Greek Goddesses
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50 free Greek Goddesses trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The goddesses of ancient Greece were anything but background figures. They started wars, punished the proud, protected cities and heroes, and held their own against Zeus himself. Their stories explained the seasons and the stars, and their names live on in brands, space missions and words we use without a second thought. This quiz covers the great goddesses of Olympus alongside the older generation who came before them and the many lesser powers of ocean, sky and underworld. Expect questions on sacred animals and symbols, rivalries and love affairs, famous temples, Roman counterparts, and the marks these figures left on modern language. It is written for mythology fans, students, teachers and quiz hosts. The questions run from classroom favourites to a handful that will test a keen reader of Homer and Hesiod, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which winged Greek goddess of victory has featured on every Summer Olympic medal since Amsterdam 1928?
Nike
Nike holds a winner's crown and a palm on the design introduced for the Amsterdam Games. Since Athens 2004 she has been shown above the Panathenaic Stadium rather than the Roman Colosseum.
Q 02Which feature of the night sky was formed, in Greek myth, when Hera pushed the suckling infant Heracles away?
The Milky Way
The Milky Way, in the best-known telling, was the milk that spurted across the heavens when Hera woke and thrust the unknown baby aside. The Greek word for milk, gala, is also the root of galaxy.
Q 03In the Roman poet Ovid's telling, Athena punished which beautiful maiden by turning her hair into snakes?
Medusa
Medusa is a punished beauty in Ovid's late version; in Hesiod's older account she was born a Gorgon. After Perseus beheaded her, he gave the head to Athena, who set it on her shield.
Q 04The word cereal comes from Ceres, the Roman name for which Greek goddess of grain and the harvest?
Demeter
Demeter was Ceres to the Romans, and cereal comes from the Latin for 'of Ceres'. Her secret rites at Eleusis, near Athens, promised initiates a happy afterlife.
Q 05Which Trojan prince awarded a golden apple to Aphrodite, judging her fairer than her rivals Hera and Athena?
Paris
Paris took Aphrodite's bribe, the world's most beautiful woman, and carrying Helen of Sparta off to Troy started the Trojan War. Hera had offered to make him king of Europe and Asia.
Q 06Which mortal princess, shown in art with butterfly wings, became the immortal wife of the love god Eros?
Psyche
Psyche shares her name with the Greek word for soul, the root of psychology. She was made immortal only after surviving a string of trials set by her husband's jealous mother, Aphrodite.
Q 07Eating the seeds of which fruit in the underworld bound Persephone to return to Hades for part of every year?
Pomegranate
Pomegranate seeds were a trick in the best-known version: Hades got Persephone to eat them just before she was due to leave. The Greeks told the story of her yearly return to explain the seasons.
Q 08Which seven sister nymphs, companions of Artemis turned into stars, appear in the logo of the carmaker Subaru?
The Pleiades
The Pleiades also give Subaru its name, the Japanese word for their star cluster. The logo shows six of its stars, about as many as the naked eye can easily pick out.
Q 09Which bird, sacred to Hera, was said to pull her chariot through the sky?
A peacock
A peacock got the eyes on its tail from Hera, the myth says: she set them there after Hermes killed her hundred-eyed watchman, Argus.
Q 10Which bird, stamped on the silver coins of ancient Athens, was the companion and symbol of Athena?
An owl
An owl stood for Athena so firmly that Athenian silver coins were themselves nicknamed owls. The little owl still carries her name in its scientific name, Athene noctua.
Q 11Which Greek goddess of the hearth, sworn never to marry, received the first offering at every household sacrifice?
Hestia
Hestia was honoured at every city's public hearth, and a flame from it was carried out to light the hearth of each new colony.
Q 12Which Greek earth goddess, mother of the Titans, lends her name to James Lovelock's theory of a living planet?
Gaia
Gaia was proposed as the theory's name by Lovelock's neighbour, the novelist William Golding. Her name, also written Ge, is the root behind geology and geography.
Q 13Which gift to Athens won Athena the city's patronage over Poseidon and his salt-water spring?
An olive tree
An olive tree gave the Athenians wood, oil and food, so in the best-known telling their king Cecrops judged it the better gift and declared Athena the city's patron.
Q 21Which Titaness saved her infant son Zeus by giving Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow?
Rhea
Rhea hid the real baby in a cave on Crete. Once grown, Zeus challenged his father's rule and rescued the brothers and sisters Cronus had already swallowed.
Q 22Which Greek goddess drove the Moon's chariot across the heavens and loved the mortal Endymion?
Selene
Selene is the root of selenium, an element named for the Moon because it resembled tellurium, the one named for the Earth. Her brother was the Sun and her sister the dawn.
Q 23Which Greek goddess of the dawn won immortality for her lover Tithonus but not eternal youth?
Eos
Eos has a Roman counterpart, Aurora, whose name the northern lights still carry. Tithonus, a prince of Troy, was left to grow older for ever.
Q 14Athena turned the boastful mortal weaver Arachne into which creature after their weaving contest?
A spider
A spider is what Arachne became, in Ovid's telling, after she hanged herself in shame and the goddess took pity on her. Her name is the Greek word for the creature, hence arachnid.
Q 15Which Greek goddess of strife gives her name to the dwarf planet that NASA first described as a tenth planet?
Eris
Eris seemed larger than Pluto when it was found, and within two years both had been classed as dwarf planets. In myth she set the goddesses quarrelling by tossing a golden apple into a wedding.
Q 16Which three-formed Greek goddess of witchcraft and crossroads was known to the Romans by the epithet Trivia?
Hecate
Hecate was Trivia, 'three ways', because she guarded the places where roads met. Shrines showing her as three figures set back to back stood at crossroads and doorways.
Q 17Which Greek goddess of retribution lured the vain Narcissus to the pool where he fell for his own reflection?
Nemesis
Nemesis punished hubris, arrogance before the gods, and her name became the English word for a rival who cannot be beaten. She struck Narcissus after he spurned the nymph Echo.
Q 18Which sorceress goddess, a daughter of the sun god Helios, turned men from the crew of Odysseus into pigs?
Circe
Circe changed them back once Odysseus had resisted her magic with the herb moly, a gift from Hermes. He then lived with her on the island of Aeaea for a year.
Q 19The priestess Io, loved by Zeus and hounded by a jealous Hera, was turned into which animal?
A cow
A cow is the shape Io takes in every version, though tellers differ on whether Zeus or Hera changed her. Hera then set the hundred-eyed Argus to guard the heifer.
Q 20According to the poet Hesiod, Aphrodite was born from what, before coming ashore on the island of Cyprus?
Sea foam
Sea foam gathered around the severed flesh of the sky god Uranus, thrown into the waves by his son Cronus. Hesiod tied her name to aphros, foam, which scholars now call a folk etymology.
Q 24Which primordial Greek goddess of the night did even Zeus fear to displease, according to Homer's Iliad?
Nyx
Nyx once saved her son Hypnos, the god of sleep, from the anger of Zeus. Without a father she also bore Death, the Dreams and Old Age.
Q 25Which Greek goddess of fortune, shown wearing a crown of city walls, was worshipped as the guardian of whole cities?
Tyche
Tyche was also shown with a horn of plenty, a ship's rudder and a wheel of fortune. Archaeologists use her wall-shaped crown to pick her out in ancient art.
Q 26Which Greek goddess of youth, a daughter of Zeus and Hera, became the divine wife of Heracles?
Hebe
Hebe served the gods as their cupbearer and could restore youth to mortals: in Euripides and Ovid she makes Iolaus, the aged nephew of Heracles, young again.
Q 27Which Titaness of divine law and order, the second wife of Zeus, is often depicted holding scales?
Themis
Themis was tied to prophecy as well as law, including the oracle at Delphi. By Zeus she bore the Seasons, whose names mean Law, Justice and Peace.
Q 28Which Greek sea goddess, married off to the mortal Peleus, was the mother of the warrior Achilles?
Thetis
Thetis, in the best-known telling, was courted by both Zeus and Poseidon until a prophecy warned that her son would be greater than his father, so they gave her to a mortal instead.
Q 29Which goddess, shunned by every land on Hera's orders, gave birth to Apollo on the island of Delos?
Leto
Leto, in one telling, could shelter on Delos because it was not joined to the sea floor, so it did not count as land. Some versions add that Hera sent the serpent Python to hunt her.
Q 30Which Titaness of memory became the mother of the nine Muses after nine consecutive nights with Zeus?
Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne also presided over a pool in the underworld, the counterpart of Lethe, the river whose water made dead souls forget their past lives.