Q 01/05

Plutarch wrote that Persians admired which facial feature because Cyrus the Great had it?

A) A cleft chin

B) A high forehead

C) A hooked nose

D) Bushy eyebrows

Answer · why

C) A hooked nose

A hooked nose marked Cyrus, so Persians went on calling such noses the most handsome. Plutarch recorded the taste some six centuries after the king di...

Q 02/05

Which animals did Cyrus the Great place before his army so their smell would panic the Lydian cavalry?

A) Elephants

B) Camels

C) Donkeys

D) Buffalo

Answer · why

B) Camels

Camels from the baggage train went to the front at Thymbra, and the Lydian mounts bolted from the unfamiliar smell. With the charge scattered, Cyrus w...

Q 03/05

Which American Founding Father owned two copies of the Cyropaedia, an ancient Greek book about Cyrus the Great?

A) Thomas Jefferson

B) Benjamin Franklin

C) John Adams

D) James Madison

Answer · why

A) Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson kept one copy with Greek and Latin on facing pages, and it survives in the Library of Congress. Enlightenment thinkers read the book ...

Q 04/05

Which European collection holds the Cyrus Cylinder, the clay record of the Persian conquest of Babylon found in 1879?

A) The Louvre

B) Pergamon Museum

C) Vatican Museums

D) British Museum

Answer · why

D) British Museum

The British Museum paid for the dig that unearthed it in the ruins of Babylon. The barrel-shaped cylinder had lain buried as a foundation deposit for ...

Q 05/05

Which Lydian king, whose name became a byword for fabulous wealth, lost his kingdom to Cyrus the Great?

A) Midas

B) Croesus

C) Alyattes

D) Gyges

Answer · why

B) Croesus

Croesus gave English the phrase 'rich as Croesus', yet Herodotus says Cyrus spared him after the defeat and kept him on as an adviser.