Ares Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
59 free Ares trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ares trivia is a study in how much the Greeks disliked their own war god. Zeus calls him the most hateful of the Olympians, Athena flattens him with a boulder, two giants stuff him in a bronze jar for thirteen months, and the whole male pantheon turns up to laugh when Hephaestus catches him in a net with Aphrodite. Even his cult was odd: cities in Asia Minor chained his statue once a year and put it on trial. This quiz covers the mythology (his birth, Aphrodite, Phobos and Deimos, Harmonia, the dragon of Thebes, the Golden Fleece grove, the rooster Alectryon, Cycnus and his temple of skulls), the cult (Sparta's puppy sacrifice, the Scythian sword, the Areopagus, the oracle of Ares in Anatolia, the kings of Aksum), the Roman rebranding as Mars, the moons of Mars named for his sons, and his afterlife in Wonder Woman comics, God of War and the DC films. Easy questions suit anyone who knows he was the god of war; the expert tier assumes you know which fish he turned into to escape Typhon. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Ares and related subjects, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The planet symbol for Mars, Ares's Roman counterpart, is traditionally read as which two of his belongings?
A shield and spear
A shield and spear, by the usual reading: the circle is the shield and the arrow the spear. The same sign now also means 'male', just as the Venus symbol, read as the goddess's hand mirror, means 'female'.
Q 02Who were the parents of Ares?
Zeus and Hera
Zeus and Hera. In the Iliad Zeus tells the wounded Ares he is the most hateful god on Olympus, then has him healed anyway because he is his own son.
Q 03Which daughter of Ares wore the belt sought in a famous labour?
Hippolyta
Hippolyta. In Apollodorus she promised to hand the belt over, until Hera spread a rumour that she was being kidnapped and the hero, suspecting a trap, killed her for it.
Q 04Which goddess was Ares's famous lover, caught with him in a trap set by her husband?
Aphrodite
Aphrodite. The pair were let go only when another god offered to stand surety for what Ares owed, and she slipped away to her shrine at Paphos on Cyprus.
Q 05Which god netted Ares and his lover in an invisible trap and invited the Olympians to laugh?
Hephaestus
Hephaestus. He forged chains as fine as spider's web and pretended to leave for Lemnos; the goddesses stayed home out of modesty, but the gods laughed and one said he'd gladly swap places.
Q 06Which god spotted Ares's secret affair and reported it to the wronged husband?
Helios
Helios. As the sun he sees and hears everything from the sky; he is also the god who tells Demeter that Hades has carried off her daughter.
Q 07After being caught in a net with his lover, Ares fled to which region, regarded as his homeland?
Thrace
Thrace. The Greeks gave this unpopular god a home among the Thracians, a northern people they regarded as wild and war-loving.
Q 08Ares punished Alectryon, the lookout who overslept, by turning him into which animal?
A rooster
A rooster. Alectryon was posted at the door while Ares visited his lover and dozed off; Lucian jokes that the bird has crowed before dawn ever since to make up for it.
Q 09Which two sons of Ares, his companions in battle, share their names with the moons of Mars?
Deimos and Phobos
Deimos and Phobos. Their names mean dread and fear, Phobos being the root of 'phobia', and in the Iliad Ares orders the pair to yoke his horses when he wants to storm into battle.
Q 10Which author's 1726 satire gave Mars two moons, 151 years before astronomers found the pair named for Ares's sons?
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift. In Gulliver's Travels the astronomers of the flying island Laputa have already tracked two small satellites circling Mars, so a crater on one of the real moons now carries his name.
Q 11Which daughter of Ares became the wife of the hero Cadmus?
Harmonia
Harmonia. All the gods came down to feast at the wedding, but the necklace she was given there was said to bring misfortune to everyone who later owned it.
Q 12What sprang from the ground when Cadmus sowed the teeth of the dragon that guarded Ares's spring?
Armed warriors
Armed warriors, known as the Spartoi. In one telling Cadmus threw stones among them, each man thought a neighbour had hit him, and they fought until only five were left.
Q 13After killing the dragon of Ares, Cadmus served the god for eight years before he could rule which city?
Thebes
Thebes. Apollodorus calls the penance an 'eternal year', which then meant eight of ours, and only once it was served did Athena secure Cadmus the throne.
Q 21Which hero killed Cycnus, a son of Ares who preyed on travellers bound for Delphi?
Heracles
Heracles. In the Shield of Heracles Ares then attacks him to avenge his son and is speared in the thigh; in another telling Zeus parts the two with a thunderbolt.
Q 22In Antoninus Liberalis, which monster's attack on Olympus sent Ares fleeing to Egypt disguised as a fish?
Typhon
Typhon. Nearly all the gods hid in animal shapes until Zeus struck the monster with a thunderbolt and piled Mount Etna on top of him.
Q 23On the Areopagus, Ares was said to have been tried for killing whose son?
Poseidon's
Poseidon's. His son Halirrhothius had assaulted Ares's daughter Alcippe, so the gods acquitted Ares, and Athens later tried its murder cases on the same hill.
Q 14In the Argonautica, who steals the Golden Fleece from a grove sacred to Ares?
Jason
Jason. The fleece hung on an oak in Ares's grove at Colchis, watched by a dragon that never slept, until Medea drugged the beast and the prize could be carried off.
Q 15In Apollodorus, which goddess tricked the two giants who had jailed Ares into spearing each other?
Artemis
Artemis. She turned into a deer and leapt between Otus and Ephialtes on Naxos; each brother threw at the animal and hit the other.
Q 16Which god rescued Ares from the bronze jar where two giants had kept him chained?
Hermes
Hermes. The giants' stepmother tipped him off after thirteen months, and Homer says Ares was close to death in his chains when Hermes stole him out.
Q 17In the Iliad, which Greek hero wounded Ares with a spear driven home by Athena?
Diomedes
Diomedes. Ares bellowed as loud as nine or ten thousand warriors and fled to Olympus to complain, and the side he had been helping had to fall back.
Q 18In the Iliad, Ares broke a promise to fight for the Greeks and led the Trojans beside which prince?
Hector
Hector. A Greek captain who spotted the god at the prince's side, disguised as a mortal, told his men to back away slowly, since no one should fight the gods.
Q 19How did Athena overpower Ares when he attacked her in the Iliad?
She struck him with a boulder
She struck him with a boulder, a field's boundary stone that she snatched up from the plain, then laughed as he crashed down in his clanging armour.
Q 20Which Greek hero killed Penthesilea, a warrior daughter of Ares who came to fight for Troy?
Achilles
Achilles. Apollodorus says he fell in love with her once she was dead, then killed Thersites, a fellow Greek who jeered at him for it.
Q 24Which apostle preached a famous sermon on the Areopagus, the Athenian hill of Ares?
Paul
Paul. Acts 17 has him tell the Athenians he had found one of their altars inscribed 'to an unknown god'; some listeners scoffed, but Dionysius the Areopagite was won over.
Q 25Pausanias reports that Spartan youths sacrificed which animal to the war god as the bravest of tame beasts?
A puppy
A puppy. Each team offered one at night, then fought with fists, feet and teeth on a moated island until one side had shoved the other into the water.
Q 26Plutarch says Spartans gave Ares a small bird for winning by open assault, but which animal for winning by trickery?
An ox
An ox. The bigger gift for the cleverer win, Plutarch explains, was meant to teach Spartan commanders to be tacticians and not merely fighters.
Q 27According to Herodotus, the Scythians worshipped their form of Ares through what cult object?
An iron sword
An iron sword. Each district planted an ancient blade on a huge platform of brushwood, and Herodotus says its yearly offerings included the blood of one war captive in every hundred.
Q 28In some tellings, a jealous Ares was behind the wild boar that killed which beautiful youth?
Adonis
Adonis. The late poet Nonnus has Ares take the boar's shape himself to get rid of a rival in love, while other versions blame different gods for sending the animal.
Q 29An oracle told the coastal city of Syedra to chain up a statue of Ares so that he would drive off whom?
Pirates
Pirates. Each year the statue was to be bound and put on trial like a prisoner begging for mercy, after which the oracle promised the city a gentler god and prosperity.
Q 30In parts of which region was Ares, unusually, an oracular deity with cults at 29 sites?
Asia Minor
The Hellenistic city of Metropolis in what is now western Turkey built him a monumental temple as its protector.