Q 01/05

In most ancient biographies, Homer is depicted as having what condition?

A) A limp

B) Deafness

C) Blindness

D) Leprosy

Answer · why

C) Blindness

Blindness also marks the singer of an early hymn once credited to him, who signs off as a blind man from a rocky island; scholars treat all such biogr...

Q 02/05

The most widespread ancient tradition made Homer a bard from which region of the Greek world?

A) Thrace

B) Ionia

C) Arcadia

D) Boeotia

Answer · why

B) Ionia

Ionia, on the coast of modern Turkey, fits the poems themselves: their Greek is built mainly on the speech of that coast, though scholars treat the an...

Q 03/05

Pindar is credited with saying Homer came from Smyrna and which island?

A) Lesbos

B) Crete

C) Samos

D) Chios

Answer · why

D) Chios

Chios was home to the Homeridae, a guild of reciters who claimed to be Homer's descendants and made performing his poems their trade.

Q 04/05

What false name does Odysseus give the Cyclops Polyphemus?

A) Stranger

B) Shepherd

C) Nobody

D) Wanderer

Answer · why

C) Nobody

Nobody: so when the wounded giant roars that Nobody is hurting him, his neighbours go back to bed, and the Greeks slip out clinging to the undersides ...

Q 05/05

Legend says Homer died after failing to solve a riddle posed by whom?

A) A shepherd on a hillside

B) A rival poet

C) Boys fishing on the shore

D) A priestess of Apollo

Answer · why

C) Boys fishing on the shore

Boys fishing on the shore told him that what they caught they left behind and what they missed they carried home: they meant their lice. In one tellin...