The Odyssey Test Review

Know the following about Part I:
1.
Why is Odysseus lost at sea?
2.
What happens when the crewmen eat the Lotus flower?
3.
Why does Odysseus visit the Cyclops’ cave?
4.
What does Odysseus tell Polyphemus his name is?
5.
What is Polyphemus’ curse?
6.
What gift does Aeolus give Odysseus?
7.
What does Circe do to Odysseus’ men?
8.
What modern day metaphor does the Scylla and Charybdis episode refer to?
9.
What epic simile is used to describe Scylla?
10. What epic simile is used to describe Chrybdis?
11. What does Teiresias warn Odysseus of?
12. Why are all of Odysseus’ men killed?
13. Explain how the events in Part I are a flashback.
14. What is the Greek Law of Hospitality?
15. Identify the following:
a. Athena
i. Odysseus
b. Laertes
j. Teiresias
c. Penelope
k. Eurylochus
d. Telemachus
l. Polyphemus
e. Muses
m. Lotus Eaters
f. Sirens
n. Alcinous
g. Scylla
o. Circe
h. Charybdis
p. Calypso
16. Explain the following quotations (Who’s the speaker? Who are they speaking to? Why is the quote important –
literary devices, context, etc.?)
a. “Can I be less desirable than she is? Less interesting? Less beautiful?”
b. “You are a ninny, or else you come from the other end of nowhere.”
c. “My name is Nohbdy; mother, father, and friends, everyone calls me Nohbdy.”
d. “Better to mourn six men than lose them all, and the ship, too….”
e. “Nohbdy, Nohbdy’s tricked me. Nohbdy’s ruined me!”
f. “Oydsseus, master of landways and seaways, why leave the blazing sun, O man of woe, to see the cold
dead and the joyless region?”

Know the following about Part 2:
1.
At first, why does Telemachus refuse to believe that Odysseus is his father?
2.
What is Odysseus’ motive when he asks Eumaeus why Argos is “left here on the dung pile”?
3.
How does Penelope try to prove her husband’s identity?
4.
Explain the following quotations (Who’s the speaker? Who are they speaking to? Why is the quote important
(literary devices, context, etc.?)
a.
“You yellow dogs, you thought I’d never make it home.”
b.
“Friend, sit down; we’ll find another chair in our own hut.”
c.
“Fight, I say, let’s remember the joy of it. Swords out! Hold up your tables to deflect his arrows.”
d.
“Would you be men enough to stand by Odysseus if he came back?”
e.
“A hunter owned him—but the man is dead.”
f.
“Antinous was the ringleader, he whipped us on to do these things.”
g.
“Do not rage at me, Odysseus! No one ever matched your caution!”
h.
“You herdsman, and you, too, swineherd, I could say a thing to you, or keep it dark.”
i.
“Going forward, he kissed the young man’s head, his shining eyes and both hands, while his own tears
brimmed and fell. Think of a man whose dear and only son, born to him in exile, reared with labor, has
lived ten years abroad and now returns: how would that man embrace his son!”
j.
“But the man skilled in all ways of contending, satisfied by the great bow’s look and heft, like a musician,
like a harper, when with quiet hand upon his instrument he draws between his thumb and forefinger a
sweet new string upon a peg: so effortlessly in one motion Odysseus strung the bow.”
k.
“Salt tears rose from the wells of longing in both men, and cries burst from both as keen and fluttering as
those of the great taloned hawk, whose nestlings farmers take before they fly.”
l.
“…and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is
longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon’s blows, gale
winds, and tons of seas.”
m. “She made him taller, and massive, too, with crisping hair in curls like petals of wild hyacinth but all redgolden. Think of gold infused on silver by a craftsman, whose fine art Hephaestus taught him…”