Trojan War Trivia
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48 free Trojan War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Trojan War trivia quiz covers the whole legend, not just the slice in Homer's Iliad: Eris's golden apple and the Judgement of Paris, Thetis dipping Achilles in the Styx, the oath of Helen's suitors, Odysseus faking madness, Achilles hiding among the girls of Skyros, the wound of Telephus, the sacrifice at Aulis, the thousand-odd ships, Philoctetes abandoned on Lemnos, and the nine slow years of raids before the quarrel over Briseis. It then runs through the tenth year and after: Patroclus and Hector, Priam in Achilles's tent, Penthesilea and Memnon, the arrow to the heel, Ajax and the armour, the prophecies of Helenus, the theft of the Palladium, Epeius's wooden horse, Sinon and Laocoon, the sack, Neoptolemus and Priam, Astyanax, the ruinous voyages home, Agamemnon's murder and Aeneas's escape to Italy. It finishes with the history: Eratosthenes' date, Schliemann and Frank Calvert at Hisarlik, Troy VII, Wilusa in the Hittite letters, and the 2004 film. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's article on the war and related pages, and each explanation adds one further fact. For the poem itself try our Iliad and Trojan Horse pages; this one is for the whole war.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which goddess, uninvited to Peleus and Thetis's wedding, threw the apple 'to the fairest'?
Eris
Eris, goddess of strife: Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each claimed her apple, and the mortal chosen to judge between them was a Trojan prince, whose verdict set the war in motion.
Q 02In which modern country do the ruins of Troy lie?
Turkey
Turkey: nine cities were built one on top of another on the same mound, and the legend drew visitors long before archaeology, with Alexander the Great stopping there on his way to conquer Asia.
Q 03Why was Paris raised as a shepherd on Mount Ida instead of in Troy?
A prophecy said he would destroy the city
A prophecy said he would destroy the city: his pregnant mother dreamed she gave birth to a burning torch, so the baby was left out on the mountain to die, and a herdsman raised him instead.
Q 04In the best-known version, how did Thetis try to make Achilles invulnerable?
By dipping him in the River Styx
By dipping him in the River Styx: she held him by the heel, so it stayed mortal. In an older telling she laid the baby in a fire each night to burn his mortality away, until his father caught her.
Q 05Which god fathered Helen, taking the form of a swan with Leda?
Zeus
Zeus: Helen was said to have hatched from an egg, and one version makes her true mother the goddess Nemesis, with Leda only raising the girl as her own.
Q 06Why were Greece's kings bound to go to war when Helen was taken?
An oath sworn as her suitors
An oath sworn as her suitors: her stepfather feared the losers would turn on the winner, so every man swore to defend whoever was chosen, and that vow later marched them all to Troy.
Q 07From which Greek city, ruled by her husband Menelaus, did Paris carry off Helen?
Sparta
Sparta: Menelaus had welcomed Paris as a guest, then sailed to Crete for a family funeral, leaving his wife to look after the visitor.
Q 08In one ancient version of the myth, what did the gods send to Troy in place of the real Helen?
A likeness made of clouds
A likeness made of clouds: in this telling, which Euripides put on stage, the real Helen sat out the war in Egypt, so the armies at Troy were fighting over a phantom.
Q 09How did the king of Ithaca try to dodge the war against Troy?
By pretending to be mad
By pretending to be mad: in one telling he yoked a horse with an ox and ploughed away, giving up the act only when Palamedes laid his baby son in the plough's path.
Q 10How was Achilles unmasked while hiding as a girl on Skyros?
He seized a spear at a horn blast
He seized a spear at a horn blast: Greek envoys had laid weapons among gifts of jewellery, then sounded a trumpet as if the palace were under attack, and only one 'girl' reached for arms.
Q 11How did King Cinyras cheat on his promise of fifty ships for the Greeks?
Most were models made of clay
Most were models made of clay: he sent a single real ship, moulded the other forty-nine out of earth and set them afloat on the sea.
Q 12For how long did the Greeks besiege Troy before the city fell?
Ten years
Ten years: the seer Calchas foretold it at Aulis after a serpent swallowed nine sparrows, a mother and her eight chicks, one bird for each year of fighting before the city fell.
Q 13Whose death in Achilles's borrowed armour drove Achilles back into the war?
Patroclus
Patroclus: he was told only to drive the Trojans from the ships and come back, but chased them to the city wall, where Hector killed him and stripped the armour.
Q 21Which Trojan princess foresaw the city's fall but was cursed never to be believed?
Cassandra
Cassandra: in the usual telling a god taught her prophecy to win her over, and when she then refused him he saw to it that no one would ever act on what she foretold.
Q 22How did the king of Ithaca take revenge on Palamedes for forcing him to war?
Framed him with a forged letter
Framed him with a forged letter: in the usual telling it seemed to come from the Trojan king, gold was buried under Palamedes's tent to match it, and the army stoned an innocent man as a traitor.
Q 23Which captive woman did Agamemnon seize from Achilles, prompting him to quit the fighting?
Briseis
Q 14Whom did Agamemnon have to sacrifice at Aulis to appease Artemis and free the becalmed fleet?
Iphigenia
Iphigenia: she was lured to Aulis with the promise of marriage to Achilles, and in many versions Artemis snatched her from the altar at the last moment and left a deer in her place.
Q 15Which English playwright called Helen 'the face that launched a thousand ships'?
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe: in Doctor Faustus the line greets a spirit conjured in Helen's shape, and it rounds down, since the ancient tallies of the Greek fleet run to more than a thousand.
Q 16Why was the keeper of Heracles's bow abandoned on Lemnos on the way to Troy?
A snake bite gave him a stinking wound
He carried the bow and arrows of Heracles, and a prophecy later said Troy could not fall without them.
Q 17Why did the Greeks hesitate to land at Troy?
The first man ashore was fated to die
The first man ashore was fated to die: Protesilaus leapt anyway and was killed, and the gods were said to have pitied his grieving wife and let him come back from the dead to see her.
Q 18Which two gods built Troy's walls for King Laomedon, who then refused to pay them?
Poseidon and Apollo
Poseidon and Apollo: cheated of their wages, they sent a sea monster and a plague, and when the king also cheated the hero who killed the monster, Heracles sacked Troy a generation before the famous war.
Q 19What were the soldiers Achilles led to Troy called?
Myrmidons
The Myrmidons: they followed him so faithfully, even sitting out the war when he did, that 'myrmidon' entered English as a word for someone who carries out orders without question.
Q 20Achilles killed which Trojan prince because Troy would not fall if he reached the age of 20?
Troilus
Troilus: Achilles lay in wait for the boy and killed him inside a sanctuary, and centuries later Chaucer and Shakespeare remade the doomed prince as the lover of Cressida.
Briseis: forced by a plague to hand back his own captive, Agamemnon seized her to save face, and the sulk that followed is the 'wrath of Achilles' that opens the Iliad.
Q 24Which Greek hero wounded the gods Aphrodite and Ares in battle with Athena's help?
Diomedes
Diomedes: Athena cleared the mist from his eyes so he could tell gods from men, then pushed his driver aside and rode beside him herself when he speared the god of war.
Q 25What did Achilles do with Hector's body after killing him?
Dragged it behind his chariot
Dragged it behind his chariot: he hauled it round his dead friend's tomb day after day, yet the gods kept the body unmarked until the dead man's father came to ransom it.
Q 26Which god guided King Priam to Achilles's tent to beg for Hector's body?
Hermes
Hermes: disguised as a young man, he put the sentries to sleep, opened the gates of the camp and drove the old king's wagon through, then roused him in the night to slip away again.
Q 27Which Ethiopian king, son of the dawn goddess Eos, was killed by Achilles while fighting for Troy?
Memnon
Memnon: Greek visitors to Egypt later gave his name to two colossal statues of a pharaoh that still stand near Luxor.
Q 28With what weapon did Paris kill Achilles?
An arrow
An arrow: a god was said to have steered it, and the death had been foretold by Hector, who warned Achilles with his last breath that he would fall at Troy's Scaean Gate.
Q 29To whom were Achilles's arms awarded after his death, driving Ajax mad?
Odysseus
Odysseus: Ajax, who had carried the body out of the battle, was so crushed by the verdict that he slaughtered the army's livestock in a frenzy, taking the animals for his comrades, and then killed himself.
Q 30Which archer with Heracles's bow killed Paris?
Philoctetes
Philoctetes: he brought Paris down with the hero's bow, and in the usual story the dying prince was refused help by Oenone, the wife he had left for Helen.