50 free Centaurs trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This centaurs trivia quiz gallops from Thessaly to the edge of the solar system. The easy questions are ones anyone who knows a little mythology could answer: what a centaur is made of, the wise centaur who tutored Achilles, the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles, and the star system next door named for the constellation. The harder end is for classicists and stargazers: the cloud shaped like Hera that mothered the race, the wedding brawl with the Lapiths, the hero who beat the invulnerable Caeneus into the ground, why Chiron gave up his immortality and who was freed as a result, the jar of wine that started a massacre at Pholus's cave, the centauress who killed herself in Ovid, the ox-horned centaurs of Cyprus, the donkey and fish varieties of the bestiaries, the Venetian doge's barge, Botticelli's painting, the Parthenon metopes in London, the constellation with the brightest globular cluster, the ringed body found in 1977 that named a whole class of objects, and the rocket stage that first burned liquid hydrogen. Fantasia, Narnia, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson get questions too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the myths, the artworks and the astronomy before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Greek mythology, mythical creatures and constellations quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What two creatures combine to make a centaur?
Man and horse
They were said to live in the mountains of northern Greece.
Q 02Which Greek region was the centaurs' traditional home?
Thessaly
They roamed Magnesia and Mount Pelion, plus the Foloi oak forest in Elis.
Q 03Who were the usual mythical parents of the centaurs?
Ixion and Nephele
Nephele was a cloud shaped like Hera, made to expose Ixion's lust.
Q 04What was Nephele?
A cloud in the likeness of Hera
Zeus used her to trick Ixion into revealing his desire for Hera.
Q 05What was Ixion's eternal punishment for lusting after Hera?
Bound to a spinning fiery wheel
Zeus ordered Hermes to bind him to the winged wheel in Tartarus.
Q 06What does the collective name Ixionidae mean?
Sons of Ixion
An older etymology for kentauros was piercing bull.
Q 07In another version, Centaurus fathered the race by mating with what?
Magnesian mares
His twin brother Lapithes was ancestor of the rival tribe.
Q 08What was unusual about the centaurs of Cyprus, according to Nonnus?
They were ox-horned
Zeus fathered them by spilling his seed after Aphrodite eluded him.
Q 09Which tribe fought the centaurs in the Centauromachy?
Lapiths
According to one origin myth the two peoples were cousins.
Q 10At whose wedding did the centaurs try to carry off the bride and start the battle?
Pirithous
The bride was Hippodamia; Theseus helped drive the centaurs off.
Q 11How did the centaurs kill the invulnerable Lapith hero Caeneus?
Beat him into the earth with rocks and trees
No weapon could pierce him, so they hammered him into the ground.
Q 12Which Renaissance artist carved the relief Battle of the Centaurs?
Michelangelo
The Parthenon metopes by Phidias are the other famous depiction.
Q 13On which side of the Parthenon are the Centauromachy metopes?
South
They are the best preserved; fifteen are in the British Museum.
Q 21How did the peaceful Pholus die?
Wounded by one of Heracles' venomous arrows
He dropped it on his foot while marvelling that so small a thing could kill a centaur.
Q 22Which centaur tried to violate Heracles' wife Deianeira and was shot by the hero?
Nessus
His blood, laced with Hydra venom, later killed Heracles.
Q 23What poison in the shirt that killed Heracles was actually at work?
The Lernaean Hydra's venom
Deianeira gave him the shirt, stained with a centaur's blood, fearing he had a new lover.
Q 14What is the most common theory for the origin of the centaur myth?
A non-riding culture's first sight of horsemen
Bernal Díaz reported the Aztecs made the same misapprehension about Spanish cavalry.
Q 15Who was Chiron's father?
Cronus
Cronus took the form of a horse to impregnate the nymph Philyra.
Q 16Which god found the abandoned infant Chiron and taught him medicine and archery?
Apollo
His mother Philyra had abandoned him out of shame.
Q 17Which of these heroes was among Chiron's pupils?
Achilles
Asclepius, Jason, Actaeon and Aristaeus also studied under him.
Q 18Whom did Zeus free from punishment when Chiron gave up his immortality?
Prometheus
Chiron had been incurably wounded and chose to die.
Q 19What ironic limitation did Chiron, master of healing, face?
He could not heal himself
Zeus took pity and placed him among the stars.
Q 20What smell drove the centaurs mad and into Pholus's cave when Heracles visited?
Fragrant wine
Heracles slew most of them and the rest fled to Cape Maleas.
Q 24What did Heracles do to escape the pain of the poisoned shirt?
Built a funeral pyre and threw himself on it
The Hydra venom cooked him alive.
Q 25Which centauress in Ovid killed herself when her husband Cyllarus died in the wedding war?
Hylonome
Female centaurs are absent from early Greek art but appear in later antiquity.
Q 26What is a centaur holding a bow called?
A sagittary
The zodiac constellation Sagittarius is Latin for archer.
Q 27What is an onocentaur part-human and part what?
A donkey
Bestiaries often gave it only two legs.
Q 28Which two sea personifications are depicted as ichthyocentaurs?
Aphros and Bythos
Their names mean sea foam and sea depth.
Q 29What was the bucentaur?
The ceremonial barge of Venice's doges
Each Ascension Day it carried the doge out to wed Venice to the sea.
Q 30Which Florentine painted Pallas and the Centaur around 1482?
Botticelli
The goddess clutches the centaur's hair as he reaches for his bow; it hangs in the Uffizi.