Achilles Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
59 free Achilles trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Achilles trivia for anyone who knows the heel and wants the rest of the story. The quiz opens with the basics - his mother Thetis, the river Styx, the centaur who raised him, the Myrmidons - and then follows him through the Iliad: the quarrel over Briseis, Patroclus in borrowed armour, the new shield from Hephaestus, the fight with a river, the duel with Hector and the night Priam comes to beg for his son's body. It keeps going where Homer stops: Penthesilea and Memnon, the arrow from Paris, the contest for the armour, the ghost in the Odyssey, the cult on Snake Island and the Roman writers who thought he was a butcher. The last section covers Achilles in later culture - Zeno's tortoise, Dante's second circle, Shakespeare, Brad Pitt in Troy, Bob Dylan and The Song of Achilles. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you want the whole war, try our Iliad, Trojan Horse and Greek Mythology quizzes too.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to the famous legend, which part of Achilles's body was his only vulnerable spot?
His heel
His heel is a later addition to the story: Homer's Achilles has no weak spot at all, and in the Iliad an enemy spear grazes his arm and draws blood like any other man's.
Q 02Who plays Achilles in the 2004 film Troy?
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt injured his own Achilles tendon landing a leap in a fight scene, and the film's final duel had to be finished months later, once he had healed.
Q 03Who is Achilles's mother, a sea nymph?
Thetis
Thetis did not marry willingly: her mortal suitor had to keep hold of her while she turned herself into fire, water and wild beasts, and only then did she give in.
Q 04Who is Achilles's father, a king in Thessaly and a former Argonaut?
Peleus
Peleus reached Thessaly as an exile, driven out of Aegina over the killing of his half-brother; he then killed his new host by accident with a spear meant for the Calydonian boar.
Q 05Into which river does Achilles's mother dip him as an infant?
Styx
The Styx was the river the gods swore their oaths by: in Hesiod, a god who broke one lay in a trance for a year and was shut out of their feasts for nine more.
Q 06Which Trojan prince does Achilles kill and drag behind his chariot?
Hector
Hector's body was dragged for days, yet Homer says it stayed unmarked: Aphrodite anointed it with oil of roses and another god shaded it with a cloud.
Q 07In most versions of the myth, who shoots the arrow that kills Achilles?
Paris
Paris is only foretold as the killer in the Iliad: Homer never shows the death, and a dying Trojan champion warns Achilles that Paris and a god will bring him down at the Scaean Gates.
Q 08Who is Achilles's beloved childhood companion, killed while wearing Achilles's armour?
Patroclus
Patroclus borrowed the armour only to scare the Trojans away from the Greek ships, but he ignored the order to turn back and pressed on to the walls of Troy, where he was cut down.
Q 09Which centaur, the most righteous of his kind, educated the young Achilles?
Chiron
Chiron the healer could not heal himself: wounded by a poisoned arrow, the immortal centaur was in such pain that he is said to have given up his immortality in order to die.
Q 10Achilles commands which tribe of warriors at Troy?
Myrmidons
Myrmidons was read by the Greeks as 'ant-people', and one myth explains why: Zeus is said to have made the first of them from ants to refill an island emptied by plague.
Q 11What about Achilles is the central theme of the Iliad, named in the poem's very first word?
His wrath
His wrath, menis in Greek, opens the poem, and the Iliad follows it for only a few weeks of the ten-year war: it ends with a funeral, before the wooden horse or the fall of Troy.
Q 12Which goddess, left off the guest list at the wedding of Achilles's parents, threw a golden apple among the guests?
Eris
Eris, the spirit of strife, meant the apple 'for the fairest'; three goddesses each claimed it, and their quarrel is the mythical spark of the Trojan War.
Q 13Achilles withdraws from battle after being dishonoured by which commander of the Greek forces?
Agamemnon
Agamemnon soon paid for the insult: Achilles had his mother ask Zeus to favour the Trojans until the Greeks learned what they had lost.
Q 21Antilochus, who ran to tell Achilles that his companion was dead, was the son of which aged Greek king?
Nestor
Nestor outlived him: Antilochus is said to have died at Troy shielding his father in battle, and Homer has his bones laid in the same tomb as those of Achilles.
Q 22On which island is Achilles hidden, dressed as a girl, at the court of King Lycomedes?
Skyros
Skyros was his mother's idea: a seer had declared that Troy could not be taken without Achilles, and she knew that if he went to the war he would not come back.
Q 23Which Greek hero tricks Achilles into dropping his disguise as a girl?
Odysseus
Odysseus knew the game: he had feigned madness to dodge the same war and been caught out himself, so he set a trap that only a born warrior would walk into.
Q 14Which god forges Achilles's new armour, including his famous shield?
Hephaestus
Hephaestus was repaying a debt: in the Iliad he says Achilles's mother sheltered him for nine years after he was thrown out of Olympus for being lame.
Q 15Achilles fights which river god of the Trojan plain, furious that his waters are choked with corpses?
Scamander
Scamander rose in flood and came close to drowning him; Hera sent the fire god to scorch the banks and boil the water until the river begged for mercy.
Q 16The Greek commander lured which of his daughters to Aulis with a false promise of marriage to Achilles?
Iphigenia
Iphigenia was wanted as a sacrifice so that the windbound Greek fleet could sail for Troy; in many tellings Artemis snatches her from the altar and leaves a deer in her place.
Q 17In the Iliad, which goddess takes the form of Deiphobus to trick his brother into facing Achilles?
Athena
Athena, in his brother's shape, promised to stand and fight beside him, then vanished; he called for a second spear, found nobody there and knew the gods had tricked him.
Q 18Which Trojan king comes to Achilles's tent at night to beg for his son's body?
Priam
Priam kissed the hands that had killed so many of his sons; Achilles, reminded of his own ageing father, wept with him and agreed to hold off the fighting for the funeral.
Q 19Which god escorts the Trojan king safely to Achilles's tent?
Hermes
Hermes met the old king on the plain in the shape of a young nobleman, put the camp's sentries to sleep and drew back the bolts of the gate himself.
Q 20Which king of Ethiopia, son of the dawn goddess Eos, does Achilles kill?
Memnon
Memnon brought a great army to Troy's aid late in the war; after Achilles cut him down, his mother's tears moved Zeus to make him immortal.
Q 24In the Iliad, which instrument is Achilles playing when the Greek envoys reach his tent?
A lyre
A lyre he had taken as plunder from a sacked city: the envoys find the army's fiercest fighter singing of heroes' deeds while his friend listens in silence.
Q 25What is the name of Achilles's son, who fights at Troy after his father's death?
Neoptolemus
Neoptolemus was fetched to Troy as a youth because a seer said the city could not fall without him, and he was said to be the one man who showed no fear inside the wooden horse.
Q 26Which composer's last opera, staged in London, is named for Achilles's lover Deidamia?
Handel
Handel saw Deidamia close after three performances, gave up Italian opera for good and turned to English oratorios; he wrote Messiah later that same year.
Q 27The cruiser HMS Achilles, which helped corner the Graf Spee in 1939, sailed with which country's naval division?
New Zealand
New Zealand provided most of her crew; the ship was later sold to India, yet came back to play herself in the 1956 film The Battle of the River Plate.
Q 28Achilles's mother foretold that he could either die young with glory or live long in what?
Obscurity
Obscurity tempts him once: in the Iliad he threatens to sail home to a long, quiet life, then stays to avenge his friend, knowing it will cost him an early death.
Q 29Zeus and Poseidon stopped courting Achilles's mother because of a prophecy her son would be what?
Greater than his father
Greater than his father was a risk Zeus knew well, having overthrown his own father to take the throne, so the sea nymph was married off to a mortal instead.
Q 30In one infancy myth, Achilles's mother anoints him with what before trying to burn away his mortal parts?
Ambrosia
Ambrosia by day and fire by night was her plan, until her husband saw the baby in the flames and cried out; she abandoned them both and went back to the sea.