romans and barbarians, but in 522, after the departure of the Romans, a single Visigoth kingdom was formed, and the town came to be known as Olissipona. In 711 the Arabs invaded the peninsula from North Africa and occupied the town, to which they gave the name Lissibona… In 1147 Lisbon was re-conquered by Dom Afonso Henriques.”
That’s how we “arrived” to Lisboa, the current capital of Portugal. But this is not the end of Barreto’s story. There’s more to it:
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“Santarém, [which] stands looking over the River Tagus… is believed to have been founded in the 10th century BC by Abidis [Habis],(c) of Greek origin, who gave it the name of Esca-Abidis. This prince, grandson of Gregoris [Gárgoris], king of the Iberian Peninsula, is said to have founded towns in Spain, too. According to legend, he was also the son of Ulysses. Betraying the trust of Gregoris after having been given Alis-Ubbo (Lisbon), Ulysses secretly espoused Calypso, daughter of the peninsular king, who rushed with his army on Lisbon. Ulysses fled by sea, abandoning his spouse”…
- (c) Habis, Habido, Abido, Abidas, Αbidis, Gabis, Gabid: his name’s versions in the various variations of the myth.
“Santarém is believed to have been founded in the 10th century BC
by Abidis, of Greek origin,” son of Ulysses and Calypso. (Barretο)

Odysseus and Calypso (with… Abidis?), by Gerard de Lairesse
Consequently, Calypso was not a nymph on the Isle of Ogygia, as Homer says. Deviating from the greatest of the rhapsodes, the Lusitanians adopted Calypso as a princess of Iberia and daughter of Gregoris-Gárgoris, not Atlas. Note that we remain in the same places that Heracles had toured earlier for the golden apples of the Hesperides and Geryon’s cattle. It is assumed that Ogygia must have been nearby the Pillars of Heracles, since Odysseus had to travel for 18 days in an easterly direction to reach Scheria, the Phaeacian island, which many identify with Corfu. There’s a chance that Ogygia was one of the Pillars, today’s Spanish Ceuta on Moroccan soil, opposite the other Pillar, the Rock of Gibraltar. Although it is not an island now, it may have been one in the days of Homer.
According to Hesiod, the conqueror of Troy – and also of numerous… women (for he was so “skilled”, “ingenious” and “resourceful”) – had in total 16 sons and a daughter from six women. But in his long list, he includes no Abidis, Habis, or what. Odysseus had three sons from Penelope, one from the daughter of Thoas the Aetolian, eight sons and a daughter from Circe, two sons from Calypso, one from Callidice, the queen of Thesprotia, whom he later married, and another from Euippe, daughter of Tyrimmas, king of Dodona in Epirus. Note that, if we accept Hesiod’s genealogy of Odysseus, with nine children from Circe and two from Calypso, we must reverse the time he lived with the two nymphs, according to Homer: one year with Circe and seven with Calypso.

Circe, by Charles Gumery
With such a “proliferation”, of course, Odysseus was in danger of falling by the hand of some… close relative – something that did happen in the sequel of the Odyssey, in the Telegony or Thesprotis, the Epic Cycle’s final episode, attributed to Eugammon of Cyrene or Cinaethon of Sparta. Circe’s son, Telegonus, so the story goes, while searching for his father, landed on Ithaca where – according to the favourite custom of the era – started plundering and slaughtering, among others, also his genitor. Overwhelmed with remorse, when he realized he had become a patricide, he collected Odysseus’ body and, accompanied by his half-brother, Telemachus, and Penelope, voyaged back to the island of his mother, who turned them immortal. The “saga” ends there with a happy end worthy of… a Greek film of the ’60s: with the marriages of Circe with Telemachus and Penelope with Telegonus! Finally, only poor Odysseus was enveloped by murky darkness!
A similar end awaits our hero in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The father of Italian poetry presents a traditional variation of the Homeric version, in which Odysseus himself says that he never returned to Ithaca. From Circe’s island, Aea, Aeaea, or Aeaeë,(d) he passed through the Pillars of Heracles into the Atlantic, crossed the Equator, sailing in the southern hemisphere for five months, until he reached a high mountain. Then a tornado had the ship spin three times and sink. They all drowned there. But where? In the “underworld”, or in the “new world”, America? Logic, based on today’s knowledge about the world, makes us draw wrong conclusions. Moreover, the narrative takes place in Dante’s Inferno (see also Interlude. Synopsis 10*. Sailing to Rio de Janeiro!)
- (d) Here we find another homonymous toponym with the capital of Colchis, Aea (today’s Kutaisi). But there’s an explanation now: Circe was the sister of Aeëtes, the king of Colchis, and aunt of Medea, with whom she shared magic powers – and also temperament: they say that Circe was exiled to the solitary island of Aeaea by her subjects and her father because she had killed her husband…

Statue of Viriato in Zamora: The greatest Lusitanian hero in the resistance against the Romans was killed with treachery. When his assassins asked the Romans
for their payment, the latter answered: “Rome
does not pay traitors who kill their chief!”
The Lusitanians, however, didn’t bother to… “set out for Ithaca” with Cavafy, nor cared about Odysseus after he had escaped leaving Calypso behind. Naturally, they were concerned about what was going on “at home”; thus they paid much more attention to Abidis-Habis:
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“When Abidis was born,” according to Barreto, “Gregoris ordered him to be thrown in a cave to be devoured by wild beasts. In answer, however, to the entreaties of his daughter, he consented that the child should be delivered to Fate, according to primitive custom, and the boy was put in a basket and taken away by the current of the river [Tagus].(e) A hind adopted him and when the child was later found in a wild state by some huntsmen, his mother recognised him by a mark. Gregoris forgot his former anger and gave him schooling, so that he could succeed him in the government of the peninsula. The name Esca-Abidis (Escalabis) in Greek means ‘food of Abidis’,(f) in memory of the place where he was reared by the hind.
- (e) Quite biblical the image, recalling “Moses baby” on the waters of the Nile… Conclusion: there’s no originality in the Judaic mythology, although it has since acquired “dogmatic authority”… (See also Chronicles 13 and 16).
- (f) Ἐσχάρα (eschara): hearth, fire-place (like ἑστία); pan of coals, brazier; watch-fires (of the camp); sacrificial hearth; fire-stick.
Ἑστία (hestia): hearth of a house; the house itself, home; household, family; altar; the hearth goddess Hestia, or Vesta in Latin. Hestiatórion is the Greek word for restaurant.

Roman mosaic in Pedrosa de la Vega (Castile and León). The only known evidence of transparency (veil).
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“As regards history, the Romans rebuilt the town in 153 AD and called it Scalabis-castrum. Julius Caesar raised it to the status of a capital – one of the four in Lusitania… In the year 500 when the Visigoths came to Lusitania, the barbarians and Lusitanians formed in that region a single people. In 632 the town of Tomar was the scene of the martyrdom of Irene… a nun. Her body, thrown into the river, was carried down as far as Scalabis… Nineteen years later, King Recceswinth, who was Catholic,(g) changed the name of Scalabis to Santa Irene. When… the Arabs occupied the town (715), they called it Chantireyn” – and that’s how we “arrived” to Santarém.
- (g) Force of habit: “Catholic” is what Barreto wrote, instead of “Christian”, as he should, because the Schism was still to come…
GRAECO-IBERIAN TIES, clearly suggested by Portuguese mythology, date back to much earlier times than the Trojan War, to the pre-Hellenic era of Minoan thalassocracy in the Mediterranean: they were Creto-Iberian. A common cultural characteristic of the Cretans and the peoples of Iberia was bull worship and Bullfighting: Minoan bull-leaping (ταυροκαθάψια, taurocathapsia; see also Chronicle 12. Minoan Cretan Thalassocracy).
Creto-Iberian ties due to Minoan thalassocracy in the Mediterranean.
A common cultural characteristic was bull worship and bullfifhting.
GRAECO-IBERIAN TIES, clearly suggested by Portuguese mythology, date back to much earlier times than the Trojan War, to the pre-Hellenic era of Minoan thalassocracy in the Mediterranean: they were Creto-Iberian. A common cultural characteristic of the Cretans and the peoples of Iberia was bull worship and Bullfighting: Minoan bull-leaping (ταυροκαθάψια, taurocathapsia; see also Chronicle 12. Minoan Cretan Thalassocracy)(h).
- (h) The ancestor of the Iberian bull, aurochs, was described by Julius Caesar as “somewhat smaller than an elephant, swift and powerful; attacks both men and animals.” Charlemagne hunted a similar animal, known as bubalo. It is likely that the savage creature killed by St. George was an aurochs and not a dragon as the plastic artists present him. The aurochs (aur = wild + ochs = ox), or urus, is the bos primogenius which is now extinct. It survived until 1627 in a forest of Poland.
In his Memoriae Historicae, Strabo, geographer and historian of the Roman era, who was born in Amaseia of Pontus (64-63 BCE) and died probably in Rome (24 CE), referred to the Lusitanian equestrian bullfight (“…the peoples of the coastline, who are fond of meeting, on horseback, the fierce Hispanian bulls”, he wrote).
Apart from bullfighting on horseback, there was also the pega – from the verb pegar, which means catch, seize… the bull by the horns! In one kind of pegas, the so-called forcado was not only completely unarmed, but had nothing to fool the attacking bull (e.g. cape). He should withstand the initial impact (the tremendous weight of the animal plus speed), and also the subsequent shaking of the bull’s head so as to get rid of an unwelcome rider on his neck.

Reconstruction of a relief fresco of a bull by Arthur Evans
at the northern Propylaea of Knossos
There were more forcados, usually eight, as assistants in the pega to master the bull. It is the picture we have from the Minoan bull-leaping in an extant fresco of Taurocathapsia dating back to the 15th century BCE. Isn’t it impressive? Even more if we take into account that these Cretan “forcados” included women!
Arriving at the other side of the Mediterranean, we can find the earliest known description of such a bullfight in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the legendary hero of Mesopotamia, whose name became associated with his futile struggle to obtain immortality. The epic, dating back to ca 2100 BCE, describes how the hero and his companion, Enkidu, kill the Celestial Bull that the goddess Ishtar has sent to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances:
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“Enkidu seizes the celestial bull by the horns”, while Gilgamesh “approaches it slowly and jumps on its back; then grabs it by the tail”…
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“The pegas”, Barreto concludes, “probably originated in the Neolithic ritual hunts. We may wonder whether the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula learnt this from the Cretans of the 3rd millennium BC, or if they themselves may have been the teachers, since the bulls were taken from their natural habitat in the peninsula to the island of Crete.”
But if you talk about so extensive exchanges going on five millennia ago – whether it is bull-leaping, or even bull shipments from Iberia to Crete – how is it possible to be concerned about trivial “problems”, as to who were the initiators of this practice?
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● Bull-leaping was a Minoan ritual connected with bull worship where the bull was not killed, contrary to bullfight. When it passed to the Mycenaeans, it was called in Greek ταυροκαθάψια; from ταῦρος (“bull”) and κάθαψις, a rare noun composed of the words κατα- (“across”) and ἅπτομαι (“touch, reach”); thus, literally, “touching of the bull”. Representations (frescoes, statuettes, seals, etc.) of the ritual, outside Crete or Hellas, have been found in Asia Minor (Smyrna, Hattusa), in Canaan, Egypt, Bactria, and the Indus Valley.

Juanito Apinani‘s speed and bravery in the bullring of Madrid, from
the etchings “La Tauromaquia” by Francisco Goya (1815-16)
● Non-violent bull-leaping (taurocathapsia), practiced in Spain, was called recortes. The recortadores competed at dodging and leaping over bulls without cape or sword. Some used a long pole to literally pole-vault over the charging animal, which was not restrained by any guiding rope or similar safety device. The recortes were common in the 19th century. Etchings by painter Francisco Goya depict these events.
- ● In neighbouring Portugal, the bullfight’s second stage, called pega (“holding”), was the one referred to by Barreto. The so-called forcados challenged the animal directly without protection or weapon of defense. The front man provoked the bull into a charge to perform a pega de cara (face grab), secured its head and was aided by his fellows who surrounded and subdued the animal. The bull was not killed in the ring, in the audience’s sight, but by a butcher. After an exceptional performance, some bulls, were healed, released to pasture until their end days and used for breeding.
● A ‘safer’ style of this ritual practiced in French Gascony used young cows instead of bulls, which were furthermore guided by long ropes attached to their horns, so that they ran directly towards the sauteurs (“leapers”) and écarteurs (“dodgers”), and were restrained from trampling or goring them should they miss a trick.
● In faraway South India, in Tamil Nadu, there was a related ritual, the jallikattu, as part of the harvest celebration. The participants tried to leap onto a bull, reaching for the money packets tied to its horns as a prize. The event has been depicted in rock art dated at least to the 3rd century BCE.