Storia della diplomazia della corte di Savoia (Rome, 1875). The Archivii storici and Deputazioni di storia patria of the various Italian towns and provinces contain a great deal of valuable material for local history. From the point of view of papal history, L. von Ranke’s History of the Popes (English edition, London, 1870), M. Creighton’s History of the Papacy (London, 1897) and L. Pastor’s Geschichte der Päpste (Freiburg i. B., 1886–1896), should be mentioned. From the point of view of general culture, Jacob Burckhardt’s Cultur der Renaissance in Italien (Basel, 1860), E. Guinet’s Révolutions d'Italie (Paris, 1857), and J. A. Symonds’s Renaissance in Italy (5 vols., London, 1875, &c.) should be consulted. (L. V.*)
ITEM (a Latin adverb meaning “also,” “likewise”), originally used adverbially in English at the beginning of each separate head in a list of articles, or each detail in an account book or ledger or in a legal document. The word is thus applied, as a noun, to the various heads in any such enumeration and also to a piece of information or news.
ITHACA (Ἰθάκη), vulgarly Thiaki (Θιάκη), next to Paxo the smallest of the seven Ionian Islands, with an area of about 44 sq. m. It forms an eparchy of the nomos of Cephalonia in the kingdom of Greece, and its population, which was 9873 in 1870, is now about 13,000. The island consists of two mountain masses, connected by a narrow isthmus of hills, and separated by a wide inlet of the sea known as the Gulf of Molo. The northern and greater mass culminates in the heights of Anoi (2650 ft.), and the southern in Hagios Stephanos, or Mount Merovigli (2100 ft.). Vathy (Βαθύ = “deep”), the chief town and port of the island, lies at the northern foot of Mount Stephanos, its whitewashed houses stretching for about a mile round the deep bay in the Gulf of Molo, to which it owes its name. As there are only one or two small stretches of arable land in Ithaca, the inhabitants are dependent on commerce for their grain supply; and olive oil, wine and currants are the principal products obtained by the cultivation of the thin stratum of soil that covers the calcareous rocks. Goats are fed in considerable number on the brushwood pasture of the hills; and hares (in spite of Aristotle’s supposed assertion of their absence) are exceptionally abundant. The island is divided into four districts: Vathy, Aeto (or Eagle’s Cliff), Anoge (Anoi) or Upland, and Exoge (Exoi) or Outland.
The name has remained attached to the island from the earliest historical times with but little interruption of the tradition; though in Brompton’s travels (12th century) and in the old Venetian maps we find it called Fale or Val de Compar, and at a later date it not unfrequently appears as Little Cephalonia. This last name indicates the general character of Ithacan history (if history it can be called) in modern and indeed in ancient times; for the fame of the island is almost solely due to its position in the Homeric story of Odysseus. Ithaca, according to the Homeric epos, was the royal seat and residence of King Odysseus. The island is incidentally described with no small variety of detail, picturesque and topographical; the Homeric localities for which counterparts have been sought are Mount Neritos, Mount Neion, the harbour of Phorcys, the town and palace of Odysseus, the fountain of Arethusa, the cave of the Naiads, the stalls of the swineherd Eumaeus, the orchard of Laertes, the Korax or Raven Cliff and the island Asteris, where the suitors lay in ambush for Telemachus. Among the “identificationists” there are two schools, one placing the town at Polis on the west coast in the northern half of the island (Leake, Gladstone, &c.), and the other at Aeto on the isthmus. The latter site, which was advocated by Sir William Gell (Topography and Antiquities of Ithaca, London, 1807), was supported by Dr H. Schliemann, who carried on excavations in 1873 and 1878 (see H. Schliemann, Ithaque, le Péloponnèse, Troie, Paris, 1869, also published in German; his letter to The Times, 26th of September, 1878; and the author’s life prefixed to Ilios, London, 1880). But his results were mainly negative. The fact is that no amount of ingenuity can reconcile the descriptions given in the Odyssey with the actual topography of this island. Above all, the passage in which the position of Ithaca is described offers great difficulties. “Now Ithaca lies low, farthest up the sea line towards the darkness, but those others face the dawning and the sun” (Butcher and Lang). Such a passage fits very ill an island lying, as Ithaca does, just to the east of Cephalonia. Accordingly Professor W. Dörpfeld has suggested that the Homeric Ithaca is not the island which was called Ithaca by the later Greeks, but must be identified with Leucas (Santa Maura, q.v.). He succeeds in fitting the Homeric topography to this latter island, and suggests that the name may have been transferred in consequence of a migration of the inhabitants. There is no doubt that Leucas fits the Homeric descriptions much better than Ithaca; but, on the other hand, many scholars maintain that it is a mistake to treat the imaginary descriptions of a poet as if they were portions of a guide-book, or to look, in the author of the Odyssey, for a close familiarity with the geography of the Ionian islands.
See, besides the works already referred to, the separate works on Ithaca by Schreiber (Leipzig, 1829); Rühle von Lilienstern (Berlin, 1832); N. Karavias Grivas (Ἱστορία τῆς νήσου Ἰθάκης) (Athens, 1849); Bowen (London, 1851); and Gandar, (Paris, 1854); Hercher, in Hermes (1866); Leake’s Northern Greece; Mure’s Tour in Greece; Bursian’s Geogr. von Griechenland; Gladstone, “The Dominions of Ulysses,” in Macmillan’s Magazine (1877). A history of the discussions will be found in Buchholz, Die Homerischen Realien (Leipzig, 1871); Partsch, Kephallenia und Ithaka (1890); W. Dörpfeld in Mélanges Perrot, pp. 79-93 (1903); P. Goessler, Leukas-Ithaka (Stuttgart, 1904). (E. Gr.)
ITHACA, a city and the county-seat of Tompkins county,
New York, U.S.A., at the southern end of Cayuga Lake, 60 m.
S.W. of Syracuse. Pop. (1890) 11,079, (1900) 13,136, of whom
1310 were foreign-born, (1910 census) 14,802. It is served
by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and the Lehigh
Valley railways and by inter-urban electric line; and steamboats
ply on the lake. Most of the city is in the level valley,
from which it spreads up the heights on the south, east and
west. The finest residential district is East Hill, particularly
Cornell and Cayuga Heights (across Fall Creek from the Cornell
campus). Renwick Beach, at the head of the lake, is a pleasure
resort. The neighbouring region is one of much beauty, and is
frequented by summer tourists. Near the city are many waterfalls,
the most notable being Taughannock Falls (9 m. N.), with
a fall of 215 ft. Through the city from the east run Fall, Cascadilla
and Six Mile Creeks, the first two of which have cut
deep gorges and have a number of cascades and waterfalls,
the largest, Ithaca Fall in Fall Creek, being 120 ft. high. Six
Mile Creek crosses the south side of the city and empties into
Cayuga Inlet, which crosses the western and lower districts,
often inundated in the spring. The Inlet receives the waters of
a number of small streams descending from the south-western
hills. Among the attractions in this direction are Buttermilk
Falls and ravine, on the outskirts of the city, Lick Brook Falls
and glen and Enfield Falls and glen, the last 7 m. distant.
Fall Creek furnishes good water-power. The city has various
manufactures, including fire-arms, calendar clocks, traction
engines, electrical appliances, patent chains, incubators, autophones,
artesian well drills, salt, cement, window glass and wall-paper.
The value of the factory product increased from
$1,500,604 in 1900 to $2,080,002 in 1905, or 38.6%. Ithaca
is also a farming centre and coal market, and much fruit is grown
in the vicinity. The city is best known as the seat of Cornell University
(q.v.). It has also the Ezra Cornell Free Library
of about 28,000 volumes, the Ithaca Conservatory of Music,
the Cascadilla School and the Ithaca High School. Ithaca
was settled about 1789, the name being given to it by Simeon
De Witt in 1806. It was incorporated as a village in 1821, and
was chartered as a city in 1888. At Buttermilk Falls stood
the principal village of the Tutelo Indians, Coreorgonel,
settled in 1753 and destroyed in 1779 by a detachment of
Sullivan’s force.
ITINERARIUM (i.e. road-book, from Lat. iter, road), a term applied to the extant descriptions of the ancient Roman roads and routes of traffic, with the stations and distances. It is usual to distinguish two classes of these, Itineraria adnotata or scripta and Itineraria picta—the former having the character of a book, and the latter being a kind of travelling map. Of the Itineraria Scripta the most important are: (1) It. Antonini (see Antonini Itinerarium), which consists of two parts, the
