Pericles
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
50 free Pericles trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Pericles led Athens for about three decades in the fifth century BC and left his name on the era. He was a politician, a commander and, above all, a speaker: the words attributed to him are still quoted whenever people argue about democracy, empire and what a city owes the people who live in it. This quiz covers his family and rise to power, the friends and rivals around him, the building projects on the Acropolis, the strategy he chose for the war with Sparta, and his final years. A full set of questions deals with passages from the Funeral Oration and his other recorded sayings, asked by description, so you can test how well you know what he actually claimed. It suits students revising classical Greece, readers of ancient history, and anyone curious about one of the most quoted statesmen of antiquity. Two questions also cover the Jacobean play that borrows his name.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ancient busts of the Athenian statesman Pericles almost always show him wearing what on his head?
A helmet
A helmet appears on nearly every bust of him. An ancient story claimed it hid his oddly long skull, which comic poets mocked as 'squill-head'.
Q 02Which temple, the largest on the Athenian Acropolis, was the centrepiece of Pericles' building programme?
Parthenon
Parthenon construction began in 447 BC, replacing a temple that invaders had razed a generation earlier. The project also gave paid work to the city's people.
Q 03What killed Pericles in 429 BC, about two and a half years into the war with Sparta?
A plague
A plague struck the overcrowded city in 430 BC and also killed Pericles' sister and both of his legitimate sons. Its exact identity is still debated.
Q 04According to Herodotus, Pericles' mother dreamed days before his birth that she had given birth to what animal?
A lion
A lion stood for greatness in Greek lore. A similar dream was later told of Philip II of Macedon before the birth of Alexander the Great.
Q 05Which Abraham Lincoln speech is often compared to Pericles' Funeral Oration?
Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Address parallels include opening with revered ancestors, praising a democratic ideal and urging the living to finish the work. Scholars still argue over whether Lincoln drew on it directly.
Q 06Which woman from Miletus, noted for her conversation and advice, was the longtime partner of Pericles?
Aspasia
Aspasia was attacked by comic poets for her influence as a foreigner. The couple's son, who shared his father's name, later commanded Athenian forces.
Q 07Under the law Pericles proposed in 451 BC, what did a person need to be a citizen of Athens?
Two Athenian parents
Two Athenian parents became the rule, which barred Pericles' own son by his foreign partner. The assembly later granted the boy an exemption.
Q 08Which Athenian historian, who lived through the war with Sparta, preserved Pericles' Funeral Oration in his history?
Thucydides
Thucydides admitted that the speeches in his work keep only the main ideas of what was said, so the famous wording is partly his own.
Q 09Because Pericles' speeches were said to thunder and flash like Zeus, what nickname did Athenians give him?
The Olympian
The Olympian was not always a compliment. Comic playwrights cast him as Zeus to mock his lofty manner and his grip on the city.
Q 10Pericles paid for much of his building programme with tribute from which alliance of Greek states?
Delian League
Delian League funds were meant for common defence. After the treasury moved to Athens in 454 BC, rivals accused Pericles of dressing up the city with other people's money.
Q 11The colossal goddess statue Pericles commissioned combined precious metal plates with flesh carved from what material?
Ivory
Ivory formed the face, arms and feet over a wooden core. The metal plates were treated as a financial reserve that could be melted down in an emergency.
Q 12Which sculptor, a close friend of Pericles, supervised the great building works on the Acropolis?
Phidias
Phidias also made the colossal seated Zeus that ranked among the Seven Wonders. Enemies of Pericles struck at the statesman by putting his friend on trial.
Q 13Pericles introduced state pay so that poorer Athenians could afford to perform which civic duty?
Jury service
Q 21Which democratic reformer and mentor of Pericles stripped the Areopagus council of its powers before being murdered?
Ephialtes
Ephialtes was assassinated in 461 BC, and ancient writers disagreed about who did it. His death left Pericles to lead the democratic faction.
Q 22Which philosopher, who taught that the Sun was a mass of red-hot metal, was a close friend of Pericles?
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras was later charged with impiety and left Athens for Lampsacus. His calm, sceptical outlook is said to have shaped the statesman's famous composure.
Q 23Which sophist, known for calling man the measure of all things, was a friend of Pericles?
Protagoras
Jury service in the people's courts now carried a wage, so labourers could sit in judgment. Later critics grumbled that the fees made Athenians idle and greedy.
Q 14Which elected office, one of ten filled each year, did Pericles hold for about fifteen years in a row?
General
General, or strategos, was the only office he ever officially held. Because it could be won year after year, it let one man steer a city that was wary of kings.
Q 15The years when Pericles led Athens fall within the era that is remembered as the city's what?
Golden Age
Golden Age Athens produced the great tragedians and the temples of the Acropolis. The stretch from about 461 to 429 BC is also called the Age of Pericles.
Q 16Pericles' war plan relied on the Long Walls, which joined Athens to which port?
Piraeus
Piraeus lay about six kilometres away. The walled corridor meant grain ships could feed the city even while an enemy army camped in the fields outside.
Q 17Pericles urged Athenians to avoid pitched land battles with Sparta and to trust instead in what?
Their fleet
Their fleet could raid enemy coasts and keep tribute flowing. The policy followed Themistocles' principle that Athenian power rested on the sea.
Q 18Rather than fight a land battle, Pericles let Spartan armies ravage which region, the countryside around Athens?
Attica
Attica's farmers had been evacuated into the city beforehand. Watching their fields burn made them furious with Pericles, who refused to change course.
Q 19By what Athenian vote, scratched on broken pottery, could a rival of Pericles be exiled for ten years?
Ostracism
Ostracism removed two of his leading opponents. A surviving shard shows that some Athenians scratched the name of Pericles himself.
Q 20Which conservative rival and admirer of Sparta did Pericles prosecute in 463 BC and see exiled two years later?
Cimon
Cimon had marched 4,000 hoplites to help the Spartans, only to be told to go home. The snub wrecked his popularity and opened the way for Pericles.
Protagoras and Pericles reportedly spent a whole day debating who was legally to blame when a javelin accidentally killed a man at an athletic contest.
Q 24Which Aeschylus tragedy about the Battle of Salamis did the young Pericles pay to stage in 472 BC?
The Persians
The Persians is the oldest surviving Greek play. Funding its chorus was a costly public duty that marked Pericles out as one of the city's wealthier men.
Q 25Pericles' father Xanthippus led the Athenians at which victory of 479 BC, fought on the coast of Ionia?
Mycale
Mycale came only five years after Xanthippus had been voted into exile. He was back in time to command the city's contingent in the win.
Q 26Which reformer, often called the father of Athenian democracy, was the uncle of Pericles' mother Agariste?
Cleisthenes
Cleisthenes belonged to the Alcmaeonid clan, a family said to carry an old curse. Sparta later invoked that curse to try to discredit Pericles.
Q 27Which future Athenian commander, notorious for switching sides in wartime, grew up as a ward of Pericles?
Alcibiades
Alcibiades lost his father at the Battle of Coronea in 447 BC, so his kinsman Pericles became his guardian. He later defected to Sparta, then abandoned the Spartans too.
Q 28Which tragedian, the author of Antigone, was elected a commander alongside Pericles in 441 BC?
Sophocles
Sophocles sailed as a junior colleague of Pericles during an island revolt. He had already served the city as a treasurer shortly before.
Q 29Pericles led a nine-month siege of which rebellious Aegean island, an ally of Athens, in 440–439 BC?
Samos
Samos surrendered, tore down its walls and agreed to pay a war indemnity. Back home, Pericles gave a funeral speech for the men lost in the campaign.
Q 30Pericles' trade ban of about 432 BC shut the merchants of which neighbouring city out of Athenian markets?
Megara
Megara was accused of farming land sacred to Demeter. Sparta threatened war unless the ban was lifted, and Pericles persuaded the Athenians to refuse.