The Time Machine Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1150 BC-1140 BC

The Trojan War was fought for a period of ten years between the Trojans and the Greeks in Troy, on the shores of the Aegean Sea in Asia Minor, present-day Turkey. The commonly accepted cause of the war was the kidnapping of Spartan Queen Helen by the Trojan Prince Paris. Homer narrated the story of the Trojan War in the "Iliad", Ilion being the Greek name for Troy. For the record, the two leaders of the war were King Agamemnon of Mycenae for the Greeks and King Priam for the Trojans.

It ended with the defeat and destruction of Troy.

In the 19th century, archaeological excavations led by German Heinrich Schliemann, revealed nine layers of building remains on the site, a fact that is largely considered as proof for the historical existence of the glorious city of Troy.

Answer: 430 BC

During the second year of the Peloponnesian war, an epidemic broke out in Athens, which devastated the city and killed between 75,000 and 100,000 people, among them Pericles, the leader of Athens. It is believed to have entered the city through the port, Piraeus, which provided Athens with contaminated food and water. For a long time the disease was considered the bubonic plague, but in later years, scholars, medical doctors, epidemiologists, and geneticists studied DNA from the Kerameikos mass graves and concluded that it was an outbreak either of typhus or smallpox.

The plague was documented by the historian Thucydides.

Answer: 776 BC

The ancient Olympic games were established as part of a religious festival in honor of Zeus, the father of the Olympian gods and goddesses. The festival took place in Olympia, a small town in the Peloponnese which took its name from Mount Olympus. The games, initially included just a foot race of 600 feet, but they gradually gained prestige and wider participation, and at their peak, they included 23 events.

The games were banned when Christianity became the dominant religion, namely in 394 AD, during the reign of Emperor Theodosius.

The modern Olympic Games were established in 1896.

Answer: 490 BC

The Battle of Marathon is considered the first battle in what became known as the Greek-Persian Wars. In 490 BC, the Persian king Darius I, with 25,000 men and 600 ships, and aided by the Greek traitor Hippias, attacked the Athenians at Marathon, a village near Athens.

The Athenian army of 10,000 men was led by General Miltiades, who devised an ingenious military formation that defeated Darius' army. A soldier of the Greeks, Pheidipides, ran the 42 kilometers from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory to the city and died from exhaustion upon arrival.

His heroic act is commemorated in the Marathon race, established in the first modern Olympiad in 1896.

Answer: 399 BC

In 399 BC, the Athenian philosopher Socrates was tried and condemned to death by drinking the poison hemlock. The city of Athens charged Socrates with corrupting youths and not believing in the gods of the city. The trial and subsequent sentence trigger was the fact that, at his lectures with his students, Socrates raised philosophical questions on religion and politics. Even though he is considered the father of Western philosophy, Socrates did not leave written records of his philosophical way of thinking. What we know about him is mainly from his student, Plato, and other students like the historian Xenophon. Plato's "Apology of Socrates" and "Phaedo" document the final days of Socrates' trial and the execution.

Answer: circa 1620 BC-1500 BC

The Minoan eruption on the island of Thera (present-day Santorini) took place during the Bronze age, and it was traditionally dated at around 1500 BC. Professor Marinatos, head archaeologist of the excavations at the Paleolithic site of Akrotiri on the island, attributed the destruction of the Minoan civilization to the earthquakes and tsunami that resulted from the eruption.

However, later radiocarbon dating places the date of the eruption almost a century earlier, at around 1620 BC, which would require an entirely different approach to the cause and time of the destruction of Knossos and Phaistos, main Minoan cities on the island of Crete.

The volcano eruption created the famous Caldera of Thera and has been estimated as the second strongest in history, behind the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Deposits of volcanic ash (tephra) and magma (pumice) have been found in the delta of the Nile river in Egypt, in Turkey and in Israel.

In popular legends, the Minoan eruption has been connected with the lost city of Atlantis in the writings of the philosopher Plato and the Old Testament plagues of Egypt, explaining the days of darkness, the blood-like color of the river and the poisoning of the animals.

Answer: 480 BC

Ten years after the defeat at the Battle of Marathon, the Persians returned to conquer Greece. The son of Darius I, Xerxes I, sent envoys to the Greek city-states and asked for unconditional surrender. When his envoys reached Sparta and asked the Spartan king Leonidas to surrender his arms, the answer was "Molon Labe" (come and get them.) Xerxes I did just that, amassed a vast army, and advanced toward Greece, crossing from Asia to Europe at the Dardanelles.

He found no significant resistance while pushing south towards Athens and Sparta until he reached Thermopylae in central Greece.

The narrow passage was guarded by the Spartan King Leonidas with 300 Spartan men and 1,100 Boeotians. With the aid of traitor Ephialtes, who showed the Persians a mountain trail behind the Spartans, Xerxes bypassed Thermopylae and accomplished what his father had failed to achieve, the conquest of Greece. Leonidas and all his men were massacred, and their sacrifice was documented as one of the most heroic acts in world history.

Answer: 356 BC-323 BC

Alexander the Great or Alexander III of Macedon, was born in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia, in 356 BC to Philip II and Olympias. He became king of Macedonia after his father's assassination, and, in ten years, he expanded his kingdom to three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

He set out to conquer the Persian Empire and seek revenge for all the wars the Persians initiated against the Greeks. On his way, he founded more than 70 cities that bore his name, spread the Greek language and culture as far east as India, and opened up new commercial and trading routes.

He established himself as one of the greatest military minds in human history. Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC. Sadly, his vast empire disintegrated during lengthy wars between his "diadochoi" (successors).

Answer: 431 BC-404 BC

The two most powerful city-states of ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, engaged in a war that lasted from 431 BC to 404 BC and resulted in the defeat and destruction of Athens and its subsequent decline. The animosity between the two cities originated in 478 BC with the formation of the Delian League or Athenian League, which united several Greek cities under Athens, giving it unrestricted power. On the other hand, Sparta, a known military super-power, was a member of the Peloponnesian League, which included several other city-states.

The two Leagues challenged each other's leadership, and a series of provocations led to an inevitable conflict in three phases, as documented by the historian Thucydides. In the final stage of the war, the Spartans, aided by the Persians, defeated Athens at the naval battle of Aegospotami.

Answer: 146 BC

The Battle of Corinth in 146 BC marked the Roman conquest of Greece. In the same year, 146 BC, Rome also destroyed Carthage, and these two critical victories solidified the Roman grip on the Mediterranean. One by one, all the major city-states of Greece became Roman provinces.

The coup de grāce was given at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, when the fleet of Octavian defeated the fleet of Cleopatra, the last Greek Ptolemaic Queen, and her lover, Roman general Mark Anthony. That was the final battle of the Roman Republic, which henceforth became the Roman Empire, and Octavian became the first Roman Emperor, Augustus.