Q 01/05

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty and what?

A) Pleasure and procreation

B) Music and dance

C) Youth and springtime

D) Wine and revelry

Answer · why

A) Pleasure and procreation

Pleasure and procreation were her business: the Greek word aphrodisios, 'belonging to Aphrodite', came to mean the pleasures of sex, and it gave Engli...

Q 02/05

Which flower was said to have turned from white to red when Aphrodite bled on it, running to the dying Adonis?

A) The rose

B) The poppy

C) The carnation

D) The peony

Answer · why

A) The rose

The rose: in one telling she tore her foot on its thorns as she ran, and her blood dyed the white petals for good. The red anemone, by contrast, was s...

Q 03/05

In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born from sea foam produced by what?

A) Uranus's severed genitals

B) Poseidon's trident

C) The blood of a Titan

D) A pearl in a shell

Answer · why

A) Uranus's severed genitals

Uranus's severed genitals: his son Cronus cut them off with a sickle and flung them into the sea, and she rose from the froth. Greeks heard aphros, 'f...

Q 04/05

In Homer's Iliad, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and which goddess?

A) Dione

B) Leto

C) Thetis

D) Demeter

Answer · why

A) Dione

Dione, whose name is simply a feminine form of Zeus's own, was worshipped beside him at his oracle of Dodona. In the Iliad the wounded Aphrodite runs ...

Q 05/05

In the Odyssey, the goddess of beauty is the unfaithful wife of which god?

A) Dionysus

B) Hephaestus

C) Poseidon

D) Apollo

Answer · why

B) Hephaestus

Hephaestus, the lame smith of the gods, is her husband in the Odyssey. The Iliad tells it differently: there his wife is a goddess called Charis, and ...