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 01The Trojan Horse story is NOT told in which of these famous ancient poems?
The Iliad
Homer's poem ends with Hector's funeral, long before the city falls; the Odyssey mentions the horse only in passing.
Q 02Which Roman poet gives the fullest surviving account of the Trojan Horse?
Virgil
Book 2 of his epic has Aeneas tell the tale to Queen Dido at a banquet in Carthage.
Q 03Which Greek hero was the chief architect of the horse plan, and hid inside it himself?
Odysseus
It capped a war in which he had also stolen the Palladium and dragged a reluctant Achilles into the fight.
Q 04Which Greek craftsman physically built the horse?
Epeius
Ancient writers say he later settled in Italy and dedicated his carpentry tools to a goddess near Metapontum.
Q 05According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, how long did the Greeks take to build the horse?
Three days
The same poet says the horse was chosen because it was the emblem of Troy.
Q 06What did the Greeks pretend to do after leaving the horse outside Troy?
Sail away for home
In fact they burned their tents and hid the fleet behind a nearby island.
Q 07Behind which island did the Greek fleet hide while the horse did its work?
Tenedos
A beacon lit by Sinon guided the ships back after dark.
Q 08Which Greek stayed behind to convince the Trojans the horse was a harmless offering?
Sinon
In the Aeneid he claims the plot's mastermind left him to die because they were old enemies - which the Trojans find easy to believe.
Q 09Sinon told the Trojans the horse was an offering to which goddess?
Athena
The story was that it atoned for the Greeks' desecration of her temple and would buy the fleet a safe voyage home.
Q 10Why, according to Sinon, had the Greeks built the horse so enormous?
So the Trojans could not get it into the city
The implication was that if the Trojans did manage it, the goddess's favour would pass to them - so of course they tried.
Q 11Sinon was related to the mastermind of the horse plot. How?
They were cousins
Both descended from the master thief Autolycus, which perhaps explains the talent for lying.
Q 12According to Apollodorus, where did Sinon light his beacon to call the fleet back?
On the grave of Achilles
Once the fleet was close, the men inside the horse climbed out and opened the gates.
Q 13Which Trojan priest warned against the horse and struck it with a spear?
Laocoön
The Aeneid says the groan of the men inside would have given the game away had the gods not already doomed Troy.
Q 21In the Odyssey, who sings of the wooden horse at the Phaeacian court, moving Odysseus to tears?
The bard Demodocus
The song prompts the guest to reveal his identity and begin telling his own story.
Q 22In late tradition, the number of Greek warriors hidden inside the horse was standardised at what?
40
Earlier sources disagree wildly: 30, 50, 23, or 'more than 30'.
Q 23Which of these Greek leaders is named as one of the men hidden inside the horse?
Menelaus
Once inside the city he tracked down Helen's latest husband and killed him.
Which two lost poems of the Epic Cycle told the horse story in full?
Q 14The saying 'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts' comes from a Latin line beginning with which words?
Timeo Danaos
'Danaans' was Homer's name for the Greeks; most printed texts read 'ferentis' rather than 'ferentes'.
Q 15How does Laocoön die in the Aeneid?
Strangled by sea serpents
The Trojans read it as punishment for attacking a sacred object, which sealed their decision to bring the horse in.
Q 16In Apollodorus's version, which god sent the serpents against Laocoön, and for what offence?
Apollo, for sleeping with his wife before a cult statue
Sophocles wrote a lost tragedy on the priest; in that version he was a priest who broke a vow of celibacy.
Q 17Which Trojan princess also warned about the horse but was cursed never to be believed?
Cassandra
She survived the sack only to be murdered in Mycenae by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
Q 18Which god had given the Trojan prophetess her gift before cursing it?
Apollo
The usual story is that she promised herself to him in return for the gift, then refused him.
Q 19Homer says Helen walked around the horse and tried to lure the Greeks out by doing what?
Imitating the voices of their wives
Anticlus nearly answered before a hand was clamped over his mouth.
Q 20Who was with Helen as she circled the horse, according to her husband's account in the Odyssey?
Deiphobus
He had married her after Paris's death, and her first husband killed him during the sack.
The Little Iliad and the Sack of Troy
Only fragments and ancient summaries survive of either.
Q 25In the Little Iliad, how did the Trojans get the horse into the city?
They breached a section of their own wall
The rationalising writer Palaephatus used the same detail to argue that the horse was just a ruse to make the Trojans knock down their defences.
Q 26In the Sack of Troy (Iliou persis), the Trojans debate three fates for the horse. Which option wins?
Dedicating it to Athena
In this poem the serpents kill Laocoön and only one of his sons, and Aeneas takes the omen as his cue to leave.
Q 27Which captured Trojan seer revealed the conditions for taking Troy, including the theft that led to the horse?
Helenus
His other conditions were the arrows of Heracles and bringing Achilles' son into the war.
Q 28Pausanias says a god's title 'Carneus' came from what the Greeks cut down in his sacred grove to build the horse?
Cornel trees
The Greeks appeased the angry god with sacrifices, and the name stuck.
Q 29Some ancient and modern writers think the 'horse' was really what?
A siege engine
Pausanias sniffed that anyone who thought otherwise took the Trojans for utter fools; others suggest a ship with men hidden in the hull.
Q 30Fritz Schachermeyr saw the horse as a metaphor for which natural event breaching Troy's walls?
An earthquake
Poseidon was god of horses as well as of earthquakes, and Troy VI shows heavy quake damage.