100 Greek Mythology Trivia Questions – Test Your Knowledge

Trick questions: where the popular answer is wrong

These are the questions that catch out confident players, because the familiar answer comes from a later retelling rather than the ancient sources.

1. What did Pandora open? A jar (pithos), not a box. In Hesiod's Works and Days it is a large storage jar, and Hope stays inside under the lip. The "box" goes back to the Renaissance scholar Erasmus, who rendered the word as pyxis, a small box. See Pandora's box.
2. Does Homer mention Achilles' heel? No. The Iliad never makes Achilles invulnerable, and it ends before his death. The dip in the Styx is best known from the Roman poet Statius.
3. How many heads did Cerberus have? Usually three, but Hesiod gives him fifty, and Pindar was said to have given him a hundred. See Cerberus.
4. Is Hades the god of death? No. He rules the dead, but the god of death itself is Thanatos, twin brother of Hypnos (Sleep).
5. Which of the Gorgons was mortal? Only Medusa. Her sisters Stheno and Euryale were immortal, which is why Perseus could only kill her.
6. What was the Minotaur's actual name? Asterion (Asterius in Apollodorus; Pausanias also uses Asterion). "Minotaur" just means "bull of Minos".
7. How long was Odysseus' voyage home? Ten years, but he was away from Ithaca for twenty, counting the ten years of war. Seven of the ten travelling years were spent on Calypso's island.
8. What came first in Hesiod's creation? Chaos, before Gaia. Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros come next.

Bonus round: the Trojan War

1. Who threw the golden apple, and where? Eris, at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, to which she had not been invited.
2. Why did the Greek fleet wait at Aulis? Artemis held back the winds after Agamemnon offended her; the seer Calchas said she required the sacrifice of Iphigenia. In some versions Artemis replaced the girl with a deer at the last moment.
3. Who was the first Greek to die at Troy? Protesilaus, the first to leap ashore, killed by "a Dardanian man" in the Iliad, named as Hector in later versions.
4. Who was the Amazon queen Achilles killed? Penthesilea. Later sources say he fell in love with her as she died.
5. Whose armour caused the quarrel that drove Ajax to suicide? The armour of Achilles, awarded to Odysseus instead of Ajax.
6. Who built the Trojan Horse? Epeius, with Athena's help.
7. Which Trojan priest warned against the Horse and was killed by sea serpents? Laocoön, best known from Virgil's Aeneid Book 2 and the marble sculpture group in the Vatican.
8. Whose bow was needed to take Troy? That of Heracles, held by Philoctetes, whom the Greeks had abandoned on Lemnos with a festering snakebite.

Bonus round: gods and monsters

1. Name the three Hundred-Handed Ones. Briareus (also called Aegaeon), Cottus, and Gyges.
2. Who were the parents of Echidna? Hesiod's text is ambiguous; most read it as Phorcys and Ceto. Apollodorus makes her a daughter of Tartarus and Gaia.
3. What was born from Medusa's neck besides Pegasus? Chrysaor, the warrior "of the golden sword", father of three-bodied Geryon.
4. Which god was thrown off Olympus twice? Hephaestus: once by Hera because he was born lame, and once by Zeus for taking Hera's side, landing on Lemnos.
5. Who killed the giant Argus with a hundred eyes? Hermes, which earned him the title Argeiphontes.
6. Who was born from the blood of Uranus falling on the earth? The Erinyes (Furies), along with the Giants and the Meliae nymphs. Aphrodite rose from the foam around his severed genitals in the sea.
7. Who was the first wife of Zeus? Metis, whom he swallowed while she was pregnant with Athena.
8. Which mortal was punished on a fiery wheel? Ixion, for attempting to seduce Hera.
9. What did Athena invent, according to Pindar? The aulos, the double pipe, imitating the wailing of Medusa's sisters. In other versions she threw it away because playing it puffed out her cheeks, and the satyr Marsyas picked it up.
10. Who taught Achilles, Jason, and Asclepius? The centaur Chiron.

Tips for running a mythology quiz

Because ancient authors disagree, decide in advance whether you will accept variants. A good rule is to accept any answer found in a recognised ancient source, and to phrase questions as "according to Homer" or "according to Ovid" when versions differ. Questions about parentage are the most contested: Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione in Homer but born from the sea in Hesiod, and Eros is a primordial power in Hesiod but Aphrodite's son in later poets.

Ancient sources

• Hesiod, Theogony — the creation order, the Hundred-Handed Ones, fifty-headed Cerberus, the Gorgons, and the birth of Aphrodite and the Erinyes.
• Hesiod, Works and Days — Pandora's jar and Hope left inside.
• Homer, Iliad and Odyssey — Protesilaus, the double fall of Hephaestus, Odysseus' seven years with Calypso.
• Apollodorus, Library — the Minotaur's name Asterius, Echidna's parentage, and summaries of the Trojan War from Aulis to the Horse.
• Pindar, Pythian 12 — Athena's invention of the aulos to imitate the Gorgons' lament.
• Virgil, Aeneid 2 — Laocoön and the Trojan Horse.

Frequently asked questions

What are some hard Greek mythology trivia questions?

Good hard questions test knowledge of variants: the Minotaur's name (Asterion), the first Greek killed at Troy (Protesilaus), the names of the Hundred-Handed Ones (Briareus, Cottus, Gyges), or what Hope did in Pandora's jar (stayed inside).

Was it really Pandora's box?

No. Hesiod describes a large jar. The box comes from a sixteenth-century Latin retelling and stuck in English.

How many Greek gods are there?

There is no fixed number. The Twelve Olympians are the best-known group, but even that list varies, with Hestia or Dionysus included depending on the source. Counting nymphs, river gods, and personifications, there are hundreds.

What is a good fun fact about Greek mythology?

In the Odyssey, the Sirens do not tempt Odysseus with beauty but with knowledge: they promise to tell him everything that happened at Troy and everything that happens on earth.