Ancient Olympics Trivia
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6correct to beat the crowd
48 free Ancient Olympics trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The ancient Olympic Games ran for well over a thousand years, and this quiz covers the whole span from a single foot race in 776 BC to a bronze plaque proving they were still going in AD 385. It starts with the basics (which god, which prize, what an Olympiad is, why athletes competed naked) and works through the events: stadion, diaulos and dolichos, the race in armour, wrestling and boxing, the pankration that only banned biting and gouging, halteres for the long jump and the four-horse chariot race that let a Spartan princess become the first female champion. Then come the people and the politics: Coroebus the cook, Milo and his calf, Leonidas of Rhodes and his twelve wreaths, Diagoras dying of joy, the judges from Elis, the truce and the Spartans who broke it, Sulla's looting, Nero's chariot crash, the Statue of Zeus, Kallipateira in disguise, and the emperors who revived, neglected and finally ended it all. Easy questions suit anyone who has watched a modern Olympics; the expert tier asks about mule carts and 2,000-mina fines. For the modern games, try our Olympics quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the ancient games, Olympia and the athletes involved, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01At the ancient Olympic festival's greatest sacrifice, a hecatomb, 100 of which animal were offered to Zeus?
Oxen
Oxen: the Greek hekatombe joins the words for 'hundred' and 'ox', and the offering was on such a scale that 'hecatomb' now means any great slaughter.
Q 02Greek historians named each four-year Olympiad after which person?
The sprint champion
The sprint champion gave each four-year Olympiad its name, so the Games became a shared calendar: historians counted their years from the first one, traditionally placed in 776 BC.
Q 03Which modern Olympic ritual, often assumed to be ancient, was actually invented for the 1936 Berlin Games?
The torch relay
The torch relay was first run for Berlin 1936, under organiser Carl Diem. The ancient Olympics never had one, though torch races were run at other Greek festivals.
Q 04Delphi crowned its winners with laurel, but the champion's wreath at Olympia was cut from which sacred tree?
Olive
Olive: the leaves came from a sacred wild olive at Olympia. Told that this was the only prize, a Persian officer is said to have cried out in alarm at men who competed for honour, not money.
Q 05The bronze statues of Zeus lining the way into ancient Olympia's stadium were paid for by whom?
Athletes caught cheating
Athletes caught cheating: their fines paid for the statues, each inscribed with the offence as a warning to competitors walking in. The first went up in 388 BC, after the boxer Eupolus bribed his opponents.
Q 06Which Christian emperor, who outlawed pagan worship, was reigning when the last recorded ancient Olympics were held in AD 393?
Theodosius I
Theodosius I banned pagan festivals in the 390s, which is traditionally taken as the end of the ancient games. In 426 a later emperor, Theodosius II, ordered Olympia's temples destroyed.
Q 07The only event at the first ancient Olympics was a sprint of about 190 metres, known by what Greek name?
The stadion
The stadion, one length of the track, gave English the word 'stadium'. Its first recorded winner, in 776 BC, was a local cook named Coroebus.
Q 08After the Olympic champion Theagenes died, his bronze statue was tried and thrown into the sea for which crime?
Murder
Murder: the statue toppled onto a man who came every night to flog it, and his sons took it to court. Thasos later fished it back out of the sea when an oracle blamed a famine on its exile.
Q 09Where did nearly all of the 40,000-odd spectators in ancient Olympia's stadium watch from?
Bare earth banks
Bare earth banks: the greatest games in Greece never built stands, so the crowd packed the stadium's sloping sides in the summer heat and only a handful of people had a seat.
Q 10Never run at the ancient Olympics, the marathon was invented for which modern Games?
Athens 1896
Athens 1896: French scholar Michel Bréal proposed a race from Marathon to recall a legendary messenger's run, and a Greek runner, Spyridon Louis, won it.
Q 11In the hoplitodromos, the last footrace added to the ancient Olympics, what did the runners carry?
A soldier's shield
A soldier's shield: runners in this 'race of the hoplites' also wore a helmet and, at first, leg guards, and the event is thought to have doubled as training for war.
Q 12What was the all-in ancient Olympic combat sport of punches, holds, kicks and chokes, introduced in 648 BC?
Pankration
Pankration put only biting and eye-gouging off limits, and legend said the hero Theseus devised the style to overcome the Minotaur.
Q 13When Arrhichion died just as his rival submitted, what did the Olympic judges do?
Crowned the dead man
Q 21How did Cynisca become the ancient Olympics' first female victor?
Owning a chariot team
Owning a chariot team: victory went to the owner, not the hired driver. Cynisca won in 396 and 392 BC, and her monument at Olympia boasted that she was the only woman in all Greece to have done it.
Q 22Which Athenian, according to Plutarch, entered a record seven chariots in a single Olympic race?
Alcibiades
Alcibiades took first, second and either third or fourth place with his seven teams in 416 BC, a show of wealth that helped him talk Athens into sending its great expedition to Sicily the next year.
Q 23Which Roman emperor was thrown from his chariot at Olympia in AD 67 yet was declared the winner anyway?
Nero
Crowned the dead man: caught in a stranglehold, Arrhichion wrenched his rival's foot so hard that the man signalled surrender at the very moment Arrhichion himself died.
Q 14Which wrestler from Croton won six Olympic titles and reputedly trained by carrying a calf every day until it was full-grown?
Milo
Milo is also said to have led Croton's army into battle wearing his Olympic crowns and a lion skin, like Heracles. In legend he died trapped by a tree he tried to split, a meal for wolves.
Q 15After the discus, javelin, long jump and a sprint, which event came last in the ancient Olympic pentathlon?
Wrestling
Wrestling came last, and it seems only the leaders got that far: Xenophon writes of pentathlon finalists who had qualified for it. How the overall winner was decided is no longer known.
Q 16Ancient Olympic long jumpers swung what in each hand?
Stone weights
Stone weights, or lead ones: jumpers swung these halteres forward as they took off, then thrust them behind and let go before landing, turning the backward throw into extra distance.
Q 17Instead of gloves, ancient Olympic boxers bound their fists in what?
Leather straps
Leather straps, called himantes: at first simple ox-hide thongs that spared the boxer's own knuckles, later harder 'sharp thongs' meant to do the other man more damage.
Q 18Ancient Greeks trained and competed in the nude, a habit behind which English word, from the Greek for 'naked'?
Gymnasium
Gymnasium comes from gymnos, 'naked'. One tradition says the habit began at Olympia in 720 BC, when the sprinter Orsippus let his loincloth fall mid-race and won.
Q 19With no rounds or points, what ended an ancient Olympic boxing match?
One man unable to go on
One man unable to go on: bouts ran until a boxer was knocked out or raised a finger to concede. With no weight classes and opponents drawn by lot, a small man might face a giant.
Q 20Which was the first equestrian event added to the ancient Olympics, in 680 BC?
The four-horse chariot race
The four-horse chariot race ran twelve laps of the hippodrome. Teams burst from a staggered gate shaped like a ship's prow, released as a bronze eagle rose and a bronze dolphin dropped.
Nero fell from a ten-horse chariot, gave up before the finish and was crowned anyway. He also made Olympia add a music contest, against all custom, and won that too.
Q 24Which Roman general looted Olympia in 86 BC and staged the 175th Olympic Games in Rome?
Sulla
Sulla took Olympia's treasures to pay for his war with Mithridates. In 80 BC he summoned the athletes to Rome for his victory shows, leaving Olympia with nothing to hold but footraces.
Q 25What were the judges of the ancient Olympic Games, all drawn from the host region, called?
Hellanodikai
Hellanodikai means 'judges of the Greeks'. Though every one of them was a local, they were famed for fairness and spent ten months before each festival being schooled in the rules.
Q 26The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders, was made by which sculptor around 435 BC?
Phidias
Phidias had already made the colossal Athena for the Parthenon. His workshop at Olympia was unearthed in the 1950s, and in it lay a cup scratched with the words 'I belong to Phidias'.
Q 27The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was made of which materials over a wooden frame?
Ivory and gold
Ivory and gold: ivory for the god's skin, gold for his robe. Strabo wrote that the seated Zeus so nearly touched the ceiling that if he stood up he would take the roof off the temple.
Q 28In one version of an Olympic founding myth, which hero won his bride Hippodamia by having King Oenomaus's chariot sabotaged?
Pelops
Pelops had the king's charioteer tamper with the axle pins, in the less flattering telling, and Oenomaus died in the crash. The Peloponnese, 'island of Pelops', is said to take its name from the winner.
Q 29The sacred precinct at Olympia was known by what name, from a local word for 'the grove'?
The Altis
The Altis was a walled, wooded enclosure that held the temples and altars, but not the games themselves: the stadium and the racecourse lay just outside it.
Q 30Which of the four great Panhellenic Games was held at Delphi in honour of Apollo?
Pythian
Pythian: the games began as a contest for musicians, and athletic events were added only in the 580s BC. Their winners were crowned with laurel.