Homeric Questions

Iliad, Book 1

1. What is the significance of the appeal to the Muse at the beginning? Parallels?
2. What is the significance of the first word of the poem? How is this reflected in other epics?
3. What are the associations of Apollo? Is the portrayal of him in Book 1 characteristic or eccentric?
4. What is the role of prophecy in the Iliad? How are prophets treated?
5. What are the issues at stake in the quarrel? How important is time? Is the situation salvageable or does it reflect a structure that is essentially problematic?
6. What is the position of Nestor? In what way is he valuable? What does his influence have to say about the way that the Greeks of Homer typically understand the world?
7. How do Achilles and Thetis understand the significance of his fate to die young? Are their visions compatible?
8. Achilles refers to Zeus's indebtedness to Thetis. What is its source? How does this incident complement what we here otherwise about the relationship between the gods?
9. What is the position of Hephaestus among the gods? How does his story add to the issues discussed in #8?

Book 2

1. What is Agamemnon's Dream? What are its consequences?
2. What are the characteristics of the epic simile? What are the implications of its formulaic nature?
3. What is our first introduction to Odysseus? How is it characteristic of the way he is represented in epic and how is Odysseus different from the typical warrior of the Iliad?
4. Who is Thersites? What does he represent? What is the significance of his speech?
5. What non-Iliadic stories are mentioned in the Catalogue of Ships? What is strange about the passage devoted to Athens? What signs of revision can be seen in the catalogue?

Book 3

1. How are Hector and Paris characterized? Compare this to the representation of them in Book 6. What do you make of Paris' advice to Hector not to make light of the gifts of the gods, even unwarlike gifts like those of Aphrodite?
2. How is Menelaus characterized? How does this picture hold up in the poem as a whole?
3. What is the significance of Helen's tapestry? How does the poet communicate the experience of her beauty?
4. What is particularly odd about the teichoscopeia ("view from the wall")?