The Messy Family Life of a King of the Gods Quiz

Answer: Athena

One of the thousands of daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, Metis ("wise counsel") was the personification of prudence and deep thought. As her parents were both siblings of Cronus and Rhea, she was Zeus's cousin. In some accounts, she first resisted the god's advances, metamorphosing herself various times in order to escape him. When Metis was already pregnant, Zeus heard a prophecy stating that the offspring of their union would eventually overthrow him - so he followed the advice of their mutual grandparents, the sky god Uranus and the earth goddess Gaia, and swallowed her. Thus was Athena, goddess of wisdom, born from her father's head, fully grown and clad in armour.

Of the three goddesses listed as wrong answers, only Artemis, goddess of the hunt, is described as a daughter of Zeus (by the Titaness Leto) by the vast majority of accounts of Greek mythology. In the "Theogony", Aphrodite, goddess of love, was born from the sea foam that spread around Uranus' severed genitals, though other accounts describe her as a daughter of Zeus. Asteria, Leto's sister, was the goddess of falling stars, who spurned Zeus's pursuit by turning herself into a quail, and then into the island of Delos.

Answer: centaur

Zeus often had to transform himself in order to hide his pursuits of other women from his jealous wife, Hera. He changed into a white bull to abduct Europa, daughter of the king of the Phoenician city of Tyre; the constellation Taurus was created to commemorate the event. In order to reach Danae, daughter of the king of Argos, whose father had locked her in an inaccessible tower, Zeus transformed himself into a golden shower of rain. Finally, the god took the guise of a swan fleeing from an eagle to entice the fair Leda, queen of Sparta; in some accounts, the constellation Cygnus was created to commemorate Zeus's seduction of Leda.

Though centaurs - the mythical creatures with the upper body of a man and the lower body of a horse - had a reputation for lustfulness, Zeus never turned himself into one of them to pursue any of his love interests.

Answer: Ares

In Hesiod's "Theogony" and other accounts, Ares, god of war, is described as the only male offspring of Zeus and Hera. The divine couple also had two daughters, Hebe, goddess of youth (who married Heracles after he ascended to Olympus), and Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth. Though often referred to as Zeus and Hera's other son, the blacksmith god Hephaestus is described by Hesiod and other influential authors as being the son of Hera alone, born as a result of Hera's fury at Athena's motherless birth.

Apollo was the offspring of Zeus and the Titaness Leto (one of his seven wives in Hesiod's account), while Hermes was born from Zeus's dalliance with Maia, the oldest of the Pleiades, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas. Dionysus, on the other hand, was the son of the god and a mortal woman, Theban princess Semele, who was burned to a cinder when she beheld Zeus in all his glory. Incidentally, Semele was also Zeus's great-granddaughter, since her mother, Harmonia, was the offspring of Aphrodite's affair with Ares.

Answer: Demeter

Demeter, goddess of the harvest and agriculture, was the second child born to the Titans Cronus and Rhea: her siblings, besides Zeus and Hera, were Hestia, Hades, and Poseidon. All of them were swallowed by their father, who feared being overthrown by his children, but eventually rescued by Zeus, the youngest child, who had been saved from the same fate by his mother. In Hesiod's account, Demeter was the fourth of Zeus' wives, with whom the king of the gods fathered Persephone, goddess of seasons, originally named Kore ("The Maiden").

When Hades, god of the underworld, fell in love with Persephone, Zeus helped him to abduct her, as he knew that Demeter would never allow Persephone to go to live in Hades' underground realm. Demeter, devastated by the loss of her daughter, vowed not to allow anything on earth to grow until Persephone was returned to her. Zeus then ordered Hades to return Persephone to her mother - which he did, though not before having tricked her into eating a few pomegranate seeds before her departure. Because she had eaten the food of the underworld, Persephone would be forced to spend part of the year with Hades, ushering the arrival of winter.

Dione, who was either a Titaness or an Oceanid nymph, was one of Zeus's divine consorts, and - according to some accounts (such as Homer's "Iliad") - Aphrodite's mother.

Answer: Muses

In Hesiod's account, the Titaness Mnemosyne ("memory"), one of Zeus's aunts, was his fifth wife, whom he seduced in the guise of a shepherd. They slept together for nine consecutive nights, and from their union the nine Muses were born. These nine goddesses of science, literature and the arts - from whose collective name the word "music" derives - lived near a spring on Mount Helicon, in Boeotia. Ancient works of literature, especially epic poetry, always began with an invocation to the Muses, who were asked by the poet to grant him inspiration. At the beginning of his "Theogony", Hesiod claims that the Muses taught him the art of poetry while he was shepherding lambs in the shadow of Mount Helicon.

Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos - known as the Moirae (Fates), the three goddesses of fate and destiny - were the daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Themis ("divine law"), his aunt and second wife in Hesiod's account. In the same "Theogony", however, they are also cited as being the daughters of Nyx, the goddess of night. The Horae - whose identity differs in various accounts, but who generally correspond to the seasons - were also the offspring of Zeus and Themis. Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne - the three Graces ("Charites" in Greek) - were the daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome, his third wife.

Answer: heifer

Io was the daughter of Inachus, the first king of Argos, and a priestess of Hera. One of the oldest accounts of Io's myth is featured in Aeschylus's tragedy "Prometheus Bound", in which she appears as a character. Having caught Zeus's attention, Io initially refused his advances for fear of angering Hera. Driven away from her home by her father (who was forced to do so by an oracle), Io was changed into a beautiful white heifer (a young female bovine that has not yet given birth), and endlessly tormented by a gadfly set upon her by Hera.

In other versions of the myth, however, it is Zeus who turned Io into a heifer, which eventually ended up in Hera's possession. The jealous goddess set the many-eyed giant Argus to watch her, but he was killed by Hermes. Driven to wander the world by the unceasing torment of the gadfly, Io crossed the Ionian Sea, named after her, and the strait separating Europe from Asia, known after that as Bosporus ("ox-ford"). When she finally reached Egypt, Zeus returned her to her human form. There Io gave birth to Epaphus, her son by the king of the gods, who - as Prometheus had prophesied - would become the ancestor of Heracles and other great heroes. Epaphus is also regarded as the founder of the Egyptian city of Memphis. Io and Zeus also had a daughter, Keroessa ("the horned one"), whose son by Poseidon, Byzas, was the founder of Byzantium, present-day Istanbul.

The three wrong answers refer to other notable metamorphoses found in Greek mythology: Daphne (who was turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo's pursuit), Atalanta (turned into a lioness for desecrating a temple), and Niobe (turned into stone by grief over the loss of her children).

Answer: Achilles and Ajax

The daughter of the river god Asopus, Aegina was the nymph of the island that bears her name, located off the coast of Attica: she had been carried there by Zeus in the guise of an eagle. Aegina bore the god a son, Aeacus, who became king of the island, and was believed to have helped Poseidon and Apollo to build the walls of Troy. Famous for his justice, after his death Aeacus became one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld alongside his half-brothers Minos and Rhadamanthus (the offspring of Zeus and Europa). His two sons from his wife Endeis were Peleus, the father of Achilles, and Telamon, the father of Ajax the Great. Aegina was also said to have had a daughter with Zeus, named Damocrateia, who became the mother of Patroclus, Achilles' closest friend.

Agamemnon and Menelaus were full brothers, sons of Atreus, while Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, both sons of Leda, were half-brothers: Pollux (Polydeuces) was fathered by Zeus, and Castor by her husband, Tyndareus. Odysseus and Diomedes, though very close friends, were not related.

Answer: Nemesis

In Hesiod's "Theogony", Nemesis ("the one who gives what is due") is the daughter of Nyx, goddess of Night, and the personification of retribution against those who succumb to hubris, the sin of arrogance before the gods - one of the key concepts of classical Greek tragedy. She is first mentioned as Helen's mother by Zeus in "Cypria", a lost epic poem of the 7th century BC that is widely held to have been the prelude to Homer's "Iliad". According to this tradition, Nemesis was long pursued by Zeus, but fled him by changing her shape multiple times - until he caught her in the guise of a swan (or a goose). The egg produced by their union was given to Leda, who raised Helen after she hatched from the egg. This parentage would emphasise Helen's "fatal" nature, which brought about the ruin of the mighty city of Troy.

In the better-known version of the myth, Leda laid two eggs after her union with Zeus and successively with her husband, Tyndareus. Pollux and Helen, Zeus's children, hatched from one egg; Castor and Clytemnestra, who were Tyndareus's children, hatched from the other.

Of the deities listed as wrong answer, two are male (Thanatos, the god of death, and Hypnos, the god of sleep - both also sons of Nyx). Eos was the goddess of dawn, sister to Helios, the sun god, and Selene, the moon goddess.

Answer: Heracles

Alcmene was the daughter of Electryon, one of the sons of the hero Perseus, born of the union of Zeus and Danae, and his wife Andromeda. Famed for her beauty and wisdom, Alcmene married her mother's brother, Theban general Amphitryon, who was also a grandson of Perseus. Such a remarkable woman, also known for her loyalty to her husband, inevitably caught Zeus's roving eye. In order to sleep with her, Zeus disguised himself as Amphitryon - who, in the meantime, was away from home fighting sea-robbers. Prior to visiting her, the god ordered the sun god Helios not to rise for three days, extending a single night into three. From this union Heracles, strongest of heroes, was born: because of his divine parentage, he was a half-brother of his great-grandfather, Perseus.

In Plautus' comedy "Amphitruo", it is Mercury (Hermes) who helps his father in his seduction of Alcmene by creating confusion around Amphitryon's house. At the end of the play, Jupiter (Zeus) himself explains to Amphitryon how the events unfolded, and entreats him to hold his wife blameless.

Minos, King of Crete, was one of the three sons Zeus had with Europa (the others being Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon). Theseus, on the other hand, though sometimes described as the son of Aegeus, King of Athens, in some accounts is referred to as the son of the sea god Poseidon.

Answer: bear

Callisto ("most beautiful") is described in some sources as a nymph, in others (such as a lost work by Hesiod) as the daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia. Like all followers of Artemis, Callisto was expected to remain a maiden, but Zeus pursued her, and finally managed to have his way with her. In some accounts (such as Ovid's "Metamorphoses"), Zeus seduced Callisto by disguising himself as Apollo, or even as Artemis - a rather farcical situation that was apparently the subject of a lost comedy.

In Hesiod's lost work, Artemis found out about Callisto's broken vow of virginity when she saw her follower bathing, and realized she was pregnant. The enraged goddess then turned Callisto into a bear. The unfortunate nymph gave birth to a son named Arkas, who - as a adult - almost killed her while hunting; in other accounts, Callisto was killed by Artemis or the jealous Hera. In any case, Zeus took pity on her, and turned her into a constellation that came to be named the Great Bear (Ursa Major in Latin), while Arcas became Arcturus ("guardian of the bear"), the brightest star in the constellation of Boötes.

Callisto is also one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter - the others being Io, Europa, and Ganymede - and the third-largest moon in the Solar System.