The poem opens: "Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero..." Which epic convention is this?

"As a blacksmith plunges an axe or hatchet into cold water to temper it... even thus did the Cyclops' eye hiss round the beam of olive wood." Which convention is this?

Athena comes to Ithaca in mortal disguise and pushes Telemachus to call an assembly and sail to Pylos for news of his father. Which epic convention is at work?

Polyphemus had promised Odysseus a present. He answers: "Then I will eat all Noman's comrades before Noman himself... This is the present that I will make him." Which custom is he mocking?

The Odyssey opens in the tenth year after Troy with Odysseus already stranded on Calypso's island, and the Cyclops arrives much later as a story he tells at a Phaeacian feast. Which convention is that opening?

Odysseus sails to the house of the dead and calls up the ghost of Tiresias, the blind Theban prophet, to learn how he will get home. Which epic convention is this?

The opening asks the Muse to tell of "that ingenious hero" and says the crew perished eating the cattle of the Sun. What does the invocation accomplish?

Why does Homer gain by starting the Odyssey in the middle of the action rather than at the fall of Troy?

In Book 9 the blinding of the Cyclops is set beside a shipwright's auger and a blacksmith's tempering, each comparison running on for several clauses. What does an epic simile accomplish here?

The Phaeacians feed and entertain Odysseus and promise him a ship home before they learn his name. The Cyclops eats his guests. The suitors eat their absent host's stores. What does xenia accomplish in the poem?

Athena argues Odysseus's case in the gods' council and steers Telemachus, while Poseidon keeps him from home for years. What does this constant divine intervention accomplish?

Each new day arrives as "the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn." What is the term for a fixed phrase attached to a figure like this?

Gods greet the hero as "noble son of Laertes." What is the term for an epithet that identifies a character by his father?

A Homeric formula comes back word for word each time its figure is named, whether or not it suits the moment. What does that repetition do for the poem?

Which statement is true of a Homeric epithet, as opposed to a description a poet invents for one scene?

"as though I were boring a hole in a ship's plank with an auger, which two men with a wheel and strap can keep on turning as long as they choose." Which statement about this epic simile is NOT true?

Which statement about the opening of the Odyssey is NOT true?

Which statement about the way the Odyssey is put together is NOT true?

Of Odysseus, the poem says he "strung it as easily as a skilled bard strings a new peg of his lyre and makes the twisted gut fast at both ends." Where in the poem does this epic simile come?

Where in the poem is xenia most fully honored, with the stranger feasted, entertained and promised a ship home before he even tells his hosts his name?