Q 01/05

What form of government in ancient Greek city-states was rule by a select, often wealthy, few?

A) Monarchy

B) Oligarchy

C) Democracy

D) Tyranny

Answer · why

B) Oligarchy

Oligarchy means rule by the few; in 411 BC, with a long war going badly, a council of Four Hundred wealthy Athenians overthrew the democracy, only to ...

Q 02/05

Which Olympian god was associated with wine, revelry, and theater?

A) Poseidon

B) Apollo

C) Dionysus

D) Hermes

Answer · why

C) Dionysus

Dionysus was honoured at Athens' great spring festival, the City Dionysia, where tragedies and comedies were staged in competition, which is how the g...

Q 03/05

Who is traditionally credited with the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two epic poems at the foundation of ancient Greek literature?

A) Homer

B) Sophocles

C) Virgil

D) Hesiod

Answer · why

A) Homer

Homer gets the credit, yet the poems grew out of generations of oral performance and were written down only later, and scholars still debate whether o...

Q 04/05

Which Greek architectural order, the earliest and simplest of the three, has sturdy columns topped by a plain circular capital?

A) Corinthian

B) Ionic

C) Tuscan

D) Doric

Answer · why

D) Doric

Doric columns have no base and rise straight from the temple floor; the order probably grew out of building in timber, with its triglyphs perhaps copy...

Q 05/05

What three-headed dog guarded the entrance to the Underworld in Greek mythology?

A) Cerberus

B) Chimera

C) Hydra

D) Orthrus

Answer · why

A) Cerberus

Cerberus, in Hesiod's telling, fawned on souls as they arrived but ate any who tried to leave; dragging him up into the daylight was one of the twelve...