Medea
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50 free Medea trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Medea is the Greek tragedy that still makes audiences argue on the way home. Euripides took a princess and sorceress from the edge of the Greek world, gave her a husband who trades her in for a better match, and let her answer in a way that nobody in the theatre forgets. More than 2,400 years on, it is among the most frequently staged plays to survive from the ancient world. This quiz works through the play itself: who Medea is and where she comes from, what Jason has done, the bargains she strikes, the gifts she sends and the ending that critics have fought over since antiquity. It also covers the story before the curtain rises, when her magic carried Jason through a series of impossible tasks, and the history of the play: its first performance, its author, and the poets, composers, actors and film-makers who have retold it since. It suits students reading the play for class, theatre-goers, and anyone who knows the outline of the myth and wants to test the details. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Whom does Medea kill at the climax of the tragedy by Euripides, as the act that will hurt Jason most?
Their two sons
Their two sons die by her own hand, a twist Euripides seems to have invented. In one older version of the myth the townspeople killed them.
Q 02Where did Euripides finish in the tragedy contest at which his Medea was first performed?
Third and last
Third and last was the judges' verdict on what became the most performed Greek tragedy of the 20th century. Sophocles came second that year.
Q 03Which opera soprano played Medea in Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1969 film, the only film role of her career?
Maria Callas
Maria Callas filmed the part on location in Cappadocia in Turkey and at the citadel of Aleppo in Syria.
Q 04The stage crane that lifts Medea out of reach in the final scene gave rise to which Latin phrase?
Deus ex machina
Deus ex machina means god from the machine, because the crane normally flew in a deity. Euripides gave the ride to a mortal woman instead.
Q 05Which prize did Medea's magic help Jason win from her father, before the events of Euripides' play?
The Golden Fleece
The Golden Fleece hung in a sacred grove, watched by a serpent that never slept. Medea named one price for her help: Jason had to marry her.
Q 06Which poisoned gifts does Medea send to the princess who is about to marry Jason?
A robe and a crown
A robe and a crown of gold, heirlooms from Medea's divine grandfather, cling to the bride and burn her to death as soon as she puts them on.
Q 07Which BBC drama about a wife's revenge on her cheating husband did writer Mike Bartlett model on Medea?
Doctor Foster
Doctor Foster follows the structure of the Greek tragedy, which Bartlett had adapted for the stage in 2012. Suranne Jones played the betrayed wife.
Q 08The story of Margaret Garner, painted in 1867 as The Modern Medea, inspired which Toni Morrison novel?
Beloved
Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize and grew from an 1856 newspaper report about Garner that Morrison came across. The painter was Thomas Satterwhite Noble.
Q 09In what does Medea appear above the stage at the end of Euripides' tragedy, safely beyond Jason's reach?
A dragon-drawn chariot
A dragon-drawn chariot, sent by her divine grandfather, carries her away unpunished while Jason rages below. A king has already sworn to shelter her.
Q 10In which Greek city, where Jason and Medea settled as exiles, is the tragedy by Euripides set?
Corinth
Corinth took the couple in after Medea engineered a king's death in Jason's homeland. The whole play unfolds outside her house there.
Q 11To which city does Medea flee at the end of Euripides' play, having secured a promise of refuge there?
Athens
Athens was home to the play's first audience, and shortly before the killings the chorus sings an ode idealising the very city that will take Medea in.
Q 12Which king, passing through on his way from the oracle at Delphi, swears an oath to shelter Medea?
Aegeus
Aegeus had gone to ask why he had no heir, and Medea trades on it: she promises drugs to end his childlessness in return for sanctuary.
Q 13Which king orders Medea into exile at once, fearing what she might do to his daughter?
Creon
Creon is not the Creon of Antigone, who rules Thebes. At least one ancient writer mixed up the two kings.
Q 21From which kingdom at the far eastern end of the Black Sea did Medea, a king's daughter, originally come?
Colchis
Colchis lay in what is now Georgia. Medea betrayed her father and abandoned her home there to sail away with Jason.
Q 22Which figure from Homer's Odyssey was Medea's aunt, and cleansed her and Jason after a killing?
Circe
Circe was the sister of Medea's father, so the two most famous witches of Greek myth were aunt and niece.
Q 23Which brother did Medea kill as she fled with Jason, in some versions scattering his limbs to slow pursuit?
Absyrtus
Absyrtus left a grim legend behind: the Black Sea port of Tomis was said to take its name from the Greek for cut, because his body was strewn there.
Q 14What does Medea win from the king who has banished her by kneeling before him as a suppliant?
One more day
One more day is all she asks, pleading that she needs time to prepare for exile. She spends it destroying the royal house.
Q 15By which name is the princess Jason leaves Medea to marry usually known, besides Creusa?
Glauce
Glauce shares its Greek root, a word for bluish-grey, with the English word glaucous. Euripides never names the princess at all in his play.
Q 16Which character is alone on stage as Euripides' Medea opens, wishing that Jason had never sailed east?
The Nurse
The Nurse lays out the whole backstory before her mistress appears. For the opening scenes Medea is only a voice crying out from inside the house.
Q 17Which Greek god was the grandfather of Medea and the giver of the heirloom finery she turns into a weapon?
Helios
Helios, the sun itself, was the father of the king of Medea's homeland, which is why her rescue at the end of the play arrives from the sky.
Q 18How does Jason finally die in Greek myth, friendless after breaking his vows to Medea?
His rotting ship falls on him
His rotting ship falls on him as he rests in its shadow, an end Medea foretells in the final scene of the play.
Q 19Which philosopher complained in his Poetics that the ending of Medea was contrived rather than earned?
Aristotle
Aristotle wanted a plot to untie itself through what the characters had already done. Even so, he called Euripides the most tragic of the poets.
Q 20Which label do Greeks in the play attach to Medea because she comes from beyond their world?
Barbarian
Barbarian simply meant non-Greek. Jason goes further and tells Medea that bringing her to Greece, with its laws and its fame, was a favour to her.
Q 24Medea, the great sorceress of Greek myth, is often depicted as a high priestess of which goddess?
Hecate
Hecate is the goddess Medea swears by in the play as she plans her revenge, naming her as the mistress she honours above all others.
Q 25Which usurping king of Iolcus did Medea trick his own daughters into cutting up and boiling?
Pelias
Pelias was Jason's own uncle, the man who had sent him away on his quest and then refused to hand over the throne when he came back.
Q 26Which animal did Medea cut up, boil and bring out young again to convince a king's daughters of her power?
A ram
A ram went into the pot old and sprang out young. The daughters then did the same to their father, who stayed dead.
Q 27Which bronze giant, guardian of Crete, did Medea destroy by bewitching him from the deck of Jason's ship?
Talos
Talos had a single vein, sealed by a nail at his ankle. Under Medea's spell he grazed it, and the fluid that kept him alive drained away.
Q 28Which young hero did Medea try to poison in her new home, until the king there recognised his sword?
Theseus
Theseus was the king's long-lost son, and a rival to Medea's own child for the throne. The cup was knocked away in time and she was driven out.
Q 29Medea's ointment protected Jason from which creatures, which her father ordered him to yoke and plough with?
Fire-breathing bulls
Fire-breathing bulls had to plough a field sacred to Ares. Her ointment, the Charm of Prometheus, made Jason and his weapons proof against the flames.
Q 30The winner in the year of Medea was Euphorion, the son of which earlier giant of Greek tragedy?
Aeschylus
Aeschylus had died about 25 years earlier. A later record says Euphorion won victories by staging his father's plays.