Q 01/05

Odysseus rules which island kingdom?

A) Ithaca

B) Crete

C) Rhodes

D) Lesbos

Answer · why

A) Ithaca

Modern Ithaca in the Ionian Sea is generally accepted as his home, though some scholars argue Homer meant the Paliki peninsula of neighbouring Kefalon...

Q 02/05

How long does Odysseus's journey home from Troy take?

A) One year

B) Ten years

C) Three years

D) Twenty years

Answer · why

B) Ten years

Add the ten-year siege of Troy and he has been away twenty years by the time he reaches Penelope.

Q 03/05

Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into how many books?

A) 12

B) 18

C) 20

D) 24

Answer · why

D) 24

The division is credited to Alexandrian scholars centuries after Homer; each book was assigned a letter of the Greek alphabet.

Q 04/05

In which poetic metre is the Odyssey composed?

A) Iambic pentameter

B) Elegiac couplets

C) Trochaic tetrameter

D) Dactylic hexameter

Answer · why

D) Dactylic hexameter

Stock epithets like 'rosy-fingered Dawn' exist largely because they slot neatly into that metre, a boon for singers improvising aloud.

Q 05/05

Roughly how many lines long is the Odyssey?

A) 4,000

B) 6,000

C) 9,000

D) 12,000

Answer · why

D) 12,000

Emily Wilson's 2017 translation kept to exactly the same number of lines as the Greek, in iambic pentameter.

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