Barbara - it's a lovely story up to a point. Odysseos was shipwrecked in what, from other evidence, was certainly one of the northern Ionian islands. Naked on the shore, Odysseos sees some rather lovely women bathing in a river. One of them is the king's daughter, Nafsika. She gives Odysseos something to cover his nakedness, and takes him to her father, who welcomes him. He lives there for several years - the implication being that he and Nafsika became lovers. But eventually he sailed back to Ithaka, and his patient wife Penelope, who, to resist suitors, had been weaving a shroud for Odysseos' father Laertes and unpicking it by night, because she'd told them she'd only take another husband when she'd finished the shroud.
A good question is why Odysessos took so long to go home. It was twenty years since he left for Troy. Slightly too long even to blame airport delays. So maybe he was having a good time with Nafsika until he decided he'd better go back to his own kingdom. He's a bit morally suspect, whichever way you look at it. But then Greek heroes don't have a very enlightened attitude to women. Remember, Ariadne gave Theseus the golden thread that helped him navigate the labyrinth and slay the Minotaur; he became her lover, and then eventually ditched her on a beach on Naxos.
One thing's for sure. Kerkyra was a major stopping place for ships sailing from Greece to Italy. Much later, Cicero escaped to the island when Julius Caesar made his military coup. It's all so rich, and looking out at the deceptive seas, we can be certain that the ancients sailed those waters.
I love these stories.
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