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Rosemary SutcliffA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.
Reading Check
1. What event is being celebrated at the beginning of the story?
2. How does Achilles disguise himself when Agamemnon calls him to battle?
3. How many years pass in Chapter 3 while the Greeks lay siege to Troy?
4. After his dream about victory, how does Agamemnon test the morale of his army?
5. When the Greeks seem to be winning the war, for what purpose does Hector tell his mother to gather the women of Troy?
Multiple Choice
1. Which goddess was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis?
A) Athene
B) Eris
C) Hera
D) Aphrodite
2. After hearing his mother’s prediction about his fate if he chooses to go off to war, what does Achilles show he values most?
A) a long life
B) peace
C) fame
D) friendship
3. Which of his warriors does Agamemnon offend by insisting on taking Briseis when he is forced to return Chryseis?
A) Achilles
B) Diomedes
C) Odysseus
D) Ajax
4. For Paris, what is the outcome of the fight with Menelaus?
A) He is killed by Menelaus.
B) He is hidden and removed to safety by Aphrodite.
C) He surrenders and is held captive by the Greeks.
D) He kills Menelaus.
5. Before he leaves his wife to return to battle, what value of Greek civilization does Hector stress to her?
A) It is important to remember the gods’ role in a person’s success.
B) Failing to show hospitality is disgraceful.
C) War is men’s business and the home is women’s business.
D) Fame and honor are what make a man valuable.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How does the goddess who was not invited to the wedding get revenge?
2. What did Achilles’ mother do when he was a baby to try to keep him safe in future battles?
3. Why does Apollo punish Agamemnon and the Greek army in Chapter 3?
4. How does Paris reveal himself to be a coward on the battlefield in Chapter 4?
5. In Chapter 5, how does Paris show that he is not really serious about winning the war?
Reading Check
1. What does Zeus use to distract the Greeks’ horses?
2. Who do Odysseus and Diomedes capture in Chapter 7?
3. Who is the last Greek leader to be wounded in Chapter 8?
4. Which god revives Hector when he is near death?
5. In Chapter 10, who really leads Achilles’s troops into battle?
Multiple Choice
1. Who gives Hector the idea to duel Ajax?
A) Athene
B) Hector’s wife
C) Ajax himself
D) Priam
2. In Chapter 7, why do Odysseus and Diomedes go into the Trojan camp?
A) to kill Priam
B) to surrender
C) to spy
D) to find Helen
3. What is the red rain thought to symbolize?
A) Zeus wants the war to end.
B) The Trojans have offended the gods.
C) It is an omen of death for the Greeks.
D) The gods are engaged in a battle with each other.
4. Which warrior seriously injures Hector?
A) Achilles
B) Odysseus
C) Diomedes
D) Ajax
5. In Chapter 10, what is the best description of Achilles’s immediate reaction to Patroclus when he sees how upset Patroclus is?
A) Achilles mocks Patroclus.
B) Achilles sympathizes with Patroclus.
C) Achilles feels ashamed of himself.
D) Achilles feels dishonored by Patroclus.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why do Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix go to the beach to talk to Achilles?
2. What important fact do Odysseus and Diomedes learn from Dolon?
3. What idea does Nestor have in Chapter 8 that will allow Achilles’ men to fight for the Greeks without Achilles giving in to Agamemnon?
4. When the Trojans almost push the Greeks back onto their ships, how does Poseidon come to the Greeks’ aid?
5. What causes Zeus to take revenge on Patroclus, and what is his revenge?
Reading Check
1. What frightens the Trojans after Patroclus’s death?
2. What does Achilles do with the Trojan captives at Patroclus’s funeral?
3. How is Priam able to enter the Greek camp in Chapter 13?
4. In Chapter 14, what allies, besides King Memnon, has Paris left Troy to go get?
5. Who is the father of the Amazon women?
Multiple Choice
1. In Chapter 11, why does Hector refuse to take his army back inside the city wall?
A) He knows that Achilles will be coming to fight.
B) He feels that Paris has betrayed him.
C) He is thinking of joining the Greek side.
D) Aphrodite has sent him a dream telling him to stay outside.
2. What does Achilles say should be done with his ashes after he dies?
A) They should be scattered over the walls of Troy.
B) They should be mixed with Patroclus’s ashes.
C) They should be scattered over the ocean.
D) They should be sent to the temple of Athene.
3. What is the reason for the temporary truce in Chapter 13?
A) It is intended to give the Trojans time to properly bury and mourn Hector.
B) Zeus places a spell on both camps while he tries to get Athene and Aphrodite to make peace.
C) There is a terrible storm and neither side is able to fight.
D) Both the Greeks and the Trojans have run out of food and are weak from hunger.
4. What is the Palladium?
A) a palace
B) a two-handled cup
C) a shield-shaped stone
D) a Greek ship
5. Whom does the Amazon Penthesilea boast that she will kill?
A) Nestor
B) Agamemnon
C) Odysseus
D) Achilles
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How does the warning Achilles gets from Xanthus echo the warning he got from his mother before he left for the war?
2. What makes Hector’s death especially difficult for his family to bear?
3. How do the gods intervene with both Achilles and King Priam in Chapter 13?
4. In Chapter 14, why does Odysseus dress as a beggar?
5. How does the battle go for the Amazon Penthesilea?
Reading Check
1. Which new allies arrive in Chapter 16 to support Troy?
2. How does Ajax die?
3. How was Philoctetes originally wounded?
4. What is the omen that Calchas tells the Greek leaders about seeing?
5. What happens to the women of Troy at the end of the story?
Multiple Choice
1. How does Thetis decide who should get Achilles’s armor?
A) She lets Agamemnon choose.
B) She holds an archery contest.
C) She asks Trojan prisoners to decide.
D) She prays to Athene for an answer.
2. Where has Philoctetes, the archer, been for the previous ten years?
A) in Ithaca, guarding Odysseus’s family
B) imprisoned in Troy
C) sleeping, due to one of Athene’s spells
D) abandoned on an island
3. Why does Oenone refuse to help Paris at first?
A) Paris rejected her for Helen.
B) Paris killed her father.
C) Oenone is Greek by birth.
D) Oenone was told to by Aphrodite.
4. What is Laocoon’s position in Troy?
A) He is Poseidon’s high priest.
B) He is the Trojan oracle.
C) He is a military leader.
D) He is a powerful royal.
5. What is the gift that Odysseus asks for as a reward for the conquest of Troy?
A) He asks for land and wealth.
B) He asks for Helen’s life to be spared.
C) He asks to be allowed to return home to Penelope.
D) He asks for a sacrifice to Athene to be made.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What is ironic about Paris’s beliefs about Polydamas?
2. How does Paris kill Achilles?
3. What is Philoctetes’ reaction when Diomedes and Odysseus first arrive to ask for his help?
4. What is the message that Calchas thinks the Greeks should see in the omen he tells them about?
5. What is the Greeks’ Trojan Horse plan?
Chapters 1-5
Reading Check
1. a wedding (Chapter 1)
2. a maiden, or young woman (Chapter 2)
3. nine (Chapter 3)
4. He suggests that they should go home to Greece. (Chapter 4)
5. pray to Athene (Chapter 5)
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Eris, the goddess of discord, gets revenge for not being invited to the wedding by putting a golden apple labeled “To the Fairest” on the table. She knows that the goddesses will all fight over who is meant to have the apple. (Chapter 1)
2. Achilles’s mother, Thetis, dipped him in the River Styx, knowing that everywhere the water touched him he would be impervious to battle wounds. She held him by the tendon on the back of his heel, so it was only this one spot on his body that was not protected. (Chapter 2)
3. Agamemnon captures Chryseis, who is the daughter of one of Apollo’s priests, and he refuses to return her to her father. (Chapter 3)
4. Paris issues a challenge, saying that he will fight any man in single combat. When Menelaus accepts the challenge, Paris hides. (Chapter 4)
5. Paris fusses over his equipment and plays around with his weapons as if he is getting ready for a party, not a war. (Chapter 5)
Chapters 6-10
Reading Check
1. a lightning bolt (Chapter 6)
2. Dolon (Chapter 7)
3. Odysseus (Chapter 8)
4. Apollo (Chapter 9)
5. Patroclus (Chapter 10)
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix go to the beach to tell Achilles that if he will return to fight for the Greeks, Agamemnon will return Briseis, give Achilles land and wealth, and marry his daughter to Achilles. (Chapter 6)
2. When Odysseus and Diomedes capture Dolon and interrogate him, they learn that even though the Trojan troops are alert during the night, many of their allies are asleep. (Chapter 7)
3. Nestor suggests that someone else dress as Achilles to lead his men into battle. (Chapter 8)
4. Poseidon sees how desperate the Greeks’ situation is and sends waves of sea monsters against the Trojans. (Chapter 9)
5. After Patroclus kills Zeus’s son Sarpedon, Zeus takes revenge on Patroclus by filling his mind with battle lust so that he will be reckless and endanger himself.
Chapters 11-15
Reading Check
1. Achilles screaming from the top of the rampart (Chapter 11)
2. burns them on the funeral pyre (Chapter 12)
3. Hermes has cast a spell on the Greeks to make them sleep. (Chapter 13)
4. the Amazons (Chapter 14)
5. Ares, god of war (Chapter 15)
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Xanthus warns Achilles that he is about to die; Achilles knows this, though, because his mother warned him before he left for the war that he would achieve great glory but be killed in the fight. (Chapters 2 and 11)
2. After Achilles kills Hector, he desecrates Hector’s body instead of returning it to his family for an honorable burial. (Chapters 11 and 12)
3. The gods send Achilles’s mother, Thetis, to speak to him about returning Hector’s body to his family. The gods also intervene with Priam, suggesting that he should offer Achilles a ransom for Hector’s body. (Chapter 13)
4. Odysseus dresses as a beggar so that he can sneak into Troy to gather information and steal the Palladium. (Chapter 14)
5. The battle goes nothing like Penthesilea thought it would. Instead of killing Ajax and Achilles, she herself is killed without harming either of them at all. (Chapter 15)
Chapters 16-19
Reading Check
1. King Memnon and his troops (Chapter 16)
2. He kills himself by falling on his own sword. (Chapter 16)
3. A dragon bit him. (Chapter 17)
4. a hawk that hid itself to fool the dove it was hunting (Chapter 18)
5. They are enslaved by the Greeks. (Chapter 19)
Multiple Choice
Short-Answer Response
1. Paris thinks that Polydamas is a coward because Polydamas suggests that they end the war by returning Helen and paying reparations. Throughout the story, however, Paris is the one who has behaved like a coward. (Chapter 16)
2. Paris shoots an arrow at Achilles. Apollo guides the arrow to hit Achilles in the back of his heel, the only place where he is vulnerable. Because there is poison on the arrow, the wound is fatal. (Chapter 16)
3. Philoctetes shoots a poisoned arrow at Diomedes and Odysseus, intending to kill them. (Chapter 17)
4. Calchas thinks that, like the hawk, they should realize that strength is not working and change their tactics to use stealth and cunning. (Chapter 18)
5. The Greeks hide their best fighters inside a huge hollow horse, which they leave as if it is a gift for the Trojans. Then, leaving Sinon behind to talk to the Trojans, they pretend to set sail home. After Sinon convinces the Trojans that he has been left behind as a sacrifice and it is okay to take the horse inside the city gates, he waits for a signal from the returning armies. When they signal, he signals the men inside the horse to come out, and they open the gates to the returned Greek army. (Chapters 18 and 19)
By Rosemary Sutcliff