Trojan Horse Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Trojan Horse trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Trojan Horse trivia for anyone who knows the outline - Greeks hide in a wooden horse, Trojans wheel it in, city falls - and wants the rest. The quiz covers where the story actually comes from (not the Iliad, barely the Odyssey, mostly Virgil's Aeneid and lost poems of the Epic Cycle), who built it and why a horse, how many men squeezed inside, the double agent who talked the Trojans into it, and the two prophets nobody listened to. There are questions on Laocoön's spear and the serpents, on 'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts', on Helen circling the horse imitating the wives of the men inside, on the ancient sceptics who thought it was really a siege engine or a ship, and on the Mykonos vase - the earliest surviving picture of the horse, made before Homer was written down. Then the modern afterlife: the Vatican's Laocoön statue and its missing arm, Ken Thompson's Turing lecture and the computer trojan, the 2004 film Troy, and the Birmingham 'Trojan Horse' affair. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. For the whole war, try our Troy, Iliad and Achilles quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which famous ancient epic ends with the Trojan War still raging, before the wooden horse is built?
The Iliad
The Iliad stops with Troy still standing and the war unfinished. The horse turns up only in passing in the Odyssey, and at full length in a Latin epic written centuries later.
Q 02Which Roman poet gives the fullest surviving account of the Trojan Horse?
Virgil
Virgil gave the tale to the losing side. In Book 2 of his epic a Trojan refugee relives the night at a royal banquet, and that Latin version became the one everyone knows.
Q 03Which Greek hero was the chief architect of the horse plan, and hid inside it himself?
Odysseus
Odysseus had tried to dodge the war by pretending to be mad, yet it was his trick that finally ended it, and he climbed in to lead the ambush himself.
Q 04Ancient accounts say the timber for the wooden horse was felled on which mountain overlooking Troy?
Mount Ida
Mount Ida. The carpenter, Epeius, was a champion boxer who admitted he was no great fighter, yet his woodwork did what the army's heroes could not.
Q 05The wooden horse ended a siege of Troy that had dragged on for how long?
Ten years
Ten years of fighting had failed to breach the walls. The horse, on one ancient poet's telling, took just three days to build.
Q 06What did the Greeks pretend to do after leaving the horse outside Troy?
Sail away for home
Sail away for home is what the Trojans were meant to think. The fleet went no farther than the far side of a nearby island and came back the next night.
Q 07Behind which island did the Greek fleet hide while the horse did its work?
Tenedos
Tenedos lies within sight of the Trojan shore: far enough to look like a departure, close enough for the fleet to slip back in a single night.
Q 08Which Greek stayed behind to convince the Trojans the horse was a harmless offering?
Sinon
Sinon let himself be caught, hands bound, and wept his way through a tale of Greek cruelty. The Trojans pitied him, untied him and asked him what the horse was for.
Q 09The Greek left behind with the horse told the Trojans it was an offering to which goddess?
Athena
Athena, he said, had turned against the Greeks after two of them stole her sacred image, the Palladium, from her Trojan temple, and the horse was built to win her back.
Q 10Why, according to the Greeks' cover story, was the horse built so enormous?
To keep it out of Troy
To keep it out of Troy: the spy claimed that if the horse ever stood inside the walls, the goddess's favor would pass to the Trojans. So they dragged it in.
Q 11In the Aeneid, the Greek left with the horse claims his own army meant to do what to him?
Sacrifice him
Sacrifice him: an oracle, he says, demanded a Greek life in return for fair winds, and he broke free and hid all night in a marsh.
Q 12In the Greek accounts, how did the spy inside Troy call the hidden fleet back that night?
Lit a beacon fire
He lit a beacon fire. In the Aeneid the signal runs the other way: the flagship shows a flame, and only then does the spy unbolt the horse.
Q 13In the Aeneid, what does the priest Laocoön hurl into the horse's side to back up his warning?
A spear
A spear. It stuck quivering in the planks and the hollow belly rang and groaned, a sound that the poem says would have saved Troy had anyone listened.
Q 21In the Odyssey, who sings of the wooden horse at the Phaeacian court, moving an unnamed guest to tears?
The bard Demodocus
The bard Demodocus is blind, and sings the tale at the stranger's own request. The stranger's tears give him away, and he finally tells his hosts who he is.
Q 22In the Aeneid, how do the hidden warriors get down from the horse when the moment comes?
Slide down a rope
They slide down a rope. Another ancient account adds a casualty: the first man out jumped instead, and the fall killed him.
Q 23Which of these Greek leaders do ancient writers name among the men hidden inside the horse?
Menelaus
Q 14The saying 'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts' comes from a Latin line beginning with which words?
Timeo Danaos
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, 'I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts', is a Trojan priest's shout as his countrymen crowd round the horse. They ignored him.
Q 15How does Laocoön die in the Aeneid?
Strangled by sea serpents
Strangled by sea serpents, along with his two sons, in the middle of a sacrifice. The Trojans took it for a judgment on him and hauled the horse inside.
Q 16In the lost epic Sack of Troy, how did one band of Trojans respond to the omen of Laocoön's death?
Withdrew to the hills
Withdrew to the hills: Aeneas and his followers took fright and left before the Greeks struck, which is how Rome's legendary ancestor survived the night.
Q 17Which Trojan princess warned that the horse would be the city's downfall, and was ignored?
Cassandra
Cassandra saw the truth and was dismissed as usual. She outlived the sack only to be carried off as a war prize by the Greek commander and murdered with him by his wife.
Q 18Which god had given the Trojan prophetess her gift before cursing it?
Apollo
Apollo, in the usual story, taught her prophecy in return for a promise of love. When she went back on it he let her keep the gift and made sure nobody would believe a word.
Q 19Homer says Helen circled the horse and tried to lure the Greeks out by doing what?
Mimicking their wives' voices
Mimicking their wives' voices, she called to the hidden chiefs by name. One was about to answer when his captain clamped a hand over his mouth and held it there until she had gone.
Q 20Why does Achilles, the Greeks' greatest warrior, play no part in the wooden horse in the ancient stories?
He was already dead
He was already dead, shot down by Paris with a god's help before the horse was thought of. In the Odyssey his ghost has to be told how the ambush went.
Menelaus had the most personal stake: his wife, Helen, was inside the walls. That night he went straight for the house of her new Trojan husband and killed him.
Q 24In the Aeneid, the story of the wooden horse is told over dinner to which queen?
Dido of Carthage
Dido of Carthage asks her shipwrecked Trojan guest for the whole story. By the time he has finished she is falling in love with him, and his leaving destroys her.
Q 25In one lost Greek epic, how did the Trojans get the horse into their city?
Tore down part of their wall
Tore down part of their wall, with their own hands: the Trojans opened the breach that a whole Greek army had failed to make.
Q 26In the Odyssey, some Trojans want to hack the horse open, and others want to do what?
Hurl it off a cliff
Hurl it off a cliff, after dragging it up to the heights. A third party wanted it left standing as an offering to the gods, and won the argument.
Q 27Which captured Trojan seer told the Greeks what they must do before Troy could fall?
Helenus
Helenus was ambushed and captured by the Greeks, and he revealed the oracles that protected the city. In one account he had left Troy in anger by then, passed over for Helen's hand.
Q 28In one story Pausanias tells, a god's title 'Carneus' recalls which trees, felled in his grove to build the horse?
Cornel trees
Cornel trees, 'craneia' in Greek. The story goes that the god was angry at the felling, so the Greeks appeased him with sacrifices and named him Carneus after the trees.
Q 29Some ancient and modern writers think the 'horse' was really what?
A siege engine
A siege engine, such as a battering ram. One ancient travel writer said everyone knew the horse was a device for breaching the wall, unless they took the Trojans for utter fools.
Q 30One modern theory treats the horse as a metaphor for which natural disaster breaching Troy's walls?
An earthquake
Poseidon was god of horses as well as of earthquakes, and Troy VI shows heavy quake damage.