Before there was movie magic, there was Greek mythology. And although Christopher Nolan’s vivid adaptation of the Odyssey doubles the mystic, the original folklore is just as hard to believe—and memorize. From tempestuous gods to terrifying monsters, the lore of ancient Greece has always entranced the people. Whether your trivia odyssey started by tearing through “Percy Jackson” paperbacks or you’re a 70mm snob, mythology mastery is a must.

To be a Greek myth buff means to be sharp. It means tracking the tumultuous love stories of the Olympians, memorizing which beast guards which Underworld river, and knowing your Cronus from your Chronos. Whether you’re putting together an epic game night or prepping for a screening of the new film with Greek mythology trivia questions, you’re in the right realm.

The Major Olympians

1. Who is the king of the gods in Greek mythology?

Answer: Zeus.

2. What animal is primarily associated with Zeus as a symbol of power and majesty?

Answer: The eagle.

3. Who is Zeus’s wife and queen of the gods?

Answer: Hera.

4. Which two major gods are brothers to Zeus?

Answer: Hades and Poseidon.

5. How many major gods and goddesses made up the core Olympian pantheon?

Answer: Twelve.

6. What is Poseidon’s signature weapon?

Answer: A trident.

7. What salt-water offering did Poseidon give to Athens during their contest for patronage?

Answer: A saltwater spring.

8. What gift did Athena give to the citizens of Athens to win their patronage over Poseidon?

Answer: The olive tree.

9. How was the goddess Athena born?

Answer: She sprang fully grown and armored from the head of her father, Zeus.

10. Who are the twin divine siblings born to Leto and Zeus?

Answer: Apollo and Artemis.

11. Who is the messenger of the gods who wears winged sandals?

Answer: Hermes.

12. What is the Roman equivalent of the messenger god Hermes?

Answer: Mercury.

13. Who is the god of fire, blacksmiths, and metalworking?

Answer: Hephaestus.

14. Which goddess of love and beauty was said to be born from seafoam?

Answer: Aphrodite.

15. Who is the god of war, embodying the physical and violent aspects of battle?

Answer: Ares.

16. Who is the goddess of agriculture, grain, and the harvest?

Answer: Demeter.

17. Who is the god of wine, theater, and revelry?

Answer: Dionysus.

18. Who is the goddess of the hunt, wilderness, and young girls?

Answer: Artemis.

19. What vehicle does Apollo ride across the sky?

Answer: A golden chariot.

20. What animal was Hera often accompanied by in classical art?

Answer: A peacock.

Titans & Creation

21. Who was the primordial personification of the Earth, often called “Mother Earth”?

Answer: Gaia.

22. Who were the Titans in Greek mythology?

Answer: The generation of elder gods who ruled the cosmos before being overthrown by the Olympians.

23. Who was the leader of the Titans who swallowed his own children at birth?

Answer: Cronus.

24. How did Rhea save her baby, Zeus, from being swallowed by Cronus?

Answer: She hid Zeus and gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead.

25. What is the epic ten-year war between the Titans and the Olympians called?

Answer: The Titanomachy.

26. Which Titan was condemned to hold up the celestial heavens for eternity?

Answer: Atlas.

27. What did the Titan Prometheus steal from Mount Olympus to give to humanity?

Answer: Fire.

28. What was Prometheus’s daily punishment for deceiving Zeus?

Answer: He was chained to a rock where an eagle ate his liver daily, which regenerated every night.

29. Who eventually freed Prometheus from his chains?

Answer: Heracles (Hercules).

30. Who was the first mortal woman created by the gods?

Answer: Pandora.

31. Which god fashioned Pandora out of clay on the orders of Zeus?

Answer: Hephaestus.

32. What remained inside Pandora’s container after all the world’s evils escaped?

Answer: Hope.

33. Who is the goddess of the hearth, home, and sacrificial fire?

Answer: Hestia.

34. Who is the Greek goddess of the rainbow and secondary messenger to the gods?

Answer: Iris.

35. Who is the triple-headed goddess of magic, witchcraft, and crossroads?

Answer: Hecate.

36. How many Muses—goddesses who inspired literature, science, and the arts—existed in Greek myth?

Answer: Nine.

37. What did the four wind gods, known as the Anemoi, represent?

Answer: The four cardinal directions (North, South, East, and West).

38. Who is the god of the north wind?

Answer: Boreas.

39. Who is the god of dreams in Greek mythology?

Answer: Morpheus.

40. Which winged goddess personified victory in ancient Greece?

Answer: Nike.

The Underworld & Fate

41. Who is the ruler of the Greek Underworld?

Answer: Hades.

42. What is the Roman equivalent of Hades?

Answer: Pluto.

43. Who was the queen of the Underworld and goddess of Spring?

Answer: Persephone.

44. Why was Persephone forced to spend part of every year in the Underworld?

Answer: She ate pomegranate seeds while in the Underworld, binding her to return annually.

45. How did ancient Greeks explain the changing of the seasons?

Answer: Through Demeter’s grief when Persephone was in the Underworld (winter) and her joy upon her return (spring).

46. What is the name of the monstrous three-headed dog that guards the Underworld?

Answer: Cerberus.

47. Who is the ferryman responsible for carrying dead souls across the Underworld’s rivers?

Answer: Charon.

48. What primary river separates the realm of the living from the Underworld?

Answer: The River Styx.

49. Drinking from which Underworld river caused souls to forget their past mortal lives?

Answer: The River Lethe.

50. What was the name of the deep abyss used as a dungeon of torment for evil souls and defeated Titans?

Answer: Tartarus.

51. Which king was condemned in Tartarus to roll a giant boulder up a hill for eternity?

Answer: Sisyphus.

52. How did Sisyphus cheat death twice?

Answer: He first chained up Thanatos (Death) and later convinced Hades to let him return to Earth to scold his wife for improper burial rites.

53. Why was Tantalus punished in the Underworld with eternal hunger and thirst?

Answer: He cooked his own son and served him to the gods as a test of their omniscience.

54. Who are the three Fates who spin, measure, and cut the thread of life?

Answer: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.

55. Which legendary musician descended into the Underworld to bring back his deceased wife, Eurydice?

Answer: Orpheus.

56. What fatal mistake did Orpheus make on his journey out of the Underworld?

Answer: He looked back at Eurydice before they both reached the surface, causing her to vanish forever.

57. Who was the god of sleep and twin brother to Thanatos (Death)?

Answer: Hypnos.

58. What term refers to a hero born of one divine parent and one mortal parent?

Answer: Demigod (or demigoddess).

59. Who were the children of Hades and Persephone?

Answer: Melinoe and Zagreus.

60. Who was the personification of Death in Greek mythology?

Answer: Thanatos.

Heroes & Myths

61. Which famous Greek hero was forced to complete twelve monumental labors?

Answer: Heracles (Hercules).

62. What were three of Heracles’s famous twelve labors?

Answer: Slaying the Nemean Lion, defeating the Lernaean Hydra, and capturing the Erymanthian Boar.

63. Which Greek hero decapitated Medusa?

Answer: Perseus.

64. Who was the mortal mother of Perseus?

Answer: Danaë.

65. Which prince of Troy sparked the Trojan War by abducting Helen of Sparta?

Answer: Paris.

66. Which goddess of discord caused the dispute between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite with a golden apple?

Answer: Eris.

67. Who judged the beauty contest between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite?

Answer: Paris of Troy.

68. What strategy allowed the Greeks to breach the walls of Troy and end the ten-year siege?

Answer: Hiding soldiers inside a giant wooden horse left as a fake offering.

69. Who wrote the foundational ancient epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey?

Answer: Homer.

70. What was the only vulnerable spot on the body of the hero Achilles?

Answer: His heel.

71. Who killed Achilles by shooting a guided arrow into his heel?

Answer: Paris (with the help of Apollo).

72. Who was Achilles’s beloved companion whose death spurred him back into battle?

Answer: Patroclus.

73. How long did it take Odysseus to complete his treacherous voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War?

Answer: Ten years.

74. What name did Odysseus tell the Cyclops Polyphemus to deceive him?

Answer: “Nobody.”

75. Who was Odysseus’s faithful wife who waited twenty years for his return?

Answer: Penelope.

76. Which mythical hero slew the Minotaur inside the Cretan Labyrinth?

Answer: Theseus.

77. Who built the Labyrinth on Crete and later made wings of wax and feathers to escape imprisonment?

Answer: Daedalus.

78. Why did Icarus fall to his death during his escape with his father Daedalus?

Answer: He flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax on his wings.

79. Who led the Argonauts on a quest aboard the Argo to retrieve the Golden Fleece?

Answer: Jason.

80. Which king was cursed so that everything he touched turned into solid gold?

Answer: King Midas.

Monsters & Mythical Beasts

81. What creature was Arachne transformed into after boasting she was a better weaver than Athena?

Answer: A spider.

82. What replaced Medusa’s hair after she was transformed into a Gorgon?

Answer: Live, venomous snakes.

83. What happens to anyone who looks directly into the eyes of a Gorgon?

Answer: They are turned to stone.

84. Who were Medusa’s two immortal Gorgon sisters?

Answer: Stheno and Euryale.

85. What winged horse sprang from the neck of Medusa when Perseus beheaded her?

Answer: Pegasus.

86. Which hero tamed Pegasus and defeated the Chimera?

Answer: Bellerophon.

87. What mythical sea creatures lured sailors to shipwrecks with their enchanting voices?

Answer: Sirens.

88. What monster possessed the body of a man and the head of a bull?

Answer: The Minotaur.

89. What species of creature was half-man and half-horse?

Answer: Centaurs.

90. Which famous centaur was known for his wisdom and served as a tutor to heroes like Achilles?

Answer: Chiron.

91. Pan, the god of nature and wilderness, belonged to what group of goat-legged creatures?

Answer: Satyrs.

92. What general name was given to the race of aggressive, one-eyed giants?

Answer: Cyclopes.

93. What creature with a woman’s head, a lion’s body, and wings asked travelers a deadly riddle at Thebes?

Answer: The Sphinx.

94. What was the answer to the Sphinx’s famous riddle: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?”

Answer: Man (who crawls as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult, and uses a cane in old age).

95. Who solved the Sphinx’s riddle correctly?

Answer: Oedipus.

96. Which sea monster personified a massive, ship-swallowing whirlpool?

Answer: Charybdis.

97. Which mortal princess did the god of love, Eros, fall in love with?

Answer: Psyche.

98. Who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water until he wasted away?

Answer: Narcissus.

99. Which nymph was cursed to only repeat the last words spoken to her after trying to pursue Narcissus?

Answer: Echo.

100. Which Trojan princess was cursed by Apollo to speak true prophecies that no one would ever believe?

Answer: Cassandra.

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