Cephallenians (Κεφαλλῆνες) — a Homeric kingdom of the Odyssey, c. 1200 BC

Cephallenians — The kingdom without a king — sunny Ithaca, whose lord is ten years lost at sea.

Odysseus' island realm in the western sea. Its king sacked Troy but has never come home; the suitors devour his hall while Penelope weaves against them and Telemachos sails for word of his father.

Leader at Troy: Odysseus.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: the suitors (de facto).

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Twelve ships of the Cephallenians — but the war's master strategist: he unmasked Achilles, fetched Philoktetes' bow, stole the Palladion, and built the Wooden Horse that took Troy.

The homecoming: The king is lost at sea; the hall is usurped.

Odysseus ruled the Cephallenians — the men of rugged Ithaca and wind-stirred Neriton, of Same and Doulichion and wooded Zakynthos, and of the mainland shore over against the isles. Small and stony and set 'toward the dark' in the western sea, Ithaca was dearer to its king than any richer land: a nurse of hardy men, sunny and sea-girt. To Troy he led but twelve ships with vermilion prows, yet no mind in the host counted for more. Odysseus of the many turns — polytropos — was the war's deep strategist. He unmasked Achilles hidden among the daughters of Lykomedes; he brought the stranded, festering Philoktetes and his fated bow from Lemnos; he went by night with Diomedes to kill Rhesos and to carry off the Palladion; he took a beating of his own devising to spy inside the walls. And it was Odysseus who built the Wooden Horse and, crouched in its belly, held the ambushed men silent while Helen circled it calling in the voices of their wives — the ruse that at last brought down the sacred citadel of Troy. Yet of all the kings who turned for home, Odysseus alone has not come. Ten years he has wandered the wine-dark sea — past the Lotus-Eaters and the Cyclops' cave, from Aiolos' floating isle to Circe's Aiaia, down to the very house of Hades, between Skylla and Charybdis and past the singing Sirens — until now he lies held on Ogygia by the nymph Kalypso, weeping toward Ithaca while the gods on Olympos debate his release. At the dramatic present his hall is a wound. A hundred and eight suitors out of Ithaca, Same, Doulichion and Zakynthos feast on his herds and court his queen, led by insolent Antinoos and smooth-tongued Eurymachos. Faithful Penelope holds them off by guile, weaving a shroud for old Laertes by day and unravelling it by night — three years undiscovered until a maidservant betrayed her. Now young Telemachos, roused by grey-eyed Athena in a stranger's shape, has taken ship to sandy Pylos and to Sparta to seek news of his father; in the hills the swineherd Eumaios keeps faith; and the king, unknown even to his own, draws near.

“Tell me, Muse, of that man, so ready at need, who wandered far and wide, after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.” — Odyssey 1.1-2