O is For Orpheus Trivia Quiz

Answer: Orestes

Agamemnon was the King of Mycenae and husband to Clytemnestra. Their house was cursed because one of Agamemnon's ancestors was the daredevil Tantalus, who killed his son Pelops and served the flesh to the Olympic gods. Pelops would be revived, but all of his descendants carried the curse.

When the Trojan prince Paris abducted the very pretty Helen, wife of Agamemnon's brother Menelaus, Agamemnon called upon all Greeks to unite against Troy. So Agamemnon sailed to Troy, thinking he would return very soon - but that was a severe miscalculation. The Trojan War would take up to ten years, and meanwhile Clytemnestra started an affair with Aegisthus.

Finally Agamemnon returned to Mycenae, accompanied by his slave Cassandra - a beautiful Trojan princess who was allotted to Agamemnon as part of the spoils. Clytemnestra (or Aegisthus, sources differ) then killed Agamemnon in his bath, whereupon the son Orestes swore revenge. And indeed, Orestes killed both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, but for this matricide he was pursued by the dreaded Erinyes (Furies).

At last Orestes appeared before a divine trial, with a jury presided by the goddess Athena. He confessed having killed his mother, but was acquitted because the murder took place at the request of Apollo. 

Answer: Oedipus

Laius and Iocasta, the royal couple ruling Thebes, had a son named Oedipus. And as was usual in those times, they consulted an oracle about the future of their son. To their great horror, the oracle predicted Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. Fearing such future, they decided to cripple their son and have him abandoned in a wild forest. However, the shepherd who had to fulfil this task, knew that the King and Queen of Corinth desperately wanted a son, and so Oedipus was delivered in Corinth and adopted by the Corinthian royals.

When Oedipus grew up to a young adult, he decided to travel through Greece. On a crossroads Oedipus quarreled with Laius and killed him. Continuing his journey, Oedipus heard of a Sphinx terrorizing Thebes. Iocasta was bestowed to whoever could get rid of the Sphinx. Oedipus solved the Sphinx' riddle, whereupon the Sphinx died violently (either by suicide or by Oedipus' sword). Oedipus was welcomed in Thebes, and as decreed, he married Iocasta. The new couple had four children: Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone and Ismene.

Many years later, the truth was revealed. Iocasta hung herself, and Oedipus blinded himself and went into exile. Eteocles and Polynices killed each other as they didn't want to share the Theban throne, and Antigone was executed because she tasked herself to bury Polynices - spite the new king of Thebes, her uncle Creon, had forbidden this honour.

Answer: Orthosia

Orthosia (aka Orthia) was a Spartan goddess of whom little was known outside the region Laconia. She was vaguely known to the other Greeks as a local variation on Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. According to various inscribed artefacts found at the shrine of Orthosia, she would have been celebrated both by young virgin girls, who marched in procession for her, and by young adult men.

The boys held a singing competition and composed music to be played on the lyre, but they also had a more violent ceremony. At first, they drew lots to see which one of them would be whipped to death in order to feed Orthosia. Later the legislator Lycurgus intervened: not a single boy would have to be killed, but all of them would be whipped in order to provide Orthosia with enough fresh blood to be satisfied another year.

Answer: Orpheus

According to Greek myth, the greatest mortal singer and musician was Orpheus - almost equal to the god of music Apollo. When Orpheus sang and played the lyre, all creatures (humans, satyrs, centaurs, ordinary animals...) stopped to listen, and trees and even rocks were moved into dance. Orpheus would have been one of the Argonauts who accompanied Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece, and Orpheus rescued the crew by overwhelming the sirens with his music.

One day Orpheus fell in love with Eurydice, a graceful woman. They soon married, but did not live happily ever after. Indeed: soon after the wedding Eurydice was bitten by a snake and died on the spot. Orpheus composed and performed such a beautiful lamentation that even Hades pitied him, and made an agreement with Orpheus: the singer was allowed to enter the underworld to retrieve Eurydice and lead her back into the world of the living, on one single condition: Orpheus could never look back. Orpheus did indeed find Eurydice and took her with him towards the exit of the underworld. But at one point the way narrowed and they had to walk in a single row. The inevitable happened: Orpheus did not hear his wife's footsteps after him, and turned - only to see Eurydice spirited away to the underworld forever.

Once again Orpheus took his lyre to comfort himself, but this time his song was so sad the jolly Maenads, female followers of the wine god Dionysus, could not stand it, and they tore Orpheus into little pieces.

Answer: Odysseus

There is so much to tell about Odysseus - Homer wrote more than 12,000 verses about his adventures. Odysseus and Penelope were King and Queen of the small island of Ithaca. When Agamemnon called the Greeks for war against Troy, Odysseus was one of the commanders who answered. Contrary to the brute force of both men called Ajax and the speed of Achilles, Odysseus was known for his slyness.

Before the Greeks sailed towards Troy, an oracle had declared the Greeks would never win without the presence of Achilles. But Achilles' mother Thetis had disguised him as a girl and hidden him with some real princesses. Odysseus' ruse detected Achilles and so he was recruited.

At the end of the tenth year of the Trojan War, the future for the Greeks seemed very bleak. Many of their fiercest warriors had been killed, and the Trojan city wall was still intact. Once again, it was Odysseus who invented a cunning plan: the wooden horse intended as a gift, but concealing forty excellent warriors.
After the war, Odysseus set out for his voyage home. But because he had offended Poseidon, Odysseus and his crew were delayed for ten years, and all but Odysseus perished on different adventures. On arriving home, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, had one final task: slaughtering a number of bragging suitors of Penelope, who have lived at her expenses for several years.

Answer: Oenone

Oenone was an Oread (mountain nymph) associated with Mount Ida in Phrygia, about 130 km from Troy. In Troy prince Paris was born, and an oracle predicted he would cause the downfall of the city. So the young Paris was exposed at Mount Ida, and he was raised there as a shepherd. As soon as Paris met Oinone, they fell in love and married.

But a few years later, three Olympian goddesses competed for the golden apple thrown by Eris, goddess of discord. Hera, Athena and Aphrodite chose Paris as the judge to end the quarrel, and Aphrodite won the prize by promising to Paris the love of the most beautiful mortal woman - Helen, at that time married to the Greek king Menelaus.

Paris did elope with Helen, thus causing the Trojan war. And at the very end, Paris was mortally wounded by an arrow. He turned to Oenone for help, but she refused - still angered by his unfaithfulness.

Answer: Orthrus

Greek myth had several curious monsters, and almost all of them had as common ancestor Echidna - a hybrid consisting of a lion, a goat and a serpent.

Among Echidna's direct children were Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance of the Underworld, and Orthrus, also named Orthus, a two-headed dog with a serpent's tail who was appointed the guard of Geryon's cattle - a herd of huge bovines. Orthrus fathered the Nemean lion and the Sphinx who terrorized Thebes.

Answer: Ourania

Urania is the Latin and in English the most common spelling, the Greek spelling Ourania starts indeed with the omicron. There are some authors who propose different sets of Muses, sometimes with different parentage, but most sources follow the argument developed by Hesiod.

According to Hesiod, Zeus and the Titaness Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory) had nine daughters, the Muses, who offered their services mostly to Apollo. In *Greek* alphabetical order, the Muses were Erato (love poetry), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Thalia (comedy), Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Melpomene (tragedy), Ourania (astronomy), Polyhymnia (sacred hymns) and Terpsichore (dance). Indeed: Greeks wrote Erato and Euterpe with an epsilon, Thalia with a theta, Calliope and Clio with a kappa and Ourania with an omicron.

Ourania was also the protector of philosophy, as many philosophers from ancient Greek times wondered about the heavenly objects.

Answer: Orphne

Orphne was a nymph living in Hades, wife to Acheron - the minor deity personalizing the Acheron (river of woe), one of the main rivers in the Underworld. Acheron and Orphne had a son named Ascalaphus, the guardian of Hades' garden with the pomegranate trees.

Wikipedia states that Orphne was also known as Styx, the personification of the river that separated earth and the Underworld. In her identity as Styx, she would be married to the titan Pallas and give him four children, among them Nike (Victory). Adventures outside of this marriage would result also in Styx giving birth to the frightening monster Echidna, and to the spring goddess Persephone.

Answer: Oceanus

According to Greek myth, the gods of the Olympus were preceded by the Titans - sons and daughters of Ouranos (heaven) and Gaia (earth). There were twelve Titans: Oceanus who married his sister Tethys, Coeus who married his sister Phoebe, Cronos who married his sister Rhea, Hyperion who married his sister Theia, and then those who married further relatives: Crius, Iapetus, Mnemosyne and Themis.

Cronos and Rhea had several children who became the core of the Olympic gods: Zeus who married his sister Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter and Hestia.
When the Titans declared war on the Olympian gods, Oceanus preferred to remain neutral. Instead he nursed his nieces Hera, Demeter and Hestia back to life, after their throats were slit by Cronus.

Oceanus and Tethys had several offspring: three thousand sons, the Potamoi (river gods) and three thousand daughters, the Oceanids (nymphs who took care of everything that needed water).