Persian Empire Trivia
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50 free Persian Empire trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Persian Empire trivia quiz covers the Achaemenid dynasty from Cyrus's revolt against the Medes in 553 BC to Darius III's murder on the road from Gaugamela. The easy questions ask who founded the empire, which Macedonian ended it, which elite unit the Greeks called the Immortals, where the ceremonial capital stood and which strait Xerxes bridged to invade Greece. Then it works through the kings: Cambyses in Egypt, the impostor Gaumata, Darius's provinces and Royal Road, Xerxes at Thermopylae and Salamis, and the long reign of Artaxerxes II. The hard end is for people who read Herodotus for fun: the four capitals, the Cyrus Cylinder in the British Museum, the trilingual Behistun inscription that cracked cuneiform, the nine-day courier ride from Susa to Sardis, the Egyptian bull Apis, the eunuch Bagoas and his poisons, the Peace of Callias, Themistocles in exile at Magnesia, and the two theories for why Persepolis burned. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Xerxes I, Persepolis, the Cyrus Cylinder, the Royal Road and the Behistun inscription before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our ancient Greece, Alexander the Great and ancient history quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Spartan king died with his 300 men resisting Xerxes's invasion of Greece in 480 BC?
Leonidas
Leonidas did not make his last stand with only his 300: about 700 men from the small city of Thespiae refused to leave and died beside them, allies the legend usually forgets.
Q 02Cambyses dropped his plan to attack which city when his fleet refused to sail against it?
Carthage
Carthage was a Phoenician colony, and the Phoenician crews who manned Cambyses's fleet would not attack their own kin; he let the plan drop, because his whole navy depended on them.
Q 03Persian envoys asked Greek cities for which two symbolic gifts as tokens of submission?
Earth and water
Earth and water was the standard demand, and Herodotus says two cities answered it by throwing Darius's heralds into a pit and down a well, telling them to fetch both for themselves.
Q 04Which Athenian playwright, who fought the Persians himself, put a grieving Xerxes on stage in The Persians?
Aeschylus
Aeschylus told the Greek victory entirely from the losing side: the play is set at the Persian court in Susa, with no Greek character, and the news reaches Xerxes's mother and the ghost of Darius.
Q 05Cyrus's first great conquest, in 550 BC, was of which empire, ruled by Astyages?
The Medes
The Medes were beaten from within: their general Harpagus went over to Cyrus with much of the army, and a Babylonian chronicle records that Astyages's own troops then revolted and handed him over.
Q 06Which fabulously wealthy king lost his capital Sardis to Cyrus?
Croesus
Croesus asked the oracle at Delphi whether to attack Persia and was told he would destroy a great empire; in Herodotus's telling he marched, and the empire he destroyed was his own.
Q 07Which last king of Babylon was taken prisoner when Cyrus captured the city in 539 BC?
Nabonidus
Nabonidus had spent about ten years away at the Arabian oasis of Tayma, leaving his son Belshazzar to run Babylon, the ruler the Book of Daniel places at the city's fatal feast.
Q 08Cyrus is credited with freeing which people from captivity in Babylon and letting them rebuild their temple?
The Jews
The Jews honoured him in scripture for it: the Book of Isaiah calls Cyrus the Lord's 'anointed', the same Hebrew word that gives English 'messiah'.
Q 09Herodotus says Cyrus died fighting which nomadic people east of the Caspian Sea?
The Massagetae
The Massagetae were led by Queen Tomyris, who in Herodotus's telling pushed the dead Cyrus's head into a skin full of blood so that he could drink his fill.
Q 10Which biblical queen of Persia, wife of King Ahasuerus, foils a plot to wipe out her people?
Esther
Esther's husband Ahasuerus is usually identified with Xerxes, and her victory is still celebrated each spring at Purim, when the villain Haman's name is drowned out with noisemakers.
Q 11Which museum holds the Cyrus Cylinder, the clay record of Cyrus's capture of Babylon dug up in 1879?
The British Museum
The British Museum keeps the original and made the replica displayed at UN headquarters in New York, a gift from Iran, whose last shah promoted the Cylinder as an ancient charter of human rights.
Q 12Darius's inscriptions in Egypt boast that he ordered which great work there?
A canal
A canal: Darius's stone markers say he ordered it dug from the Nile to the Red Sea, a forerunner of the Suez Canal, and that ships then sailed through it from Egypt to Persia.
Q 13Herodotus claims Cambyses went mad after killing which sacred Egyptian animal?
The Apis bull
Q 21Which city, today's Hamadan, served the Persian kings as a summer capital high in the Zagros mountains?
Ecbatana
Ecbatana had been the capital of the first kingdom Cyrus overthrew; rather than destroy it, the Persians kept it as a royal residence and treasury.
Q 22Persepolis lies in which Iranian province, the old homeland whose name gave us the word Persia?
Fars
Fars is the Arabic form of the older name Pars, since Arabic has no 'p' sound; the same shift is why Iranians call their language Farsi.
Q 23One theory says Alexander burned Persepolis at the urging of which courtesan during a drunken feast?
Thaïs
Thaïs is an Athenian in the tale, and wants the palace burned to avenge Xerxes's sack of her city; Arrian's account has Alexander burn it on purpose and never mentions her.
The Apis bull story looks like slander: the bull that died during his stay was buried in a granite sarcophagus made on Cambyses's own order, and its successor outlived him.
Q 14According to Darius's Behistun inscription, a magus named Gaumata seized the throne in 522 BC by impersonating whom?
Bardiya, son of Cyrus
Bardiya's only first-hand chronicler is the man who took the throne: Darius says he slew an impostor magus, and historians still argue over whether the man he overthrew was Cyrus's real son after all.
Q 15In Herodotus's account, what killed Cambyses II as he hurried home from Egypt?
A thigh wound turned gangrenous
A thigh wound turned gangrenous after Cambyses accidentally stabbed himself while leaping into the saddle, Herodotus says; an Egyptian chronicle records only that he died on the journey.
Q 16Darius the Great organised the empire into provinces each governed by an official with what title?
Satrap
Satrap governors could rule like little kings far from court, so the Persian kings sent out travelling inspectors known as the 'eye of the king' to keep watch on them.
Q 17Which language did the Persian Empire adopt for written communication between its far-flung provinces?
Aramaic
Aramaic was already the Near East's common language of trade and diplomacy under the Assyrians and Babylonians, so the Persians simply adopted the tongue their subjects already wrote.
Q 18The Persian Royal Road ran west from Susa to Sardis, a city in which modern country?
Turkey
Turkey: Sardis stood near the Aegean coast, and Herodotus reckoned the walk from Susa at exactly 90 days, which is why the king's messages went by relays of riders instead.
Q 19Herodotus's praise of Persia's mounted couriers inspired the unofficial motto of which American institution?
The US Postal Service
The US Postal Service has no official motto, but 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night', carved on New York's main post office, reworks Herodotus's line about Xerxes's relay riders.
Q 20Herodotus gave what name to the 10,000-strong elite infantry of the Persian army?
The Immortals
The Immortals got the name, Herodotus says, because any man who was killed or fell sick was replaced at once, so the corps never numbered more or fewer than ten thousand.
Q 24Darius's Behistun inscription is written in Old Persian, Elamite and which third language?
Babylonian Akkadian
Babylonian Akkadian was the prize: because all three texts say the same thing, the inscription let scholars crack cuneiform, doing for Mesopotamia what the Rosetta Stone did for Egypt.
Q 25Which British East India Company officer scaled the cliff at Behistun from 1835 to copy the inscription?
Henry Rawlinson
Henry Rawlinson had to climb for it: the text sits about 100 metres up a cliff, and Darius's masons are thought to have cut away their own path once the carving was done.
Q 26Which supreme deity does Darius repeatedly credit for his kingship in his inscriptions?
Ahura Mazda
Ahura Mazda is the only god Darius names in his texts; about a century later a Persian king began invoking Mithra and Anahita beside him for the first time.
Q 27In Herodotus, Darius became king because which animal of his was the first to cry out at sunrise?
His horse
His horse neighed first because his groom Oebares cheated: Herodotus gives two versions of the trick, and both rely on the stallion's favourite mare.
Q 28Darius pushed the Persian Empire to its eastern limit by conquering the valley of which river?
The Indus
The Indus was unknown water to the Persians, so Darius sent the Greek sailor Scylax down it to find the sea, a voyage on to Egypt that Herodotus says took thirty months.
Q 29Which kingdom on Greece's northern edge became a Persian vassal under Darius and later marched with Xerxes?
Macedon
Macedon bowed to a Persian general after 513 BC and its king was still Xerxes's ally in 480; about 150 years later another Macedonian king, Alexander, conquered the whole Persian Empire.
Q 30Which uprising of Greek cities in Asia Minor, from 499 to 493 BC, opened the Greco-Persian Wars?
The Ionian Revolt
The Ionian Revolt drew in Athens, whose troops helped burn Sardis; Herodotus says Darius then had a servant tell him three times at every dinner, 'Master, remember the Athenians.'