Q 01/05

The discus was part of which ancient Greek multi-event competition, dated to at least 708 BC?

A) The tetrathlon

B) The decathlon

C) The heptathlon

D) The pentathlon

Answer · why

D) The pentathlon

It remains part of the modern decathlon, though it is not in the modern pentathlon.

Q 02/05

Which sculptor made the famous fifth-century-BC statue of a discus thrower, the Discobolus?

A) Phidias

B) Praxiteles

C) Myron

D) Polykleitos

Answer · why

C) Myron

The original bronze is lost; the work is known through Roman marble copies such as the Palombara Discobolus, found in 1781.

Q 03/05

Which dictator bought the Palombara Discobolus in 1938 and had it shipped to Munich?

A) Benito Mussolini

B) Adolf Hitler

C) Francisco Franco

D) Joseph Stalin

Answer · why

B) Adolf Hitler

Foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano sold it for five million lire over the protests of Italy's education minister; it went back to Rome in 1948.

Q 04/05

The Townley Discobolus, excavated at Hadrian's Villa in 1790, is now held where?

A) The Louvre

B) The British Museum

C) The Vatican Museums

D) The Glyptothek

Answer · why

B) The British Museum

Charles Townley paid £400 for it and insisted his was the better copy even though its head had been wrongly restored.

Q 05/05

In which German city was the discus revived as a sport in the 1870s by Christian Georg Kohlrausch?

A) Leipzig

B) Munich

C) Magdeburg

D) Hamburg

Answer · why

C) Magdeburg

Organized men's competition resumed in the late 19th century, in time for the first modern Olympics in 1896.