Hypnos
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40 free Hypnos trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hypnos is the Greek god of sleep, a quiet figure with an outsized record: he is one of the few gods who ever got the better of Zeus, and he did it more than once. Ancient poets gave him a dark family, a home that no sunlight could reach, and power over mortals and immortals alike. His name still sits inside the word hypnosis. This quiz turns the best fun facts about Hypnos into questions with answers and short explanations. It covers his parents, his twin and his children, the bribes it took to win his help in the Trojan War, the cave where he dozes, the Roman version of his story, and the statues, vases and paintings that show him. It also follows him into later centuries, through medicine, astronomy, horror fiction and modern fantasy novels. It is written for mythology fans, students working on a Greek gods project, and quiz hosts who want a themed round. The questions run from classroom favourites to a few deep cuts.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which personification of death was the twin brother of Hypnos and shared his home in the underworld?
Thanatos
Thanatos lived next door to Hypnos in a place the sun's rays never reached. Ancient artists rarely showed him without his twin at his side.
Q 02Which sleep-inducing flowers were said to grow at the mouth of the cave where Hypnos lived?
Poppies
Poppies, the source of opium, bloomed at the entrance among other drowsy herbs. Their juices were said to be sprinkled over the darkening earth to bring on sleep.
Q 03Which son of Hypnos in Roman poetry takes human form in dreams and later lent his name to a painkiller?
Morpheus
Morpheus could copy the walk, face and voice of any person, and his name was borrowed for morphine. His brothers played the animals and the scenery in dreams.
Q 04In which ancient epic does Hypnos lull Zeus to sleep so that the Greeks can gain ground at Troy?
The Iliad
The Iliad gives Hypnos his biggest scene, in a passage ancient editors titled the Deception of Zeus. With the king of the gods asleep, the Greeks regained the upper hand.
Q 05Which horror writer's short story Hypnos follows a sculptor who takes drugs to avoid falling asleep?
H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft wrote the tale in 1922 and dedicated it to his friend Samuel Loveman. Its narrator explores worlds beyond human understanding in dreams and comes back terrified of sleep.
Q 06Which country won back the Euphronios Krater, a vase of Sleep and Death lifting a warrior, from New York?
Italy
Italy got the vase back because it had been looted from an Etruscan tomb near Cerveteri in 1971. The Metropolitan Museum had paid more than a million dollars for it.
Q 07Which underworld river, drunk by souls before rebirth, was said to flow through the cave of Hypnos?
Lethe
Lethe means forgetfulness, and its murmuring through the cave was said to make listeners drowsy. Souls were believed to drink from it so that they would forget their past lives.
Q 08Which author's Camp Half-Blood novels feature Clovis, a demigod son of Hypnos who leads his father's cabin?
Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan gave Hypnos his own cabin at the camp, with Clovis as its lead counselor. In The Lost Hero another camper consults him about a friend's missing memories.
Q 09What kind of object is 14827 Hypnos, found in 1986 by Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker?
An asteroid
An asteroid, it is thought to be a dead comet and is classed as potentially hazardous. In 1958 it passed unusually close to both Earth and Mars.
Q 10Which goddess, feared even by Zeus, was the mother of Hypnos and hid him from the king's rage?
Nyx
Nyx, the goddess of Night, took Hypnos in after he had put Zeus to sleep as a favour to Hera. Zeus gave up the chase rather than anger her.
Q 11By which name did the Romans know the sleep god Hypnos, whom their poets housed in a silent cave?
Somnus
Somnus is simply the Latin word for sleep, which is why English has insomnia and somnolent. His house had no doors, so that no hinge could ever creak.
Q 12Before visiting Hypnos, Hera lied to which goddess, who backed the other side at Troy, to borrow a charm?
Aphrodite
Aphrodite handed the charm over, believing that Hera wanted to end a family quarrel. Hera used it to make Zeus fall for her while Hypnos waited nearby to put him to sleep.
Q 13In the Argonautica, Medea calls on Hypnos to charm the sleepless serpent guarding which treasure?
The Golden Fleece
Q 21On which Aegean island, where the smith god landed when thrown from Olympus, does Hera find Hypnos?
Lemnos
Lemnos is where Homer has Hera find Hypnos, although Hesiod and the Roman poets housed him in the underworld. The islanders were said to have nursed the fallen smith god back to health.
Q 22On which mountain overlooking Troy did Hypnos send Zeus to sleep in the arms of Hera?
Mount Ida
Mount Ida rises to a peak called Gargarus, where Hera went to find Zeus. The pair lay hidden inside a cloud on the summit while Hypnos did his work.
Q 23Which gift did Hypnos turn down when Hera first tried to bribe him into putting Zeus to sleep?
A golden seat
The Golden Fleece hung on an oak in Colchis, watched by a dragon that never closed its eyes. Medea sang to Hypnos as the highest of the gods, and Jason snatched the prize.
Q 14What sprouts from the temples of Hypnos in ancient art, as on a bronze head found near Perugia?
Wings
Wings mark Hypnos out in ancient art, usually on his brow or his shoulders. On the bronze head they rise beside elaborately woven locks of hair held in by a band.
Q 15On a Greek vase in Boston, Hypnos stands over which sleeping princess as Theseus abandons her?
Ariadne
Ariadne was left behind on the island of Naxos while she slept. The vase painter shows Hypnos dripping water on her head as she sleeps and Theseus slips away.
Q 16Where has the bronze Head of Hypnos, a Roman copy of a Greek statue, been kept since the 1860s?
The British Museum
The British Museum bought the head in 1868 with other pieces from the Castellani Collection. Only a handful of similar statues of Hypnos are known in Western Europe.
Q 17Hera first had Hypnos put Zeus to sleep so she could send a storm against which hated stepson's ship?
Heracles
Heracles was sailing home from sacking Troy when the winds struck. Zeus woke in a fury and went looking for Hypnos, which is why the god was so wary when Hera asked again.
Q 18Once Zeus was asleep, Hypnos hurried to the Greek ships to tell which god he was free to help them?
Poseidon
Poseidon, god of the sea, was told he could now hand the Greeks a victory while his brother slept. He seized the chance and urged the Greek fighters on from the front rank.
Q 19Which youth, also loved by the Moon goddess, did Hypnos let sleep with open eyes in one telling?
Endymion
Endymion slept with his eyes open so that Hypnos could go on gazing into them, the poet Licymnius of Chios claimed. The better-known story has Selene visiting him every night.
Q 20Which of the Graces did Hera promise to Hypnos as a bride to win his help against Zeus?
Pasithea
Pasithea was the bride Hypnos had always wanted, so the offer won him over. He still made Hera swear a binding oath, with the gods of the underworld as witnesses.
A golden seat that could never fall apart, with a footstool to match, was Hera's opening offer. Hypnos remembered how badly his last trick on Zeus had ended and said no.
Q 24Hypnos hid in a tall pine while Zeus fell asleep nearby, disguised in Homer as what kind of creature?
A bird
A bird with a sweet song was his disguise, one the gods called chalcis and mortals called cymindis. He perched in the tallest pine on the mountain until his moment came.
Q 25Zeus had Sleep and Death carry the body of which fallen son home from Troy to Lycia?
Sarpedon
Sarpedon was a son of Zeus who died fighting for the Trojans. The twin gods laid him down in his homeland for burial, a scene painted on several famous Greek vases.
Q 26Which Roman poet gave Hypnos a silent doorless cave and a thousand shape-shifting sons?
Ovid
Ovid tells the story in the Metamorphoses, and no earlier writer names any of the god's sons. Some scholars suspect that he simply made the names up.
Q 27Which messenger goddess did Juno send to wake the Roman sleep god so that he would dispatch a dream?
Iris
Iris had to brush sleeping dreams out of her way, and the gleam of her robes woke the god. She left at once, before the drowsiness of the cave could overcome her too.
Q 28In which Roman epic does the god of sleep drug the helmsman Palinurus and tip him into the sea?
The Aeneid
The Aeneid has the god pose as a shipmate named Phorbas and offer to take the helm. When Palinurus refuses, the god shakes a dripping branch over him and pushes him overboard.
Q 29Which early Greek poet wrote that Hypnos and his twin were born to their mother alone, with no father?
Hesiod
Hesiod lists Hypnos in the Theogony among a brood that also includes Doom, Blame, Old Age and Strife. Roman writers later supplied a father for the whole family.
Q 30Which father of Hypnos in Roman sources shares his name with an Antarctic volcano and a lost ship?
Erebus
Erebus was darkness itself, the gloom of the underworld. HMS Erebus gave his name to the volcano in 1841 and was later lost in the Arctic on the Franklin expedition.