Q 01/05

Which Spartan king died with his 300 men resisting Xerxes's invasion of Greece in 480 BC?

A) Menelaus

B) Lysander

C) Leonidas

D) Agesilaus

Answer · why

C) Leonidas

Leonidas did not make his last stand with only his 300: about 700 men from the small city of Thespiae refused to leave and died beside them, allies th...

Q 02/05

Cambyses dropped his plan to attack which city when his fleet refused to sail against it?

A) Athens

B) Carthage

C) Cyrene

D) Syracuse

Answer · why

B) Carthage

Carthage was a Phoenician colony, and the Phoenician crews who manned Cambyses's fleet would not attack their own kin; he let the plan drop, because h...

Q 03/05

Persian envoys asked Greek cities for which two symbolic gifts as tokens of submission?

A) Bread and salt

B) Earth and water

C) Gold and silver

D) Oil and wine

Answer · why

B) Earth and water

Earth and water was the standard demand, and Herodotus says two cities answered it by throwing Darius's heralds into a pit and down a well, telling th...

Q 04/05

Which Athenian playwright, who fought the Persians himself, put a grieving Xerxes on stage in The Persians?

A) Sophocles

B) Euripides

C) Aeschylus

D) Aristophanes

Answer · why

C) Aeschylus

Aeschylus told the Greek victory entirely from the losing side: the play is set at the Persian court in Susa, with no Greek character, and the news re...

Q 05/05

Cyrus's first great conquest, in 550 BC, was of which empire, ruled by Astyages?

A) The Medes

B) The Babylonians

C) The Lydians

D) The Elamites

Answer · why

A) The Medes

The Medes were beaten from within: their general Harpagus went over to Cyrus with much of the army, and a Babylonian chronicle records that Astyages's...