Epic Heroes Trivia Quiz

Answer: Miyamoto Musashi

Miyamoto Musashi (often just called Musashi), is the only epic hero to write his own story. He finished "The Book of the Five Rings", a remarkable mix of philosophy and autobiography, just before he died in 1645. He lived from 1584 to 1645, in the flower of the samurai culture under the shoguns.

Eisaku Sato was Japan's first Nobel Peace Prize winner. Hideki Tojo drove Japanese aggression in World War II. Toshiro Mifune was likely Japan's greatest actor. He portrayed Musashi in a superlative trio of 1950s films by Hiroshi Inagaki.

Answer: El Cid

Beloved for his even handed treatment of all his subjects, Diaz was called Al Sayyid by the Moorish ones. It became El Cid in Spanish. The term means "lord" or "master". El Cid died in battle in defense of Valencia on 10 July 1099. The epic poem securing his fame, "El Cantar de Mio Cid" (The Song of My Cid), was composed some time between 1140 and 1207.

The wrong answers are faux translations of Arabic into Spanish (Suleiman, alcazar, algebra).

Answer: Beowulf

"Beowulf" is believed to be the oldest extant complete work in English (not that an untrained speaker of Modern English would understand a word of it), with the oldest known manuscript dating to between 975 and 1025 CE. The epic shows enduring life, being retold by modern writers like Michael Crichton, and has been the subject of several movies.

Answer: Orlando

Ludovico Ariosto's 1516 masterwork was named "Orlando Furioso", which depending on your translator means either "The Rage of Roland" or "The Frenzy of Roland". The city of Orlando, Florida draws its name either from Ariosto's epic poem or from the 1727 Vivaldi opera of the same name, which was based on it.

Rigoletto is a character from a Verdi opera; Rolla is a college town in Missouri. In addition to a Shakespearean character, Romeo is a miniscule hamlet in Florida about 155 km from Orlando.

Answer: Arthur Pendragon

While the saga of King Arthur is an English tale, it would be unfair not to note the French contribution. Beginning with Chretien de Troyes in the late 12th Century and continuing for more than 150 years, the French reworked Arthur's story adding Christianity, the Grail Quest, and the two great knights, Lancelot and Galahad.

Arthur's "circle of friends" were the Knights of the Round Table, of which Gawain and Galahad were members. Robin of Locksley is better known as Robin Hood.

Answer: Cuchulain

"Cu" is the Old Irish for "dog" or "hound". The repeated reference to Cuchulain's lack of facial hair is central to the legend. The Irish goddess Macha suffered a shocking offense from the King of Ulster, and as punishment decreed that for nine generations, at every time of need, every Ulsterman old enough to grow a beard would suffer the pangs of childbirth for five days. Cuchulain's beardlessness allowed him to escape the curse.

Answer: William Tell

Scottish wit Sir William Connolly, CBE (better known as Billy Connolly) has defined an intellectual as "someone who can hear the "William Tell Overture" and not think of the Lone Ranger". I'm just as struck by the early appearance of the European Union: an opera, written in French, by an Italian, about a Swiss hero. Robin Hood is, of course, English not Swiss.

Parsifal is the German translation of "Percival", one of Arthur's knights (opera by Wagner). Who was that masked man? It's Clayton Moore, who starred as "The Lone Ranger" in the television series.

Answer: Paul Bunyan

There's a certain amount of academic dispute about how old and authentically folkloric the tales of Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Big Blue Ox actually are. I'm on the side of the experts who claim the tales began in logging camps and were later appropriated for advertising. Fabian Fournier was a French-Canadian logger held in near mythic repute. He may have helped inspire the Bunyan tales.

Answer: Siegfried

The hero Siegfried slew a dragon and bathed in its blood to become invulnerable. It didn't work very well, for when his wife, Gudrun, and the Icelandic queen, Brunhild, had a spat, he got murdered! The Germans called their World War I defensive line the Siegfried Line, the allies called it the Hindenburg Line. The World War II fortification was called the Westwall by the Germans, and the Siegfried Line by the allies.

Parsifal and Lohengrin got their own Wagnerian operas, but they were Germanic Grail knights. Hildebrand has his own myth cycle among the Germanic peoples, but plays only a minor role in the tale of Siegfried.

Answer: Heracles

The myth cycle of Heracles (Hercules to the Romans) has been translated into more than forty languages. His name translates as "Hera's Glory", but Hera was not appeased. I have used the spelling "Heracles" for the hero's name. Arguably, the name might best be spelled "Herakles", since the Greek spelling uses the letter "kappa". Like Pericles and Sophocles, Heracles' name entered English from the Latin. I have retained the Latinized spelling, since it has been in use for a millennium.