- MYTHS AND HOMER REFERENCES
The myth about Sappho's suicide at Cape Lefkada is related to other myths linking the island of Lefkada to the ancient Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, and to Odysseus, the hero of Homer's Odyssey.
The German archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld, having performed excavations at various locations of Lefkada, was able to obtain funding to do work on the island by suggesting that Lefkada was Homer's Ithaca, and the palace of Odysseus was located west of Nydri on the south coast of Lefkada.
There have been suggestions by local tourism officials that several passages in the Odyssey point to Lefkada as a possible model for Homeric Ithaca. The most notable of these passages pushed by the local tourism board describes Ithaca as an island reachable on foot, which was the case for Lefkada since it is not really an island, that it was connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway.
According to Strabo, the coast of Acarnania was called Leucas in earlier times. The ancient sources call Leucas a Corinthian colony, perhaps with a Corcyraen participation.
During the Peloponnesian War Leucas had joined the Spartan Confederation.
During the Venetian rule, the island was known as "Santa Maura".
O Fotinós (or Der Helle in German), is a famous unfinished poem by Aristotelis Valaoritis, relating the so-called Voukentra revolution of 1357 in Lefkada against the Venetian rule.
The Ottomans called it "Ayamavra" (a rendering of the Greek Αγία Μαύρα, Santa Maura), and ruled it between 1479–1502, 1504–1684 and 1715-1716.
Source: wikipedia.org
Edited by: Yallou