Ten Myths from Ancient Greece Trivia Quiz

Answer: Icarius, an Athenean aristocrat, father of Erigone

During Pandion's reign, Dionysus visited Attica and became a good friend of Icarius, who was cordial towards the God and gave him residence. Icarius learned from Dionysus all the secrets of viticulture and the making of wine, which he started teaching to the Atheneans. During that visit the Wine God had a love affair with Icarius' daughter, Erigone, and gave her a son, Staphylus.

Unfortunately Erigone had a very tragic end. Dionysus had given Icarius some pretty strong wine as a gift. When Icarius tasted it he liked it so much that he immediately went out to the fields with his chariot to share it with his shepherds. They all drank from it, became very intoxicated and passed out. When they woke up, they thought that Icarius had tried to poison them, so they hunted him down and killed him. Icarius' dog alerted Erigone and led her to her father's unburied corpse. Erigone, devastated, buried her father and then hanged herself from a tree, above his grave.

Answer: Hesione, daughter of Laomedon

During Laomedon's reign in Troy, Poseidon got angered with the King and sent a sea monster to attack the city. An oracle told the King that by sacrificing his daughter Hesione, he would appease the monster. The King tied her on the rocks by the sea and left her there to die.
Hercules, returning from his Amazons expedition, was passing by Troy and saw Hesione exposed. Taking pity on her, he proposed to rid Troy of the monster, asking in return the famous war horses of Laomedon's (a gift from Zeus). Laomedon agreed and Hercules did indeed slay the monster, but the King of Troy refused the agreed gift.

Hercules returned on a later expedition, attacked Troy and slew Laomedon and all his children, except Hesione and the youngest son, Podarces. Hercules gave Hesione to his friend, King Telamon of Salamis, as a wife and allowed her to take any captives she chose with her to Salamis. She chose her brother, Podarces. Later she bought his freedom from Hercules, who gave the throne of Troy to Podarces and renamed him "Priam" from the Greek verb "piprasko" which means "to buy", so that everyone would remember that he was a King whose freedom had been bought.

Answer: A hoopoe

This is one of the darkest myths of ancient Greece. Tereus was the son of Ares (god of War) and King of Thrace. He was married to Procne and had a son named Itys. King Tereus secretly desired his wife's sister, Philomela, and one day he tried to have her. When she refused, he raped her. When the King realized what he had done, he became afraid of the consequences. To secure this terrible secret, he cut off Philomela's tongue, imprisoned her and told his wife that her sister had died.

Philomela found a way to exact revenge. She managed to weave letters on a fabric, telling her story, and sent the tapestry secretly to Procne. When the Queen read about her husband's crimes, blind with rage, she killed her son Itys, and served his flesh to her ignorant husband on his next meal. Tereus soon found out and tried to hunt down both sisters intending to kill them.

The Gods intervened to avert more bloodshed and taking pity on the sisters they transformed them all into birds. Philomela was turned into a nightingale and female nightingales don't sing (she had no tongue). Procne was turned into a swallow, and Tereus became a hoopoe.

Answer: Harpies

Ok, this one was easy. Some more info: King Phineas had the gift of prophecy. According to the myth, Zeus got angered with the King, because he abused his gift and kept revealing to men too many of the gods' plans. To punish him, Zeus abandoned him on an island with a stash of food. He could not eat of that food however, because whenever he approached it, the winged women named Harpies attacked him with their claws and drove him away.

Phineas was saved by Jason and the Argonauts who passed by his island and sent Boreads, the winged heroes, after the harpies, driving them away. Phineas rewarded Jason by telling him the secret that helped him pass by the Symplegades later on his quest.

The Amazons are irrelevant to this myth.

Answer: False

Palamedes was a brilliant mind who has been associated with many inventions such as the Greek numbers, currency and alphabet, dice and many games, the most famous of which was an ancient version of the modern checkers (English draughts). However he was not a sculptor.

Palamedes also played a very important part in Homer's "Iliad", first by convincing Odysseus of Ithaca to join Greeks in the expedition (another great myth... but that's another story) and then in Troy where, after Achilles' death he advised the Greeks to abandon the siege and return home. Odysseus, who was bearing a grudge against Palamedes, convinced the Greeks that Palamedes was acting as a traitor and made them stone him to death.

Answer: Damysus

Damysus was the fastest runner among all Gigantes. After his death, Centaur Chiron, the teacher of young Achilles, found his grave, dug out his corpse and cut off his ankle. He replaced one of Achilles' ankles with the one from Damysus, thus bestowing to Achilles his incredible speed (In Homer's "Iliad", Achilles has often been called "okypous" which means "fast-footed").

Interestingly enough the two myths (heel and ankle) were both involved in Achilles' death by Paris: when Paris learned of the weak spot of Achilles he got his bow and emerged from the Trojan Walls, searching for him. Achilles got warned by his mother of the mortal danger, so he spent all day fighting, but whenever he sighted Paris he ran away from him and Paris could not get a clear shot. Unfortunately, late in the day, while Achilles was again running away from Paris, Damysus' ankle was dislocated and fell off, causing Achilles to slow down. Paris finally caught up to him and shot him down.

Answer: His black feet

"Melan" means black and "podas" means foot.

Melampus and his heirs revived and kept alive the worship of Dionysus.

Answer: Iole, daughter of Eurytus, Princess of Oechalia

All four women were wives or lovers of Hercules, at one time or another. Hercules also had a great number of illegitimate children all over Greece. Deianira was his third and last mortal wife and she was jealous of Iole.

The interesting part is that Deianira did not use that potion intending to harm Hercules. Centaur Nessus (whom Hercules killed for trying to abduct and rape Deianira) gave her, in his dying moments, a few drops of his blood (mixed with semen, according to other sources), telling her that if ever Hercules cheated her, she could bring him back to her and make him love her forever with a potion made of this blood. Deianira kept that potion and used it when she suspected that Hercules fell in love with Iole. Thus, long dead Nessus had his revenge and Hercules died. After his death, Zeus took him to Olympus and immortalized him. Later, Hercules and Hera (who hated Hercules from the moment of his birth) were reconciled, and he married (for the last time) Hebe, the Goddess of Youth.

Answer: Memnon, hero and King of Ethiopia

This one is very tough, since Greek names and especially love affairs and relationships tend to be very confusing. Memnon was not a lover of Eos. He was the son of Eos and Tithonus. All the rest and many, many more were lovers of erotically insatiable Eos.

Answer: Podaleirius, son of Asclepius

The Trojan War was raging for ten, long, bloody years without result for the Greeks, when it was revealed that one of the conditions of Greeks winning the war was to use Hercules' bow and poisoned arrows. Odysseus set out for Lemnos at once, retrieved Philoctetes and brought him back to Troy, where Podaleirius healed Philoctetes' wound, performing (for the first time in the history of mankind) an operation using anesthesia.

When Philoctetes recovered, he put his bow to good use, killed many Trojans and changed the tide of the war. After Paris, son of Priam of Troy, killed Achilles with an arrow directed by Apollo at his heel (but see Q.6), he was himself killed by a poisoned arrow of Philoctetes.