Greek & Roman Mythology Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which Trojan prince was asked to judge which of three goddesses was the most beautiful, and chose the one who bribed him with the love of the world's loveliest woman, thereby bringing the Trojan War down on his own city?

Question 2

Which many-headed water serpent of the swamps of Lerna grew two new heads for every one that was cut off, and had breath and blood so venomous that its very scent could kill?

Question 3

What Latin epic poem by Virgil follows a Trojan prince who escapes the burning city carrying his father on his back, loves and leaves Queen Dido of Carthage, visits the underworld, and fights to settle in Italy as an ancestor of the Roman people?

Question 4

What is the name for the fringed goatskin, bearing the severed head of Medusa at its centre, that Athena wore across her chest or carried as a shield, and that spread terror among her enemies when she shook it?

Question 5

Which musician played the lyre so sweetly that wild beasts, trees and even stones followed him, and charmed his way alive into the underworld to beg for the return of his dead wife?

Question 6

Which cunning king cheated death twice, once by chaining up the god sent to fetch him and once by tricking the queen of the underworld into letting him go back to the living, and for his insolence was condemned to an eternity of pointless labour?

Question 7

Which god ruled the shadowy realm of the dead beneath the earth, rarely leaving it and rarely worshipped openly, and owned a helmet that made its wearer invisible, lent to heroes on dangerous errands?

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About Greek & Roman Mythology

Greek mythology is the deepest and best-recorded body of myth in the Western tradition, and Roman myth mostly reuses it under Latin names, so the two are taken together here. This quiz runs to eighty questions. Each describes a figure, a monster, a place, an object or a story, and asks you to name it from four choices, then explains who they were, how the tale goes, the Greek and Roman names, and the word or phrase we still get from it.

The first pack is the core pantheon and the biggest names: the twelve Olympians one by one, from Zeus and Hera to Hephaestus and Dionysus, each with their sphere, their symbols, their Roman name and a signature myth; the Titans they overthrew, led by Cronus who ate his own children; Gaia the primordial Earth and Prometheus who stole fire; and the four heroes everyone half-remembers, Heracles of the twelve labours, Perseus who beheaded Medusa, Achilles of the fatal heel and Odysseus of the long way home.

The second pack widens out to the rest of the heroic world. More heroes and their quests, Theseus and the Minotaur, Jason and the fleece, Orpheus in the underworld, Bellerophon on Pegasus. The doomed and the punished, Oedipus, Sisyphus, Tantalus, Midas, Narcissus, Icarus, Pandora. The cast of the Trojan War, Helen, Paris, Agamemnon, Hector and Cassandra. The famous monsters, Medusa, the Hydra, Cerberus, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis. The groups of lesser powers, the Fates, the Furies, the Muses. And the smaller gods and enchantresses, Eros, Pan, Persephone, Charon, Hestia, Circe, along with Daedalus, Ariadne and Virgil's Roman epic the Aeneid.

The third pack is the geography and furniture of the myths, plus the distinctively Roman material: Mount Olympus and the rivers and regions of the underworld, Styx, Tartarus, Elysium; the Labyrinth, the Golden Fleece, the Trojan Horse, the Apple of Discord, the aegis, ambrosia and the cornucopia; the war of gods and Titans and the primordial Chaos before it; the Oracle of Delphi; and the two-faced Janus, Aeneas, Romulus and Remus, Atlas, Hypnos and Thanatos, and Nemesis. Because a captioned painting usually gives the answer away, images are used only where the picture does not, and everything has been checked against the standard ancient sources.

Throughout, the quiz keeps the Greek and Roman names paired so you can see where 'Jupiter' is 'Zeus', 'Venus' is 'Aphrodite', 'Ulysses' is 'Odysseus' and 'Hercules' is 'Heracles', and it flags the places where Roman myth genuinely differs, most of all in treating Mars as a dignified father of the state rather than the bully the Greeks made of Ares. It also points out the everyday debts we owe these stories: a titanic scale, a herculean task, a promethean gift, a narcissist, an odyssey, a nemesis, panic, chaos, a museum, the word 'cereal' from Ceres and 'January' from Janus.