100 free Sirens trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This sirens trivia quiz is about the singing creatures of Greek mythology who lured sailors onto the rocks, and about everything that has borrowed their name since. Easy questions cover the story everyone half-remembers: how Odysseus survived their song, what his crew stuffed in their ears, who told him the trick, and how Orpheus got the Argonauts past. From there it digs into what the Greeks actually thought sirens looked like (birds, not fish), who their parents were, how the Muses humiliated them, and why some versions say the sirens died the day Odysseus sailed by. The harder end is for mythology buffs and classicists: Parthenope and the founding of Naples, the Li Galli islands, Butes and Aphrodite, Isidore of Seville's prostitutes, the medieval bestiaries that turned sirens into mermaids with combs and mirrors, Dante's dream, Kafka's silent sirens, the Ulysses pact and Etty, Waterhouse and Draper's paintings. A final stretch covers the siren's afterlife in the sea cows, the warning device, the Starbucks logo, Debussy, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and television. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the sirens, the Odyssey and the works they inspired before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Greek mythology, Odyssey and mermaids quizzes next.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which ancient Greek epic do the sirens make their first appearance?
The Odyssey
Homer gave no physical description of them at all, leaving their looks to the imagination.
Q 02What did Odysseus' crew plug their ears with to avoid hearing the sirens?
Beeswax
Odysseus alone left his ears open so he could hear the song and live to tell of it.
Q 03How did Odysseus manage to hear the sirens' song without being lured to his death?
He had himself tied to the mast
He ordered his men to ignore his pleas, and when he signalled with frowns to be released they bound him tighter.
Q 04Which sorceress advised Odysseus on how to survive the sirens?
Circe
She had earlier turned his men into pigs on her island of Aeaea.
Q 05How were sirens usually depicted in early Greek art?
As birds with women's heads
They may have been influenced by the ba-bird of Egyptian religion, and were often shown playing the lyre or aulos.
Q 06How many sirens does Homer say there were?
Two
Later writers raised the number to as many as eight and gave them names.
Q 07Which musician saved the Argonauts from the sirens by out-playing them on his lyre?
Orpheus
Chiron had warned Jason that Orpheus would be necessary on the voyage.
Q 08Which Argonaut still heard the sirens and leapt overboard, only to be rescued by Aphrodite?
Butes
Aphrodite carried him to Lilybaeum in Sicily, where he became her lover and fathered Eryx.
Q 09The sirens are most often named as daughters of which river god?
Achelous
Their mother is variously given as Terpsichore, Melpomene, Calliope, or Sterope of Calydon.
Q 10Per Ovid, the sirens were companions of which goddess, and gained wings to search for her when she was abducted?
Persephone
Hyginus tells it the other way round: the goddess of the harvest cursed them for failing to prevent the kidnapping.
Q 11The sirens lost a singing contest against which group, who then plucked their feathers to make crowns?
The Muses
Hera had persuaded the sirens to issue the challenge in the first place.
Q 12A Cretan city was named Aptera, meaning "featherless", after which event?
The sirens shedding their feathers in defeat
Nearby islands became the Leukai, the white ones, because the sirens turned white and threw themselves into the sea.
Q 13According to some post-Homeric authors, what happened to the sirens after Odysseus sailed safely past?
Q 21Roman poets placed the sirens on three rocky islands called what?
Sirenum Scopuli
Joseph Addison confidently identified them with rocks a stone's throw off the south side of Capri.
Q 22The male siren, once shown in Greek art alongside female ones, disappeared around which century?
The 400s BC
Originally sirens were shown as either sex.
Q 23The first written description of a siren as a fish-tailed "mermaid" is in which 8th-century work?
Liber Monstrorum
It called them sea-girls with a maiden's body and scaly fishes' tails.
They flung themselves into the sea and died
They were fated to die if anyone heard their song and escaped.
Q 14What does the name of the siren Parthenope, whose body washed ashore at Naples, mean?
Maiden-voiced
Settlers from Cumae named their city after her, and she drowned herself when her songs failed to entice Odysseus.
Q 15On which small Naples island, site of Castel dell'Ovo, did the siren Parthenope wash ashore?
Megaride
Her tomb there was called the construction of sirens.
Q 16In a Roman version of the Parthenope myth, a lovesick centaur was turned into which volcano by Jupiter?
Vesuvius
His frustrated rage is said to explain the volcano's violent eruptions.
Q 17Whose opera about Parthenope premiered in 2025 for Naples's 2,500th anniversary, thirty years after he wrote it?
Ennio Morricone
Handel and Vivaldi were among the 18th-century composers who had already written Parthenope operas.
Q 18Which Roman poet wrote in the Georgics that he had been nurtured by "sweet Parthenope"?
Virgil
Parthenope stood for Naples, where the poet lived and worked.
Q 19The Sirenusas, islands off the Amalfi Coast said to be the sirens' home, are also known by what name?
Li Galli
The name means the Cocks, a nod to the bird-like form of the ancient sirens.
Q 20What was the name of the "flowery" island where some traditions placed the sirens?
Anthemoessa
Various accounts identify it with Ischia or Capri in the Gulf of Naples.
Q 24Medieval bestiaries gave the vain siren which two accessories, now emblematic of mermaids across Europe?
A comb and a mirror
Some bestiary sirens were also shown holding an eel-like fish.
Q 25Isidore of Seville, in his Etymologiae, rationalised the sirens as what?
Prostitutes who ruined travellers
He said they had wings and claws because Love flies and wounds.
Q 26In Isaiah 13:22, Jerome used the Latin for sirens to translate a Hebrew word meaning what?
Jackals
In Jeremiah 50:39 he used the same word to translate a term for owls.
Q 27In which canticle of the Divine Comedy does Dante dream of a siren who claims to have diverted Ulysses?
Purgatorio
Dante had no access to Homer's poem, so the siren's boast is false: Homer's sirens never turned Ulysses aside.
Q 28Which Renaissance polymath's notebooks say the siren lulls mariners to sleep, then kills them?
Leonardo da Vinci
Renaissance female court singers came to be associated with the siren, a creature that could overthrow a man's reason.
Q 29Which 17th-century Jesuit scholar argued Noah must have built compartments for sirens on the Ark?
Athanasius Kircher
Several Jesuit writers of the period asserted that sirens really existed.
Q 30In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, which legendary founder of Britain nearly capsizes at the Pillars of Hercules?
Brutus of Troy
He escapes into the Tyrrhenian Sea on his way to fulfil a prophecy of empire.