Aphrodite Trivia
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48 free Aphrodite trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Aphrodite trivia that goes beyond 'goddess of love'. The quiz starts with the myths - the two rival birth stories (foam from Uranus's severed parts, or a daughter of Zeus and Dione), the marriage to Hephaestus and the invisible net that trapped her with Ares, Adonis and the boar, Anchises and Aeneas, the golden apple and the Judgement of Paris, Pygmalion's statue, Atalanta's golden apples and the stinking women of Lemnos. It then looks at her cult and origins - Cythera and Cyprus, Corinth's courtesans, the Aphrodisia, her links to Astarte, Ishtar and Inanna, and the epithets Urania, Pandemos and 'smile-loving' - and at her Roman counterpart Venus, ancestress of Caesar and namesake of Friday. The last section is Aphrodite in art: Praxiteles' nude at Knidos, Apelles, Botticelli's Birth of Venus and the armless Venus de Milo. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Athena, Apollo and Greek Mythology quizzes.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty and what?
Pleasure and procreation
Pleasure and procreation were her business: the Greek word aphrodisios, 'belonging to Aphrodite', came to mean the pleasures of sex, and it gave English the word aphrodisiac.
Q 02Which flower was said to have turned from white to red when Aphrodite bled on it, running to the dying Adonis?
The rose
The rose: in one telling she tore her foot on its thorns as she ran, and her blood dyed the white petals for good. The red anemone, by contrast, was said to have sprung from Adonis's own blood.
Q 03In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born from sea foam produced by what?
Uranus's severed genitals
Uranus's severed genitals: his son Cronus cut them off with a sickle and flung them into the sea, and she rose from the froth. Greeks heard aphros, 'foam', in her name, though scholars doubt that is where it comes from.
Q 04In Homer's Iliad, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and which goddess?
Dione
Dione, whose name is simply a feminine form of Zeus's own, was worshipped beside him at his oracle of Dodona. In the Iliad the wounded Aphrodite runs to her mother's lap to be comforted and healed.
Q 05In the Odyssey, the goddess of beauty is the unfaithful wife of which god?
Hephaestus
Hephaestus, the lame smith of the gods, is her husband in the Odyssey. The Iliad tells it differently: there his wife is a goddess called Charis, and Aphrodite appears to have no husband at all.
Q 06Which mortal princess drew so many worshippers away from Aphrodite that the jealous goddess set her a string of impossible tasks?
Psyche
Psyche won in the end: the goddess's own son, sent to make her love the vilest of men, fell for her himself, and after her last task in the underworld she was made immortal. The tale comes from the Roman novelist Apuleius.
Q 07How did Aphrodite's husband catch her in bed with her lover, in the Odyssey?
With an invisible net
With an invisible net of fine chains, which he forged himself and hung over the bed. Tipped off by the sun god Helios, he sprang the trap and then called the other gods in to laugh at the pair.
Q 08After catching Aphrodite with Ares, what did her husband demand from Zeus?
His bride price
His bride price back: in the Odyssey he vows to hold the lovers until Zeus returns every gift he paid for her. Poseidon wins their release by pledging that Ares will pay an adulterer's fine.
Q 09Aphrodite's mortal lover Adonis was killed by which animal?
A wild boar
A wild boar gored him out hunting, though Aphrodite had warned him off dangerous game. In some tellings a jealous Ares sent the beast; in others it was the anger of Artemis that set it on him.
Q 10Zeus ended a custody fight over the infant Adonis by splitting his year between Aphrodite and which goddess?
Persephone
Persephone had been given the baby to look after and refused to hand him back. In the best-known telling Zeus gave each goddess a third of the year, and Adonis chose to spend his own third with Aphrodite too.
Q 11Zeus made Aphrodite fall for which mortal herdsman, the father Aeneas would one day carry out of burning Troy?
Anchises
Anchises was Zeus's revenge on her for making so many gods fall for mortals. She came to him on Mount Ida disguised as a Phrygian princess, and afterwards warned him never to boast of it.
Q 12Which son of Theseus scorned Aphrodite for Artemis, and was destroyed when the goddess made his stepmother fall for him?
Hippolytus
Hippolytus had sworn himself to the virgin huntress and wanted nothing to do with love. In Euripides's play the rejected Phaedra kills herself and leaves a note accusing him, and his father's curse does the rest.
Q 13Which Roman leader claimed descent from Aphrodite through her son Aeneas, and built the goddess a temple in his new forum?
Q 21In Athens, officials purified Aphrodite's shrine before her festival procession by sacrificing which bird, sacred to the goddess?
A dove
A dove: an Athenian decree of the 280s BC tells the city's officials to supply one for the purification, then to wash the statues and whitewash the altars. The dove was the best known of her sacred birds.
Q 22Aphrodite's epithets Cytherea and Cypris come from the two islands that both claimed what?
To be her birthplace
To be her birthplace: in Hesiod the newborn goddess drifts past Cythera, off the southern Peloponnese, and comes ashore on Cyprus, far to the east. Poets used both names for her ever after.
Q 23Scholars trace Aphrodite's cult back through the Phoenician goddess Astarte to which Mesopotamian goddess of love and war?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar's clan, the Julii, traced their name to Iulus, son of Aeneas. Before the battle of Pharsalus he vowed Venus a temple, and in 46 BC he dedicated it to her as Genetrix, 'the Mother' of his line.
Q 14What did Aphrodite promise Paris in exchange for judging her the fairest goddess?
The world's most beautiful woman
The world's most beautiful woman was Helen, already the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, so collecting the prize started the Trojan War. Hera had offered Paris a great kingdom, and Athena success in war.
Q 15Which uninvited goddess threw a golden apple marked 'for the fairest' among the guests at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis?
Eris
Eris, the goddess of strife, was the one deity left off the guest list. Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each claimed her apple, Zeus passed the judging to the Trojan prince Paris, and the quarrel ended in war.
Q 16In the Iliad, which Greek hero spears Aphrodite in the wrist and goes on to wound Ares as well?
Diomedes
Diomedes, urged on by Athena, cuts her wrist as she carries her son Aeneas from the field. She flees to Olympus in Ares's own chariot, where Zeus tells her that her business is love, not war.
Q 17Aphrodite brought to life the ivory statue carved by which Cypriot sculptor?
Pygmalion
Pygmalion had sworn off women, then fell in love with his own carving. In Ovid's telling he prayed at the goddess's festival for a bride like his ivory girl, went home, kissed the statue and felt its lips grow warm.
Q 18Aphrodite's gift of golden apples let Hippomenes win a footrace, and a bride, against which swift huntress?
Atalanta
Atalanta would marry only a man who could outrun her, and the losers paid with their lives. Hippomenes tossed the three apples aside one by one, and each time she left the track to pick one up.
Q 19When the women of Lemnos neglected her rites, how did Aphrodite drive their husbands into the arms of Thracian captives?
They stank horribly
They stank horribly, in the best-known telling, so their husbands took up with women captured in Thrace. The wives then killed every man on the island, all but the king, whom his daughter Hypsipyle hid.
Q 20Aphrodite is almost always accompanied by which winged god, in later myth her own son?
Eros
Eros is her son in most later tellings, and her constant companion. Hesiod has it the other way round: there he is one of the first powers in the cosmos, already on hand to escort her when she rises from the sea.
Ishtar
Ishtar, the Sumerians' Inanna, ruled sexual love and war alike. Aphrodite's lover Adonis came west with her: he began as the consort of Ishtar-Astarte, and his name is simply the Phoenician adon, 'lord'.
Q 24In Plato's Symposium, what title does the 'heavenly' Aphrodite carry, as opposed to Pandemos?
Urania
Urania, 'heavenly', is for Plato's speaker the elder Aphrodite, who inspires love of the mind, while Pandemos, 'of all the people', stirs mere bodily desire. In real worship both were ordinary titles of one goddess.
Q 25Which Greek city, famous for its expensive courtesans, had a major temple of Aphrodite on its acropolis?
Corinth
Corinth's temple, the geographer Strabo wrote, owned more than a thousand courtesans dedicated to the goddess. Ship captains spent so freely on them, he adds, that a proverb warned the voyage to Corinth was not for every man.
Q 26Which sister goddesses were Aphrodite's handmaids, bathing and anointing her at her temple in Paphos on Cyprus?
The Graces
The Graces, goddesses of charm and beauty, bathe her in divine oil at Paphos in a Homeric hymn before she sets out to seduce a mortal, and were said to weave her robes as well. There were usually three of them.
Q 27In the Iliad, Hera borrows which love charm of Aphrodite's, embroidered with desire, to seduce Zeus away from the war?
Girdle
Girdle is the usual English for the kestos himas, an embroidered band that held love and desire. Hera got it with a lie about mending a quarrel, then used it on Zeus on Mount Ida while the Greeks rallied.
Q 28What wedding gift, given to Aphrodite's daughter when she married Cadmus of Thebes, brought ruin on everyone who later owned it?
A necklace
A necklace: in the usual telling the goddess's wronged husband forged it for Harmonia, her daughter by Ares, as revenge for the affair. It passed down the royal house of Thebes, and each owner came to grief.
Q 29The fertility god Priapus was usually said to be Aphrodite's son by which god?
Dionysus
Dionysus was the usual father: the historian Diodorus reasoned that wine leaves men inclined to the pleasures of love. Hera, the story goes, cursed the child in the womb, so that he was born grotesque.
Q 30The gods turned Adonis's pregnant mother into which tree, whose fragrant resin was said to be her tears?
A myrrh tree
A myrrh tree: she is the Myrrha of Ovid's poem, and she was fleeing her own father's drawn sword when the gods transformed her. Months later the trunk split open and the baby Adonis came out.