Orpheus
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40 free Orpheus trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Orpheus is the musician of Greek myth who sang so well that the dead stopped to listen. When his bride Eurydice died, he walked into the underworld to ask for her return, and what happened on the way out has been retold for more than two thousand years. This quiz covers the whole story: his parents and homeland, his voyage with the Argonauts, the bargain struck with Hades, and his violent death. It also follows the myth into later culture, from the first operas to Broadway's Hadestown, French cinema and modern comics. The questions suit mythology students, classics classes, theatre fans and quiz night hosts. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is easy to revise as you play.
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Q 01Which instrument did Orpheus play so sweetly that wild beasts, trees and even rocks were said to follow him?
Lyre
Lyre in hand he could charm anything, and after his death the instrument was said to be placed in the sky as the constellation Lyra.
Q 02What did Orpheus do on the climb out of the underworld that lost Eurydice to the dead forever?
Looked back at her
Looked back at her is all it took: Hades had freed Eurydice on condition that Orpheus walk ahead and not turn until both had reached the upper world.
Q 03What caused the death of Eurydice soon after her wedding to Orpheus, as she walked through a meadow?
A snake
A snake bit her on the ankle as she walked with the naiads, in Ovid's telling; an earlier version has her stepping on it while fleeing an unwanted admirer.
Q 04Which monstrous guardian of the underworld's gates fell silent when Orpheus played and sang his way past?
Cerberus
Cerberus stood with his three jaws hanging open and forgot to bark, one Roman poet wrote, and even the Furies stopped to listen.
Q 05Sailing with the Argonauts, Orpheus played loudly enough to drown out which creatures and save the crew?
The Sirens
The Sirens still claimed one sailor: sharp-eared Butes heard them and leapt overboard, and the goddess Aphrodite had to carry him to safety.
Q 06Which band of women tore Orpheus limb from limb during their wild rites, in most versions of his death?
The Maenads
The Maenads served Dionysus, yet Ovid has the god punish them for the killing by rooting their feet in the earth and turning them into oak trees.
Q 07Which part of Orpheus was said to go on singing as it floated down the river Hebrus to the sea?
His head
His head drifted on beside his instrument, still murmuring, while the river banks answered; it was later buried at a shrine that became a famous oracle.
Q 08Which dance is now performed around the world to the 'Galop infernal' from Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld?
The can-can
The can-can only claimed the tune in the 1890s, after Offenbach's death, when Paris cabarets adopted his galop for their high-kicking dancers.
Q 09Which Baz Luhrmann film did its director say drew on the Orpheus myth, with a young poet as its hero?
Moulin Rouge!
Moulin Rouge! sends its poet into a Paris underworld of cabaret to win a singer he loves, and like Orpheus he leaves without her.
Q 10Which goddess was so moved by Orpheus's song in the underworld that she agreed to let Eurydice go?
Persephone
Persephone and her husband could not bring themselves to refuse him, Ovid wrote, after Orpheus reminded the royal couple that love had once joined them too.
Q 11Which hero took Orpheus along on the voyage of the Argo, where his music kept the rowers in time?
Jason
Jason had reason to be glad of him: when a quarrel among the crew nearly came to blows, Orpheus calmed everyone with a song about how the world began.
Q 12Which god, sometimes named as the father of Orpheus, is said to have given him his instrument and taught him to play?
Apollo
Apollo is the god Orpheus honoured above all others late in life, one lost tragedy said, climbing before dawn each day to greet the sunrise.
Q 13Which of the nine Muses, the patron of epic poetry, is usually named as the mother of Orpheus?
Calliope
Calliope taught her son to make verses for singing, and after he was killed she and her sisters are said to have gathered his remains for burial.
Q 21Which Greek island, later the home of the poet Sappho, claimed the shrine where an oracle of Orpheus spoke?
Lesbos
Lesbos is where the waves were said to carry what was left of him, and the fame of the oracle there was said to reach as far as Babylon.
Q 22In the Georgics, which keeper of bees was chasing Eurydice through the grass when she met her death?
Aristaeus
Aristaeus paid for it with his hives: the bees sickened and died until he sacrificed cattle to make amends, and new swarms rose from the carcasses.
Q 23Which long poem by Ovid tells of Orpheus losing Eurydice and of his death in its tenth and eleventh books?
Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses lets Orpheus do much of the talking: after losing Eurydice he sings a string of other myths, the story of Pygmalion among them.
Q 14Orpheus is called a bard of which ancient region, where his father Oeagrus was king?
Thrace
Thrace was thought to have had no writing in his day, which is one reason ancient critics doubted that the poems passed down under his name were really his.
Q 15In Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, which figure does the hero lull to sleep with his music to slip across the Styx?
Charon
Charon refuses him passage even after a long aria of flattery, so Orfeo plays until the ferryman nods off, then steals the boat and rows himself over.
Q 16Which condemned king is said to have sat down on his boulder to listen when Orpheus sang in the underworld?
Sisyphus
Sisyphus was not the only one to pause: Ovid says Tantalus stopped reaching for water, Ixion's wheel stood still and the Furies wept for the first time.
Q 17In the Broadway musical Hadestown, which Greek god narrates the story of Orpheus and Eurydice to the audience?
Hermes
Hermes welcomes the audience in the opening number and returns at the end to explain why the sad tale is worth telling all over again.
Q 18The Oscar-winning film Black Orpheus moves the story of Orpheus and Eurydice to Carnival time in which city?
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro's hillside favelas stood in for ancient Greece, and two songs from the film's soundtrack went on to become classics of bossa nova.
Q 19Which Roman poet told the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Georgics, a poem about farming and beekeeping?
Virgil
Virgil made it the finale of a beekeeping lesson: a farmer whose hives have died learns he is being punished for causing the death of the bride.
Q 20Which composer's opera Orfeo ed Euridice breaks with the myth by restoring the heroine to life at the end?
Gluck
Gluck has the god of love step in to revive her as a reward for the hero's devotion, and the opera closes with a ballet and a chorus of praise.
Q 24Which French poet and filmmaker directed the 1950 film Orphée, in which mirrors are doorways to the land of the dead?
Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau had his hero pull on surgical gloves and walk straight through the glass, an effect filmed with a vat of mercury standing in for the mirror.
Q 25Which American playwright wrote Orpheus Descending, about a wandering musician who unsettles a small Southern town?
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams reworked it from his first professionally produced play, Battle of Angels, which by his own account had failed spectacularly in Boston in 1940.
Q 26Which singer-songwriter wrote the musical Hadestown, first performed in Vermont years before it became a concept album?
Anaïs Mitchell
Anaïs Mitchell sang the heroine herself in an early staging, and the Broadway version she later built won eight Tony Awards, Best Musical among them.
Q 27In which DC comic series is Orpheus the son of the hero, with Death and Destruction for an aunt and uncle?
The Sandman
The Sandman gives Orpheus a father whose other name, Morpheus, is one letter longer than his own, in a retelling of the myth called The Song of Orpheus.
Q 28Which philosopher has a speaker mock Orpheus as a coward who entered the underworld alive instead of dying for love?
Plato
Plato has the speaker add that the gods showed Orpheus only a phantom of his wife, then let him die at the hands of women as a punishment.
Q 29Which birds were said to sing more sweetly over the grave of Orpheus than they did anywhere else?
Nightingales
Nightingales nesting on the tomb were said to sing louder as well as more sweetly, a local boast that the travel writer Pausanias wrote down centuries later.
Q 30Which German-language poet wrote the 55 Sonnets to Orpheus in a three-week burst of work in 1922?
Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke dedicated them as a memorial to Wera Knoop, a childhood playmate of his daughter who had died in her teens.