The Aeneid Trivia
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60 free The Aeneid trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Aeneid trivia quiz covers Virgil's national epic of Rome book by book, from 'Arma virumque cano' to the last spear-thrust that kills Turnus. The easy questions are the ones any student of the classics should manage: who wrote it, which hero it follows, which queen he abandons in Carthage, and which famous wooden animal ends the Trojan War. From there it goes deeper: the number of lines and books, the meter, the goddess whose grudge drives the plot, the two Greeks the poem models itself on, the priest eaten by sea serpents, the ghost who tells Aeneas to sail for Hesperia, the Harpy's prophecy about eating tables, the funeral games in Sicily, the helmsman lost overboard, the Sibyl and the underworld, the shield that shows Actium, Nisus and Euryalus, Camilla, Pallas's belt, the poet's dying wish to burn the manuscript, and the operas and novels it inspired. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the Aeneid, Virgil, Aeneas, Dido and related figures before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Roman mythology, Ancient Rome and Greek mythology quizzes next.
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Q 01Which poem about farming did Virgil finish just before he began work on the Aeneid?
The Georgics
The Georgics: Virgil is said to have read it aloud to Augustus over four days, his patron Maecenas taking over whenever his voice gave out, and he then gave the rest of his life to the Aeneid.
Q 02Which river's god appears to Aeneas in a dream and calms his own current so the Trojan ships can row upstream?
The Tiber
The Tiber: old Tiberinus rises from the water to tell the sleeping Aeneas that he has reached his true home, then holds the river smooth as a pond all night so the oars meet no resistance.
Q 03Which poem was rearranged into twelve books like the Aeneid?
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost. For the second edition of 1674 Milton split two of his longest books in two, giving his Christian epic the same twelve-book shape as Virgil's poem.
Q 04Which familiar saying does Turnus use to rally his men against the landing Trojans in Book 10 of the Aeneid?
Fortune favours the bold
Fortune favours the bold. Turnus shouts it as he leads a charge on the Trojans while they are still stumbling ashore, though in the end fortune deserts him and he dies at Aeneas's hand.
Q 05In which meter is the Aeneid written?
Dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter. Early Roman epics used the native Saturnian verse until Ennius borrowed the six-beat line of Greek epic for his Annales, and his choice made it the standard metre for Latin epic.
Q 06What are the famous opening words of the Aeneid?
Arma virumque cano
Arma virumque cano. It means 'I sing of arms and the man', and Bernard Shaw borrowed the phrase for the title of his comedy Arms and the Man.
Q 07At a feast Aeneas joins on the future site of Rome, which hero is honoured for killing the fire-breathing Cacus?
Hercules
Hercules. Cacus stole eight of his cattle and dragged them into his den backwards by their tails so the tracks pointed the wrong way, but one cow's answering bellow gave him away.
Q 08Who is Aeneas's divine mother?
Venus
Venus. She meets her shipwrecked son near Carthage disguised as a huntress and reveals herself only as she turns to go, and he protests that she always mocks him with false shapes.
Q 09Whom does Juno bribe with the offer of a nymph bride to wreck Aeneas's ships in Book 1?
Aeolus
Aeolus. Juno offers the keeper of the winds her loveliest nymph, Deiopea, as a wife, and he looses a storm; Neptune, angry that his sea was stirred without his leave, calms it.
Q 10Whom does Cupid impersonate to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas?
Ascanius, the hero's son
Ascanius, the hero's son. The real boy is carried off asleep to the groves of Idalium, and Cupid takes his shape to sit in Dido's lap at the banquet and breathe love into her.
Q 11Dido, queen of Carthage, had fled which Phoenician city after her brother murdered her husband?
Tyre
Tyre. Her brother Pygmalion, its king, secretly murdered her rich husband for his gold; the dead man's ghost showed her where treasure lay buried, and she sailed with it to Africa.
Q 12Which Trojan priest speared the wooden horse and was then killed with his sons by sea serpents?
Laocoön
Laocoön. His warning gave us 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts', and when the serpents struck, the Trojans decided he had been punished for wounding the horse and hauled it inside.
Q 13Which Greek was left behind to convince the Trojans the horse was a harmless offering?
Sinon
Sinon. Posing as a runaway the Greeks had meant to sacrifice, he swore the horse was an offering built too big for Troy's gates, then slipped its bolts that night to let the soldiers out.
Q 21Which deity does Jupiter send to remind Aeneas of his duty and make him leave Dido?
Mercury
Mercury. He finds Aeneas in a purple cloak Dido made him, laying out new houses for Carthage, and asks why he is building a fine city for a wife while forgetting the kingdom owed to his son.
Q 22How does Dido die?
She stabs herself on a pyre with Aeneas's sword
She stabs herself on a pyre with Aeneas's sword. She had the pyre built on the pretence of a magic rite to burn his belongings and cure her love, and she dies on the bed they had shared.
Q 23On which island does Aeneas hold funeral games for his father in Book 5?
Sicily
Q 14Whose ghost appears to Aeneas in a dream and tells him to flee burning Troy?
Hector's
Hector's. He appears torn and bloodied, as he was after Achilles dragged him behind a chariot, and entrusts Troy's household gods to Aeneas to carry to a new city overseas.
Q 15Whom does Aeneas famously carry on his back out of burning Troy?
His father Anchises
His father Anchises. The old man holds the household gods as he rides on his son's shoulders, because Aeneas, fresh from the fighting, says his own bloodstained hands must not touch them.
Q 16What omen appears on Ascanius as his family argues over fleeing burning Troy?
Harmless flames on his head
Harmless flames on his head. The family tries to douse them in a panic, but thunder and a shooting star confirm the fire as a sign from Jupiter, and that settles the argument about leaving.
Q 17Which monsters foul the Trojans' feast and warn that hunger will make them eat their tables?
Harpies
Harpies. Their leader Celaeno's curse comes true painlessly in Italy, when the hungry Trojans eat the flatbread they were using as plates and Aeneas's son jokes that they are eating their tables.
Q 18At Buthrotum, a replica of Troy, Aeneas meets which grieving Trojan widow?
Andromache
Andromache. She is pouring offerings at an empty tomb she has raised for her first husband when Aeneas walks up, and at first she cannot believe the man in front of her is alive.
Q 19The Trojans rescue Achaemenides, a Greek castaway whom Ulysses had left behind in whose lair?
Polyphemus
Polyphemus. Starving and ragged, Achaemenides begs his old enemies to take him aboard, and as they row off the blinded Cyclops wades out after the sound of their oars, roaring.
Q 20Where do Dido and Aeneas shelter together from a storm during the royal hunt in Book 4 of the Aeneid?
A cave
A cave. Juno sends the storm to bring the pair together, with lightning for wedding torches, but Virgil adds that Dido only 'calls it marriage' and uses the name to cover her fault.
Sicily. Storms drive his ships back to the island exactly a year after his father died there, so Aeneas marks the anniversary at the tomb with races, boxing and archery.
Q 24What do the Trojan women, incited by Juno through Iris, try to burn in Book 5?
The fleet
The fleet. Worn out by seven years of wandering, the women torch the ships to end the voyage; Jupiter's rainstorm saves all but four, and Aeneas founds a town for those who want to stay.
Q 25Which helmsman is put to sleep by Somnus and falls overboard as the price of safe passage to Italy?
Palinurus
Palinurus. Neptune had promised the Trojans a safe crossing at the price of one life; the helmsman's ghost later tells Aeneas he swam ashore alive and was killed there, near the cape still named after him.
Q 26Who guides Aeneas into the underworld in Book 6?
The Cumaean Sibyl
The Cumaean Sibyl. Apollo's aged priestess warns Aeneas that going down is easy, because death's door stands open night and day, and that the real labour is getting back up.
Q 27What must Aeneas pluck and carry as a gift for Proserpina before he can enter the underworld?
A golden bough
A golden bough. It comes away only for someone the fates have called, and two doves guide Aeneas to the tree; James Frazer later took the image as the title of his study of myth and religion.
Q 28Which figure of the underworld is put to sleep with a drugged honey cake so that Aeneas can pass?
Cerberus
Cerberus. The three-headed dog gulps the cake and sprawls asleep across his den, and in English a bribe that quiets a troublemaker is called 'a sop to Cerberus'.
Q 29Which king in Italy is told by his father's oracle to give his daughter to a foreign husband?
Latinus
Latinus. The oracle of his father Faunus promises that a foreign son-in-law will lift the family's name to the stars, so he offers his daughter to Aeneas before the two have even met.
Q 30Which Fury does Juno summon from the underworld to stir up war between the Trojans and the Italians?
Alecto
Alecto. Disguised as an old priestess, she urges the sleeping Turnus to fight; when he laughs at her, she shows her true form and hurls a torch into his chest, and he wakes shouting for weapons.