Q 01/05

Which winged Greek goddess of victory has featured on every Summer Olympic medal since Amsterdam 1928?

A) Athena

B) Nike

C) Enyo

D) Bia

Answer · why

B) Nike

Nike holds a winner's crown and a palm on the design introduced for the Amsterdam Games. Since Athens 2004 she has been shown above the Panathenaic St...

Q 02/05

Which feature of the night sky was formed, in Greek myth, when Hera pushed the suckling infant Heracles away?

A) The North Star

B) The Big Dipper

C) The morning star

D) The Milky Way

Answer · why

D) The Milky Way

The Milky Way, in the best-known telling, was the milk that spurted across the heavens when Hera woke and thrust the unknown baby aside. The Greek wor...

Q 03/05

In the Roman poet Ovid's telling, Athena punished which beautiful maiden by turning her hair into snakes?

A) Medusa

B) Arachne

C) Scylla

D) Cassandra

Answer · why

A) Medusa

Medusa is a punished beauty in Ovid's late version; in Hesiod's older account she was born a Gorgon. After Perseus beheaded her, he gave the head to A...

Q 04/05

The word cereal comes from Ceres, the Roman name for which Greek goddess of grain and the harvest?

A) Athena

B) Artemis

C) Demeter

D) Aphrodite

Answer · why

C) Demeter

Demeter was Ceres to the Romans, and cereal comes from the Latin for 'of Ceres'. Her secret rites at Eleusis, near Athens, promised initiates a happy ...

Q 05/05

Which Trojan prince awarded a golden apple to Aphrodite, judging her fairer than her rivals Hera and Athena?

A) Hector

B) Paris

C) Priam

D) Troilus

Answer · why

B) Paris

Paris took Aphrodite's bribe, the world's most beautiful woman, and carrying Helen of Sparta off to Troy started the Trojan War. Hera had offered to m...