Q 01/05

Which poison did Socrates drink to carry out the death sentence passed on him by an Athenian jury?

A) Arsenic

B) Hemlock

C) Wolfsbane

D) Nightshade

Answer · why

B) Hemlock

Hemlock ended his life at 70, after he had joked to the jurors that a fitting punishment would be free meals at the city's sacred hearth, an honour us...

Q 02/05

Which future conqueror did Aristotle tutor as a thirteen-year-old prince at the request of King Philip II?

A) Alexander the Great

B) Demetrius the Besieger

C) Pyrrhus of Epirus

D) Julius Caesar

Answer · why

A) Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great took his lessons at Mieza, a royal estate near Pella, and Aristotle encouraged him toward eastern conquest.

Q 03/05

In a famous allegory from Plato's Republic, lifelong prisoners watching shadows on a wall are chained inside what?

A) A dungeon

B) A quarry

C) A temple

D) A cave

Answer · why

D) A cave

A cave holds the prisoners in Book VII, where the shadows come from objects carried in front of a fire behind them. Plato uses the scene to show what ...

Q 04/05

Which legendary island makes its first known appearance in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias?

A) Thule

B) Hy-Brasil

C) Atlantis

D) Avalon

Answer · why

C) Atlantis

Atlantis appears in no source older than Plato, who claimed the tale came from Egyptian records translated by the Athenian lawmaker Solon. He told it ...

Q 05/05

The word philosophy comes from the ancient Greek philosophia, which literally means the love of what?

A) Wisdom

B) Beauty

C) Truth

D) Virtue

Answer · why

A) Wisdom

Wisdom is sophia in Greek, joined here to a root meaning loving. The same word names Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, a church dedicated to Holy Wisdom.