Thebes, Greece
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50 free Thebes, Greece trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Thebes is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and for the ancient Greeks it was a place where myth piled up: a founder from across the sea, a monster with a riddle, a doomed royal family and more than one god or hero with local roots. Greek playwrights returned to its stories again and again. The real city was just as dramatic. Thebes chose the wrong side in one great war, humbled Sparta in another, led Greece for a few short years and was then wiped off the map, only to be rebuilt and to grow rich again in the Middle Ages. This quiz covers all of it: the legends, the battles, the generals, the medieval trade and the modern town. It suits mythology fans, ancient history students and anyone planning a trip to central Greece who wants a few fun facts first.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which monster guarded the road to Thebes and devoured every traveller who failed to solve her riddle?
The Sphinx
The Sphinx was a foreigner in Greek eyes: late lore had her sent from far-off Aethiopia, and she strangled anyone who failed her test.
Q 02Sigmund Freud named a famous psychological complex after which mythical king of Thebes?
Oedipus
Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and Freud used the legend to explain the origin of certain childhood neuroses.
Q 03Which conqueror razed Thebes to the ground in 335 BC after the city rose in revolt against him?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great destroyed the city and had its people sold into slavery, a fate that frightened Athens into submission.
Q 04The elite 300-man corps of ancient Thebes was said to be made up of 150 pairs of what?
Male lovers
Male lovers filled the ranks, and Plutarch linked the corps to vows that lover and beloved exchanged at the Theban shrine of the hero Iolaus.
Q 05Homer called the Greek Thebes "Seven-Gated" to tell it apart from a "Hundred-Gated" Thebes in which land?
Egypt
Egypt had a Thebes of its own, which the Iliad calls Hundred-Gated, while the Greek city took its epithet from the gates in its legendary wall.
Q 06Greek legend credits the founder of Thebes with bringing which invention to Greece from Phoenicia?
The alphabet
The alphabet really did reach the Greeks from the Phoenicians, as Herodotus claimed, though centuries later than the myth's Bronze Age setting.
Q 07Which of the four Gospel writers is traditionally said to be buried in a church in Thebes, Greece?
Luke
Luke has a tomb in the city, and after tests on relics held in Padua, the bishop there sent back the rib that lay closest to the saint's heart.
Q 08Which Olympian god was the son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal princess of Thebes?
Dionysus
Dionysus was rescued unborn from his dying mother and sewn into the thigh of Zeus, who carried him until he was ready to be born.
Q 09The walls of Thebes were said to have risen when Amphion charmed the stones into place with which instrument?
A lyre
A lyre played by Amphion made his stones glide gently into place, while his twin Zethus struggled to carry his own.
Q 10What is the answer to the riddle of Thebes about a creature that walks on four legs, then two, then three?
A human
A human crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult and leans on a walking stick in old age.
Q 11Which Phoenician prince from Tyre is credited in Greek legend with founding the city of Thebes?
Cadmus
Cadmus gave his name to the city's citadel, the Cadmea, whose remains can still be seen in the modern town.
Q 12The first nobles of Thebes were said to have sprung fully armed from which objects sown in the ground?
Dragon's teeth
Dragon's teeth, sown on Athena's advice, grew into fierce warriors called the Spartoi, the Sown Men, from whom Theban nobles claimed descent.
Q 13Which mythical strongman, son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, was said to have been born in Thebes?
Heracles
Heracles later married Megara, daughter of the Theban king Creon, and the city kept a statue of him nicknamed Nose-docker for mutilating enemy heralds.
Q 21Which Theban general, who broke the military power of Sparta, did Cicero later call the first man of Greece?
Epaminondas
Epaminondas, dying of a spear wound, was said to have described his two great victories as his daughters.
Q 22At which battle of 371 BC did a Theban army shatter Sparta's long dominance on the battlefield?
Leuctra
Leuctra so upset the old order that the Theban herald who carried news of the win to Athens was met with stony silence.
Q 23After humbling Sparta, Thebes marched into Messenia and freed which enslaved people, the basis of the Spartan economy?
The helots
The helots of Messenia had been enslaved for some 230 years, and losing the region cost Sparta a third of its territory.
Q 14Which daughter of the royal house of Thebes was sentenced to death for burying her brother against the king's decree?
Antigone
Antigone, in Sophocles' play, argues that divine law outranks the king's; he relents after a seer's warning, only to find she has already hanged herself.
Q 15A contingent of 400 Thebans stood with Leonidas and his Spartans at which famous last stand?
Thermopylae
Thermopylae saw the Thebans stay on with the Spartans for the final stand, yet soon afterwards their city's rulers went over to the invaders with great readiness.
Q 16Which elite Theban corps of 300 hand-picked soldiers was annihilated by the army of Macedon in 338 BC?
The Sacred Band
The Sacred Band, in Plutarch's account, was formed by the commander Gorgidas, who chose its members purely for ability and merit, regardless of social class.
Q 17Which poet's house was said to be the only home spared when Thebes was demolished in 335 BC?
Pindar
Pindar had written verses praising an ancestor of the Macedonian king, who ordered that the house stay standing out of gratitude.
Q 18During the Byzantine era, Thebes grew rich as the empire's leading producer of which luxury fabric?
Silk
Silk from the city was prized above all others, and by the mid-12th century its workshops out-produced even those of Constantinople.
Q 19Which imperial power captured Thebes in 1458 and held it until the Greek War of Independence?
The Ottomans
The Ottomans renamed the city İstefe and kept it for more than three centuries, apart from a Venetian interlude between 1687 and 1699.
Q 20Ancient Thebes was the leading city of which region of central Greece, separated from Attica by mountains?
Boeotia
Boeotia was once run by a league of its cities with Thebes at the head, a presidency it lost as punishment after the invasion of 480 BC.
Q 24Which future king of Macedon spent part of his youth as a hostage in Thebes, studying its army?
Philip II
Philip II received a military and diplomatic education in the city, and in 338 BC he defeated the very place that had schooled him.
Q 25A giant stone lion marks the common tomb of Thebans killed fighting Macedon at which battle?
Chaeronea
Chaeronea's lion stands about 12.5 feet high, and 254 skeletons laid out in seven rows were found buried within its enclosure.
Q 26When most Greek cities united against invasion in 480 BC, the rulers of Thebes sided with which empire?
Persia
Persia won over the governing aristocracy of Thebes, and the victorious Greeks later punished the city for fighting zealously on the wrong side.
Q 27The founder of Thebes was told by which oracle to follow a cow and build where it lay down?
Delphi
Delphi sent him after a cow with a half moon on her flank, and the animal led him on until she lay down exhausted.
Q 28The founder of Thebes first set out from Phoenicia to search for which sister, carried off by Zeus?
Europa
Europa was never found: an oracle ordered her brother to give up the quest and found a city instead.
Q 29The legendary founder of Thebes was a prince of Tyre, an ancient port in which modern country?
Lebanon
Lebanon is home to Tyre, the Phoenician port the prince sailed from under orders not to come home without his missing sister.
Q 30Which wedding gift to Harmonia, bride of the founder of Thebes, was said to bring misfortune to all its owners?
A necklace
A necklace made by Hephaestus, in the most common telling, was the unlucky gift; it was later used to bribe Eriphyle into sending her husband to a doomed war.