10 years to get home. The Odyssey is the finest travel story ever written: nearly three thousand years before our route notes, Homer was already sending his hero from island to island, from storm to enchantment. A single idea carries him: to see Ithaca again.
Cyclopes, Sirens, sorceresses and the anger of the gods: can you follow Odysseus stop by stop? 12 questions to retrace, from memory, the greatest of Greek voyages. Every answer lights up an episode: enough to fall in love with the story all over again.
Once safely in port, carry on with our Greek mythology quiz or the great Greece quiz.
To which poet is the Odyssey, the story of Odysseus's return, attributed?
Explanation The Odyssey, like the Iliad, is attributed to Homer: the great poem of the return, the nostos.
Which war is Odysseus returning from when his long journey begins?
Explanation Odysseus leaves Troy after ten years of siege; his return will last ten more.
Which island is Odysseus struggling to return to, against winds and gods?
Explanation Ithaca, in the Ionian Islands, is his kingdom, and the goal of the whole epic.
Who waits faithfully for him on Ithaca, weaving by day and undoing her work by night?
Explanation Penelope holds off her suitors with the trick of the shroud, never finished, while waiting for Odysseus.
Which one-eyed giant does Odysseus blind in order to escape from his cave?
Explanation Polyphemus, the man-eating Cyclops, is blinded with a stake heated in the fire.
Whose son is the Cyclops — the god who will pursue Odysseus with his anger?
Explanation By blinding Polyphemus, Odysseus draws on himself the vengeance of Poseidon, god of the seas.
Under what name does Odysseus introduce himself to the Cyclops, the better to fool him?
Explanation "Nobody" (Outis in Greek): so when Polyphemus howls "Nobody is attacking me!", no one comes to help.
Which sorceress turns Odysseus's companions into swine?
Explanation Circe, on her island of Aiaia, transforms the crew; Odysseus outwits her thanks to the moly herb.
Which creatures charm sailors with an irresistible… and deadly song?
Explanation The Sirens lure ships onto the reefs; no one had survived their song before Odysseus.
How does Odysseus listen to the Sirens' song without succumbing to it?
Explanation Odysseus has himself bound to the mast and stops his men's ears with wax: he hears without being lost.
Between which two monsters must Odysseus pass in a fearsome strait?
Explanation Charybdis swallows the waters, Scylla devours sailors: "between Scylla and Charybdis" comes from this.
Which nymph keeps Odysseus for several years on her island, offering him immortality?
Explanation Calypso keeps him seven years on Ogygia; yet Odysseus prefers Ithaca and Penelope to immortality.
Would you like our next quizzes and our travel ideas for Greece?
Sailing in the wake of Odysseus
The Odyssey has a geography, and it is walked as much as it is read. The Ionian Islands (Corfu, Paxos, Kefalonia and famous Ithaca) unroll along the west of Greece the very waters where the hero wandered: olive groves, coves, villages asleep beneath the cypresses. It is the greenest and gentlest Greece, the one where you take your time.
At Kelifos, specialists in walking holidays in Greece for more than forty years, we compose these itineraries in the register of the sweetness of life: shaded coastal paths, charming addresses and luggage transferred from stage to stage. Yours is to walk, with a myth underfoot.
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Article written by
Maria Papadopoulou (Μαρία Παπαδοπούλου)
Editorial lead
I hike, and Greece is the place I keep coming back to. My initial studies (a Master’s in Marketing and a degree in Applied Foreign Languages) taught me how to build an editorial project, and the trails taught me the… Read more
