Apollo Trivia
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47 free Apollo trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Apollo trivia for the god, not just the moon landings (though we cover why NASA borrowed the name). The quiz opens with the myths - Leto's nine days of labour on floating Delos, the slaying of the Python at Delphi, Daphne turned into a laurel, Hyacinthus and the discus, Marsyas flayed for losing a music contest, Niobe's fourteen children, Cassandra's useless gift of prophecy and the arrow that found Achilles's heel. It then covers his cult and character: Phoebus, the lyre traded from Hermes, the Muses, the Pythia and the oracle, the Pythian Games, the animals and epithets, Apollo the plague-bringer and healer, and his later fusion with the sun god Helios. The last questions look at Apollo in Rome and afterwards - Augustus, the Apollo Belvedere and Nietzsche's Apollonian versus Dionysian. Questions run from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Athena, Hades, Poseidon and Greek Mythology quizzes, and Apollo 13 for the mission.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Apollo is the twin brother of which goddess?
Artemis
Artemis, in one telling, was born first and then helped her mother deliver Apollo.
Q 02Who was Apollo's mother?
Leto
Leto later turned the Lycian peasants who stirred up the mud of a pond to stop her drinking into frogs.
Q 03On which island was Apollo born?
Delos
Delos was then a floating island, and in Callimachus's hymn the unborn Apollo speaks from the womb to ask to be born there.
Q 04Apollo's oracle told which king that if he attacked Persia, he would destroy a great empire?
Croesus
Croesus marched on the Persians and lost his own kingdom, as they captured his capital Sardis and took him prisoner.
Q 05Apollo was the patron deity of which famous oracle?
Delphi
Delphi was hailed as the centre of the world, the spot where two eagles released by Zeus from opposite ends of the earth are said to have met.
Q 06Which monstrous serpent did Apollo kill at the site of his future oracle?
Python
Python, in one telling, had hunted Apollo's pregnant mother, and Apollo slew the serpent to avenge her.
Q 07Which nymph turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo's pursuit?
Daphne
Ovid blames Cupid, who shot Apollo with a golden arrow that kindles love and Daphne with a blunt leaden one that repels it.
Q 08Apollo's chief epithet, meaning 'bright', is what?
Phoebus
Phoebus echoes the name of his grandmother Phoebe, the Titan who in Aeschylus hands the oracle to him as a birthday gift.
Q 09From the 5th century BC, Apollo was increasingly identified with which other god?
Helios
Helios was the god of the Colossus of Rhodes, which the Rhodians paid for by selling the siege gear an attacking army left behind.
Q 10Which emperor, a lyre-player like Apollo, sang on stage?
Nero
Nero toured Greece entering contests, and he was allowed to win every one of them.
Q 11Apollo's son Asclepius was famous as what?
A healer
Asclepius became so skilled a healer that he raised the dead, so Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt.
Q 12Apollo took revenge for his son's death by killing whom, the makers of Zeus's thunderbolt?
The Cyclopes
Zeus nearly hurled Apollo into Tartarus for killing the Cyclopes, but instead made him serve a mortal for a year.
Q 13After killing the makers of Zeus's thunderbolt, Apollo was sentenced to serve which mortal king as a herdsman?
Admetus
Admetus was later rewarded: Apollo won from the Fates a promise that he could escape death if someone would die in his place.
Q 21As Musagetes, Apollo led which group in dance?
The Muses
Plato said humanity's delight in rhythm and harmony was the gift of Apollo and these nine sisters.
Q 22In the Iliad, Apollo sends a plague on the Greek camp because Agamemnon refused to return whose daughter?
Chryses, his priest
Apollo forced Agamemnon to give back the daughter of Chryses, his priest, so the king took Achilles's prize Briseis instead, provoking the anger that drives the Iliad.
Q 23In the Iliad, Apollo is called Smintheus, a title traditionally linked with which animal?
Mice
Mice, in a tale Strabo tells, ate the leather gear of settlers from Crete, fulfilling an oracle to stay where the 'earth-born' attacked them.
Q 14Who challenged Apollo to a music contest and was flayed alive for losing?
Marsyas
Marsyas had found the pipes Athena threw away because playing them disfigured her face.
Q 15When King Midas preferred Pan's pipes to Apollo's lyre, what did Apollo give him?
The ears of a donkey
Midas hid the ears of a donkey, but his barber whispered the secret into a hole, and the reeds that grew there repeated it.
Q 16Which object, blown off course by a jealous wind in one telling, killed Apollo's beloved Hyacinthus?
A discus
The discus Apollo threw killed Hyacinthus, and from the youth's blood the god raised the flower that bears his name.
Q 17After Apollo and his twin killed Queen Niobe's children, what did the grieving mother become?
A weeping rock
Niobe became a weeping rock on Mount Sipylus, and in Homer Zeus turned her people to stone so no one could bury her children.
Q 18Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy; what curse did he add when she rejected him?
No one would believe her
Cassandra warned the Trojans that the wooden horse held armed men, but no one would believe her.
Q 19The Sibyl of Cumae asked Apollo for as many years of life as what?
Grains of sand in her hand
She got a year for each of the grains of sand in her hand, but no youth, and withered until only her voice remained.
Q 20Apollo acquired the lyre from which god, who built it from a tortoise shell?
Hermes
Hermes stole Apollo's cattle as a newborn, then settled the quarrel by giving Apollo the lyre.
Q 24Apollo caused the death of Achilles by doing what?
Guiding Paris's arrow
Guiding Paris's arrow fulfilled the dying Hector's prophecy that Paris and Apollo would kill Achilles at the Scaean gates.
Q 25What did Apollo do to hide Hector from Achilles during their duel?
Wrapped him in mist
Having wrapped him in mist to save him, Apollo later covered the dead Hector with a dark cloud so the sun would not parch the body.
Q 26Which Trojan king did Apollo and Poseidon serve, tending cattle and building the walls?
Laomedon
Laomedon refused to pay the gods, so Apollo sent a plague and Poseidon a sea monster against Troy.
Q 27In Aeschylus's Eumenides, Apollo defends which prince on trial for killing his mother to avenge Agamemnon?
Orestes
Orestes was acquitted with Athena's vote on his side, and she then persuaded the Furies who had hunted him to accept the verdict.
Q 28Which goddess, leaping into the sea to escape Zeus, became Apollo's floating birth-island?
Asteria
In Pindar, Asteria's drifting island stopped wandering when four pillars rose from the roots of the earth as the pregnant goddess set foot on it.
Q 29In Ovid's telling, who told Apollo that his lover Coronis, pregnant with Asclepius, was unfaithful?
His raven
Apollo repaid his raven for the bad news by turning its white feathers black.
Q 30In Ovid, which tree did Apollo's young favourite become after accidentally killing his beloved pet stag?
Cypress
Cyparissus grieved so deeply that Apollo could not console him, and as he wept he became a cypress.