These Were All Greek To Me Trivia Quiz

Answer: Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great (356 BC - 323 BC) was the one we're looking for. He was born in Macedonia, which at that time was considered one of the less educated regions of the world. But Alexander worked hard and first subdued almost all of Greece. Then he secured the rest of the Balkan peninsula south of the Danube river and crossed to Persia. With a few remarkable battles he subdued the Persians and conquered South-Asia up till the frontier with today's India. He also won Egypt, and thus founded the greatest Empire up until his time.
Draco (7th century BC) was an Athenian monarch and lawgiver.
Leonidas (540 - 480 BC) was King of Sparta, who resisted with 300 Spartans and 700 allies against an army of 10,000 Persians.
According to Homer's "The Iliad", Agamemnon was king of Mycenae and commanded the Greeks who eventually destroyed Troy.

Answer: A law of physics

Archimedes (287 BC -212 BC) made several discoveries in physics and in mathematics.
Archimedes' principle, which he allegedly found when taking a bath, is the following: "the volume of water displaced equals the volume of the object submerged". So if you fill a bath up till the brim and you step in it, the volume of your body equals the volume of water spilled.
Archimedes then used this new finding to verify whether a crown made for King Hiero of Syracuse, was made of solid gold. It turned out the goldsmith had cheated.
Rubber ducks didn't exist in Archimedes' time.
If a scientist would leap out of his bath and run into the street yelling "I found the soap" or "I found the towel", it would not quite be worthy to mention in a history book!

Answer: Delphi

The most important oracle in Greece was Delphi, a temple dedicated to Apollo (the sun god). An elderly woman used to sit there on a tripod, next to a crack in the mountain where volcanic fumes emerged. The woman would chew on some herbs and, when somebody posed her a question, answer with some rabble.

The priests then would offer the visitor an explanation. For example, when king Croesus asked if he should go to war against Persia, the advice was "A great kingdom will perish". But unfortunately it was his own kingdom that perished... Dresden is a city in Germany. Dijon is a city in France. Darwin is a city in Australia. Neither of these existed in the Ancient Greek times.

Answer: Herodotus

Herodotus (484 BC - 425 BC) was one of the first to write down all kind of real events, earning him the title "father of history". He was also the first to include eyewitnesses to the most recent events.
But contrary to present historians, Herodotus did not check all the facts. Sometimes he wrote down a tale by someone who said they had lived it, but who was no eyewitness at all. Other texts by Herodotus are based upon folk tales or popular theatre plays, which may not render accurately what happened. So one of his successors called Herodotus "the father of lies".
Other Greek historians include Thucydides (460 BC - 395 BC) and Xenophon (430 BC -354 BC).
Hippocrates (460 BC - 370 BC) was one of the first known medics in the world.
Apelles (contemporary of Alexander the Great) was a gifted Greek painter.
Phidias (480 BC - 430 BC) was the best known sculptor of Ancient Greece.

Answer: Marathon

Persia invaded Greece in 490 BC. One of the first battles was on the site of Marathon, where we now can find a national park. This battlefield is about 40 to 50 km to the northeast of Athens.
Some historians claim a soldier named Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens in order to tell the outcome: the Athenians won. According to these sources, Pheidippides died immediately after telling the outcome of the battle to the governors of Athens.
Another story is about the same Pheidippides, running from Athens to Sparta (about 250 km southwest) to ask for reinforcements. However, the Spartans didn't arrive in time for the battle of Marathon.
When baron Pierre de Coubertin reinstated the Olympic Games in 1896, he chose the marathon (about 42 km) as the crowning event in running. The exact distance of the Olympic marathon was defined in 1908.
Olympia is the place where the ancient Olympic games were held. These involved track and field events (javelin throw, long jump, sprint...), wrestling, boxing and chariot-racing.
Pancration was a martial art at the ancient Olympics, in which almost everything was allowed.
Decathlon is the modern Olympic discipline consisting of ten different track and field events.

Answer: Piano

Music was an important part of the life of free Greeks. They had many gods, and for each god there could be some festival at one time or another. Moreover, the theatre plays the Greeks liked, were also accompanied by music - a bit like the operas composed since the Renaissance.
The piano as we know it was invented by the Italian Bartolomeo Cristofori, probably around 1700 AD.
The lyre is a musical instrument shaped as a bow, with a certain numbers of strings which can be plucked. Some ancient Greek vases show us people playing the lyre.
The tambourine is a wooden, circular frame with a drumhead and some metal bells. This was used throughout all the Mediterranean in ancient times.
The pan flute is a set of reed pipes of different length. Blowing over them gives a characteristic sound. Its name is derived from the Greek half god Pan, who favoured this musical instrument.

Answer: Salamis

The Persian army had at that time conquered half of Greece - only the Peloponnesus remained free of Persians. But the entry to the Peloponnesus peninsula is a narrow strip of land, where a small number of soldiers could resist a much larger army for several days, maybe weeks. So the Persian king Darius was eager to destroy the Greek fleet, and try landing on an undefended shore in the Peloponnesus afterwards.
The Greek fleet was outnumbered by the Persian fleet, so the Greeks chose to fight in a narrow straits, for the Greek ships were better at manoeuvering. They lured the Persians into the Straits of Salamis, and there they won a crushing victory. The remaining Persians never tried to fight the combined Greek forces again.
Surely you didn't pick tomatoes, mozzarella or oregano as the site of a naval battle. These ingredients are great on a pizza, but they don't refer to actual islands near Greece.

Answer: Socrates

Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC) was the only Greek listed here. His father was a stonemason, and his mother a midwife. At first Socrates tried his hand at stonemasonry and sculpting, but soon he was asking questions to anyone he met, in order to help his addressee to understand some issues.
One of Socrates' famed phrases is "I know that I know nothing". But in fact, the quote is wrong: it says about someone who claims fundamental knowledge, that he was proven wrong, and that Socrates doesn't claim fundamental knowledge - what is wiser, for it isn't any false pretence.
Descartes (1596-1650 AD) was a French mathematician and philosopher. His best known phrase is "I think, therefore I am".
Kant (1724-1804 AD) was a German philosopher. His best quote is what he called the golden rule: "Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself".
Nietzsche (1844-1900 AD) was another German philosopher. He stated "God is dead", for the western society doesn't need God anymore.

Answer: Sophocles

Sophocles (497 BC - 406 BC) was one of the greatest Greek playwrights, together with Aeschylus (525 BC - 455 BC), Euripides (480 BC - 406 BC) and Aristophanes (446 BC - 386 BC). Of these four, Aristophanes specialised in comedy, while the other three specialised in tragedy.
"Oedipus the King" relates how the baby Oedipus was abandoned, for an oracle foretold that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus grew up in an adoptive family and as a young soldier he went travelling. En route he quarrelled with his real father and killed him, and then he married his mother after solving a riddle by the Sphinx. When he found out, he blinded himself and went in exile.
"Antigone" is kind of a sequel to "Oedipus the King". Oedipus' sons battled to become king of Thebes, but they kill each other doing so. Creon (Oedipus' brother-in-law) forbade proper burial for one of Oedipus' sons, but Antigone defied Creon. It all ends with the death of Antigone, her lover and Creon's wife.
Eugene Ionesco (1909 - 1994 AD) was a French playwright.
Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989 AD) was an Irish playwright.
Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904 AD) was a Russian playwright.

Answer: Sparta

Ancient Greece consisted of dozens of city states (including the surrounding farmland). Most of these had an army of some kind, and many had a war fleet too.
Sparta was the state that relied most on heavy infantry. Every able boy needed to enlist for several years, training as a soldier (but also as a spy). Those who could afford it bought heavy armour to wear in battle, and these were the fiercest opponents on a battlefield.
Crete was known for its merchant fleet.
Arcadia was known as a paradise for shepherds and their flock.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, and in the third century BC they had some huge war machines (such as solar magnifiers to set fire to enemy ships).