The Odyssey Trivia
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104 free The Odyssey trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
59 free The Odyssey trivia questions with answers. Homer's Odyssey is the original road-trip story, and this quiz follows it all the way home: Calypso's island, the Cyclops and the 'Nobody' trick, the bag of winds, Circe's pigs, the trip to the underworld, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the cattle of the sun, and finally Ithaca - the dog Argos, the nurse's scar, the contest of the bow, and the bed carved from a living olive tree. It also covers the poem itself (its 24 books, its metre, the Telemachy and the Apologoi, the Homeric Question) and the afterlife of the story, from Joyce's Ulysses and O Brother, Where Art Thou? to Emily Wilson's translation and Christopher Nolan's film. Easy plot questions come first; the later ones will test a classics student. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and carries its source, so you can use the set for a literature class, a book club or a quiz night without worrying about a rogue fact.
30 of 104 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Odysseus rules which island kingdom?
Ithaca
Modern Ithaca in the Ionian Sea is generally accepted as his home, though some scholars argue Homer meant the Paliki peninsula of neighbouring Kefalonia.
Q 02How long does Odysseus's journey home from Troy take?
Ten years
Ten years, on top of the ten-year siege of Troy: he has been gone for twenty, long enough for everyone at home to presume him dead and for suitors to pursue his wife.
Q 03Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into how many books?
24
24 books, but the division is not original: it was probably made long after the poem was composed, and is often credited to scholars working in Alexandria.
Q 04In which poetic metre is the Odyssey composed?
Dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter, six feet of dactyls (long-short-short) or spondees (long-long), is the metre of both Homeric epics; stock phrases such as 'long-suffering Odysseus' recur because they fit set slots in the line.
Q 05Roughly how many lines long is the Odyssey?
12,000
12,000 lines, or 12,109 to be exact, and every one was made to be heard: in a largely illiterate age, professional reciters called rhapsodes performed the poem aloud for audiences.
Q 06Where is Odysseus when the Odyssey, which opens in medias res, begins?
Held captive by the nymph Calypso
Held captive by the nymph Calypso on Ogygia is where the poem finds Odysseus; he does not appear in person until Book 5, after four books following his son.
Q 07Books 1 to 4 of the Odyssey, which follow Odysseus's son rather than Odysseus, are known as what?
The Telemachy
The Telemachy is the scholars' name for Books 1 to 4, in which Telemachus travels to Pylos and Sparta seeking news of his father and comes of age in the process.
Q 08What trick does Penelope use to stall the suitors for three years?
Unweaving a shroud each night
Unweaving a shroud each night is her ruse: the shroud is for Odysseus's father Laertes, and she promises to choose a husband once it is finished, undoing each day's weaving until a maid betrays her.
Q 09Calypso is usually said to be the daughter of which Titan?
Atlas
Atlas, the Titan who holds up the sky, is named as Calypso's father in Book 1; her own name comes from the Greek kalyptein, 'to conceal', fitting for a nymph who hides a hero from the world.
Q 10Which god hounds Odysseus for blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus?
Poseidon
Poseidon hears Polyphemus's prayer that Odysseus reach home late, alone and on a stranger's ship, and it comes true: every other man is lost and Phaeacian sailors carry him home.
Q 11What name does Odysseus give the Cyclops Polyphemus?
Nobody
When the blinded giant bellows that Nobody is hurting him, the other Cyclopes assume he is being afflicted by the gods and wander off.
Q 12How do Odysseus and his men escape Polyphemus's cave?
Clinging beneath his sheep
Clinging beneath his sheep, each man tied under the middle ram of three, they slip out while the blinded giant feels only the animals' backs; Odysseus himself hangs under the largest ram.
Q 13What does Aeolus, keeper of the winds, give Odysseus to speed him home?
An oxhide bag of storms
An oxhide bag of storms, holding every wind but the favourable west wind, is Aeolus's gift; within sight of home the crew open it looking for treasure, are blown back, and Aeolus refuses a second time.
Q 21Scylla and Charybdis have traditionally been located in which real stretch of water?
The Strait of Messina
The Strait of Messina, between Calabria and Sicily, is where later writers placed them, reading Scylla as a rock and Charybdis as a whirlpool; the Calabrian town of Scilla still bears her name.
Q 22In the Odyssey, Odysseus's last ship is destroyed after his crew eat what?
The sun god's sacred cattle
The sun god's sacred cattle, grazing on Thrinacia, are slaughtered by the starving crew; Zeus answers Helios with a thunderbolt and every man drowns except Odysseus, who washes up on Calypso's island.
Q 23In Penelope's final test of her husband, what does only the real Odysseus know cannot be moved?
Q 14Why does only Odysseus's own ship survive the Laestrygonians?
Moored outside
Moored outside the harbour, his ship was spared while his other eleven tied up inside, where the giants smashed them with rocks and speared the men like fish; he cut his cable and got away.
Q 15What does the enchantress Circe turn Odysseus's crew into?
Pigs
Pigs is what Circe's drugged wine makes of the scouting party, though they keep their human minds; once Odysseus resists her spell the men are restored and the crew stay a full year.
Q 16Which god hands Odysseus the protective herb moly before he confronts Circe?
Hermes
Hermes meets him on the path and adds a plan: when Circe strikes with her wand, rush her with drawn sword, then make her swear an oath to do him no harm.
Q 17Whose ghost does Odysseus travel to the underworld to consult?
Tiresias
Tiresias, the blind Theban prophet, is the shade Circe sends him to consult; he also meets his mother Anticlea there and learns for the first time that she has died.
Q 18Which dead hero tells Odysseus he would rather be a slave to a poor master than king of all the dead?
Achilles
Achilles says it in Book 11, a pointed reversal of the Iliad, where the same hero chose a short, glorious life over a long, obscure one.
Q 19Elpenor, the youngest of Odysseus's crew, dies how?
Falling drunk from Circe's roof
Falling drunk from Circe's roof, where he had slept and then missed the ladder, kills Elpenor; his shade is the first Odysseus meets in Hades, and his grave on Aeaea is marked with his oar.
Q 20How does Odysseus get his ship past the Sirens alive?
Tied to the mast, crew's ears waxed
Tied to the mast, crew's ears waxed: Circe's advice lets Odysseus alone hear the song while the men row on, ordered to tighten his ropes if he begs release; Homer's dual forms imply just two Sirens.
Their marriage bed
Their marriage bed: Odysseus built it around a rooted olive tree, so when Penelope orders it moved, his outrage that anyone could shift it proves he is her husband.
Q 24What happens to sailors who eat the fruit of the Lotus-eaters?
They forget their homes and want to stay
They forget their homes and want to stay, weeping when dragged away; Odysseus lashes them under the rowing benches, and the historian Polybius placed the Lotus-eaters on Djerba, off Tunisia.
Q 25What lets the Cicones of Ismarus strike back at Odysseus?
His crew linger to feast
His crew linger to feast on the plunder, ignoring his order to leave at once; the Cicones return with reinforcements and kill six men from every ship.
Q 26Naked and exhausted, Odysseus is found on the shore of Scheria by which princess?
Nausicaa
She had come to the river to wash clothes with her handmaidens; Hayao Miyazaki later borrowed her name for the heroine of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
Q 27Scheria, home of the Phaeacians who carry Odysseus home, is commonly identified with which Greek island?
Corfu
Corfu, ancient Kerkyra, is the usual identification; the Phaeacians' ships needed no pilots and steered by thought, and the one that delivered Odysseus was turned to stone on its way home.
Q 28Sailing away from the blinded Cyclops, what does Odysseus do that lets Polyphemus call down a curse on him?
Shouts his real name
Shouts his real name: after hiding behind a false one, he cannot resist boasting who blinded the giant, and Polyphemus now has a name to curse when he prays to his father for revenge.
Q 29Who is the first to recognise Odysseus when he comes home disguised as a beggar?
His dog Argos
His dog Argos, old and flea-ridden on a dung heap, drops his ears and wags his tail at his master after twenty years, then dies; Odysseus wipes away a tear.
Q 30Odysseus's old nurse Eurycleia recognises him by what?
A scar above his knee
A scar above his knee, left by a boar's tusk on a boyhood hunt on Mount Parnassus, gives him away as Eurycleia washes his feet; he seizes her by the throat and swears her to silence.