Study Guide Answer Key: Book 17-18
Use the answers to the questions below as a guide to evaluate student understanding. Use the Pronouncing Glossary at the back of The Odyssey if you need help with names and places.
Why does Telemachus want Piraeus to keep Menelaus’s gifts at his house?
Telemachus is afraid he might be killed, and would rather Piraeus have the gifts than the suitors.
What does Telemachus tell Penelope about Odysseus? How about Theoclymenus?
Telemachus tells her that Odysseus is alive but still on Calypso’s island. Theoclymenus tells the bird sign he saw, and tells her that Odysseus is on Ithaca.
Who is Melanthius? Why doesn’t Odysseus kill him?
Melanthius is Odysseus’s disloyal goat herder. Although it is difficult, Odysseus “steels himself” so he will not disrupt his plan.
Who is Argos? Why is he laying on a pile of dung?
Argus is Odysseus’s old dog. Odysseus’s servant girls have neglected him.
How does Telemachus respond to Antinous’s tirade? How does Odysseus respond?
Telemachus is firm, angry, and confrontational. Odysseus meets him with sarcasm and cold, measured, composed insults.
Why are suitors scornful of Antinous’s behavior?
They are afraid the beggar is a god in disguise.
What prize are the two vagrants fighting for?
They are fighting for a goat sausage.
Will Amphinomus survive? How do you know?
No. Odysseus warned him but Homer says “Athena had bound him to death fast.” (18, 178) *
What does Penelope do that pleases Odysseus?
She tricks the suitors into giving her gifts, “all the while with something else in mind.” (18, 319) *
What does Eurymachus do to infuriate Odysseus?
He insults Odysseus and says he would hire him if he weren’t so lazy.
* THE ODYSSEY by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Fagles. (Viking Penguin, 1996) Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of Robert Fagles.