Hera Trivia
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50 free Hera trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Hera trivia quiz is devoted to the queen of the Greek gods: daughter of Cronus and Rhea, sister and wife of Zeus, goddess of marriage and childbirth, and the most formidable grudge-holder on Mount Olympus. It covers her birth and swallowing by Cronus, her seduction by Zeus in the form of a cuckoo, the wedding feast that lasted three hundred years, her children Ares, Hebe, Eileithyia and Hephaestus, and the sacred cow, cuckoo, peacock and pomegranate of her iconography. The heart of the quiz is her vengeance: Io and the hundred-eyed Argus, Semele's fatal request, Echo's stolen voice, Callisto the bear, Lamia, Gerana the crane, Ixion's fiery wheel, Tiresias blinded for taking Zeus's side, and above all Heracles, whose very name means Glory of Hera and whose spurt of stolen milk made the Milky Way. It also visits her cults: Argos and Samos, the Heraion at Olympia where the Olympic flame is lit, the girls' footraces of the Heraean Games, and her Roman counterpart Juno. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Hera and the figures around her, and each explanation adds one further fact. Ideal for mythology fans, classics students and anyone who has already conquered our Greek mythology and Zeus quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hera is the Greek goddess of what?
Marriage, women and family
Marriage, women and family. Her own marriage was anything but peaceful: many of her best-known myths show her taking revenge on Zeus's lovers and their children.
Q 02Who are Hera's parents?
The Titans Cronus and Rhea
The Titans Cronus and Rhea. That makes her Zeus's sister as well as his wife, and in the Iliad she pulls rank on him on both counts, as Cronus's eldest daughter and as his queen.
Q 03What did Hera's father do to her at birth?
Swallowed her whole
Swallowed her whole. He had been warned that one of his own children would overthrow him, and Hera stayed in his belly until Zeus tricked him into vomiting his sons and daughters back up.
Q 04In the Iliad, which goddess raised Hera in the house of Oceanus after her mother handed her over?
Tethys
Tethys. Hera's tale that she is off to visit her old foster mother and end the couple's long quarrel is the cover story she tells while plotting to seduce Zeus.
Q 05Which fruit is Hera sometimes shown holding in ancient Greek art?
A pomegranate
A pomegranate. Pausanias saw one in the hand of her great gold-and-ivory temple statue, but refused to explain it, saying its story was a holy mystery.
Q 06Into what bird did Zeus transform himself to seduce Hera?
A cuckoo
A cuckoo. In one telling he came to her through a storm as a shivering little bird, and revealed himself only once she had taken pity and sheltered it against her.
Q 07The poet Callimachus wrote that Zeus loved Hera passionately for how long?
300 years
300 years. One surviving line of his Aetia says so, and in the Iliad, too, the pair first slept together in secret, without their parents knowing.
Q 08What did Gaia give Zeus and Hera as a wedding present?
The apples of the Hesperides
The apples of the Hesperides. In one telling Hera so admired the golden fruit that she had the tree planted in her own garden, then set a dragon to guard it when the nymphs kept picking the apples.
Q 09Which god was Hera said to have produced on her own, without Zeus?
Hephaestus
Hephaestus. In Hesiod she bore him alone in anger after Zeus produced Athena from his own head, and in one telling she then threw the lame child out of Olympus.
Q 10Which monster did the Homeric Hymn to Apollo say Hera bore by herself in anger at Zeus?
Typhaon
Typhaon. Furious that Zeus had produced Athena alone, she struck the ground and prayed for a son stronger than he was, then handed the creature to the she-dragon of Delphi to rear.
Q 11Which Greek city, with its great sanctuary the Heraion nearby, had Hera as its patron goddess?
Argos
Argos. In the Iliad she names it first among the three cities she loves best, then tells Zeus he may destroy all three whenever he likes, so long as Troy falls.
Q 12Which Aegean island claimed to be Hera's birthplace and built her one of the earliest great Greek temples?
Samos
Samos. Herodotus called its later Heraion the largest temple known to him, yet a single column is all that still stands of it today.
Q 13What happens at the ruins of Hera's temple at Olympia before every modern Olympic Games?
The Olympic flame is lit
The Olympic flame is lit. The ritual looks ancient but is not: the torch relay was devised for the 1936 Berlin Games, and the ancient Olympics had nothing like it.
Q 21What had the nymph Echo done to make Hera curse her voice?
Distracted her with chatter
Distracted her with chatter. Echo kept Hera talking while the nymphs lying with Zeus slipped away, and Hera, seeing through it, left her able only to repeat the last words she heard.
Q 22In Ovid's telling, a furious Hera turned Zeus's lover Callisto into which animal?
A bear
A bear. When Zeus lifted her into the sky as the Great Bear, Hera asked the sea gods never to let her bathe in their waters, which is why that constellation never sets.
Q 23Which Libyan queen, robbed of her children by Hera, became a monster that hunted other people's children?
Lamia
Q 14Who competed in the Heraean Games held every four years at Olympia?
Young girls in a footrace
Young girls in a footrace. Pausanias says they ran with their hair loose, tunics above the knee and the right shoulder bare, on a track a sixth shorter than the men's.
Q 15Which sister of Hera swore an oath to stay a virgin for ever?
Hestia
Hestia. Hera took a different path: she was said to bathe every year in the spring of Kanathos, at Nauplia, and become a virgin again.
Q 16Homer's common epithet for Hera, boōpis, means what?
Cow-eyed
Cow-eyed. It was praise, not an insult: the word joins the Greek for cow and eye, and Homer uses it of women with large, beautiful eyes.
Q 17Which priestess of Hera was turned into a heifer and guarded by Argus Panoptes?
Io
Io. In one telling it was Zeus who turned her into a white cow to hide the affair, and Hera, not fooled, asked for the animal as a gift and set her watchman over it.
Q 18What did Hera do with the hundred eyes of the slain Argus?
Set them in the peacock's tail
Set them in the peacock's tail. In Ovid's telling Hermes had to lull every one of those eyes to sleep with his pipe music before he could cut off the watchman's head.
Q 19Which insect did Hera send to sting Zeus's lover, by then a cow, all the way to Egypt?
A gadfly
A gadfly. Its Greek name, oistros, also meant anything that drives a creature mad, and it survives in the English words oestrus and oestrogen.
Q 20What did Hera trick Semele into demanding of Zeus?
That he appear in his true form
That he appear in his true form. In Ovid she came disguised as Semele's old nurse; Zeus, bound by his oath on the Styx, arrived in thunder and lightning, and the sight destroyed her.
Lamia. Greek mothers and nurses went on using her name to frighten children into behaving, and Zeus was said to have given her eyes she could take out and put back.
Q 24Hera turned a boastful queen of the Pygmies into which bird, which her people fought ever after?
A crane
A crane. In one telling she kept flying back to see her baby son, and the Pygmies took up arms and drove the bird away, which is how the war began.
Q 25What did Zeus shape into a double of Hera to trap the lustful Ixion?
A cloud
A cloud. In one telling Ixion bragged of sleeping with Hera, so Zeus bound him to a wheel that turns for ever, and from his union with the cloud came the race of centaurs.
Q 26Why did Hera strike Tiresias blind?
He sided with Zeus on which sex enjoys love more
He sided with Zeus on which sex enjoys love more. Having lived as both man and woman, he said women enjoy it far more; Zeus could not undo the blinding, so he made up for it with the gift of prophecy.
Q 27What does the name Heracles mean?
Glory of Hera
Glory of Hera. The name honours his worst enemy: in Diodorus's telling he was renamed as a baby, after strangling the two snakes she sent, because her attack had won him his first glory.
Q 28How did Hera cheat the unborn Heracles of a throne Zeus had promised him?
She had a rival born first
She had a rival born first. Zeus swore that the descendant of Perseus born that day would rule, so Hera held back Heracles and hurried out Eurystheus at seven months, the king who later set his labours.
Q 29In myth, Hera's spilt milk made the Milky Way, and the drops that fell to earth became which flower?
The lily
The lily. Tintoretto painted both halves of the story, but the bottom third of his canvas, where the lilies grew, was later cut away, so only the stars survive.
Q 30Which creature bit Heracles's foot during his fight with the Hydra and was set among the stars by Hera?
A crab
A crab. Heracles killed it on the spot and went on to finish the Hydra, and Hera's reward for her fallen helper is why the zodiac has a crab, the constellation Cancer.