Divine Ladies of Greek Mythology Quiz

Answer: Nemesis

One of the many "daemones" (personified spirits) of Greek mythology, Nemesis ("she who deals out") was the goddess of retribution for evil deeds and undeserved fortune. In Hesiod's "Theogony", she is the daughter of Nyx, the primordial goddess of night, though no father is mentioned; among her numerous siblings there were Thanatos, the god of death, and Hypnos, the god of sleep. Her role in human affairs was to maintain equilibrium by keeping the favours dispensed by Tyche (the goddess of fortune) in check.

In Greek literature, Nemesis often appears as the punisher of hubris and is referred to by the name of Adrasteia ("the unescapable"). She is often depicted as a winged woman wielding a variety of objects associated with measuring or punishment - such as scales, a measuring rod, a whip or a sword. In some later traditions, she gives birth to Helen of Troy after being raped by Zeus. The centre of the cult of Nemesis was the city of Rhamnous in Attica - hence her epithet of Rhamnousia.

Answer: Amphitrite

The Nereids were the fifty daughters of the sea god Nereus - also known as the Old Man of the Sea - and his spouse Doris, one of the daughters of the primordial Titan god Oceanus. The most famous of these fifty divine maidens, who represented various aspects of the sea, were Galatea, the Nereid of the sea foam, Thetis, the mother of Achilles, and Amphitrite, the queen of the sea, who married Poseidon after initially rejecting his advances.

Usually depicted as a beautiful young woman, sometimes riding besides Poseidon in a chariot drawn by sea-horses (hippocamps), Amphitrite often appears in Greek literature as a synonym for the sea itself. In fact, her name means "the surrounding third" - based on the idea that the sea encircles two-thirds of the Earth. She was the mother of Triton, a merman, and Rhodos, the goddess of the island of Rhodes and the spouse of the sun god Helios.

Answer: Hebe

Hebe ("youth") was the daughter of Zeus and Hera, and thus a full sister of Ares, the god of war, and Eileithya, the goddess of childbirth. She was the personification of youth and the cupbearer of the gods, who served nectar and ambrosia at their heavenly banquets (as mentioned in the "Iliad"). These substances ensured that the gods would enjoy eternal youth. In the "Iliad", she is also described as the handmaiden of both Hera and Ares, helping her mother with her golden chariot, and bathing her brother after battle. The cup and pitcher were her attributes, and she was sometimes depicted with wings.

Hebe married Heracles (who, incidentally, was her half-brother, being also a son of Zeus) after the hero ascended to Olympus as a god. Their wedding is often depicted in Greek vase painting, and the goddess was also worshiped as the patron of brides. Hebe's cult was mainly associated with that of her mother Hera: the two goddesses are shown together in a famous relief from the Parthenon. Her Roman counterpart was Juventas, which means "youth" in Latin.

Answer: Hygieia

The Greek god of medicine, Asclepius (a son of Apollo), had five daughters with his wife Epione, the goddess of the soothing of pain. Each of these goddesses represented an aspect of their father's art: Hygieia ("health") presided over good health, cleanliness and sanitation - hence the English word "hygiene". Like her father, she was associated with snakes, and depicted with a snake wrapped around her body or held in her hands; father and daughter were often worshipped together. She was also identified with Athena: according to Greek historian Pausanias, a statue of Athena Hygieia stood at the entrance of the Acropolis of Athens.

A prominent mention of Hygieia in an Ancient Greek text is found in the Hippocratic oath, where the goddess is invoked along with Apollo, Asclepius and her sister Panacea ("universal cure"). Her cult as an independent deity spread in Athens after the devastating epidemic of 430-427 BC. In Rome, she was given the name Salus, which also means "health".

Answer: Echo

The tragic tale of Echo's unrequited love for Narcissus is one of the most famous of Greek myths. Before her fateful encounter with the handsome youth, Echo was an Oread nymph who lived on Mount Cithaeron in Boeotia, and a handmaiden of Hera. As her endless chatter distracted the goddess from her husband Zeus's affairs with other nymphs, Hera punished Echo by cursing her to repeat the last words she heard - effectively rendering the hapless nymph unable to communicate.

According to some sources, the nature god Pan fell in love with Echo, but she did not reciprocate. As detailed in Ovid's "Metamorphoses", the nymph saw the handsome Narcissus while he was hunting with his companions, and immediately fell in love with him. However, the young man spurned her cruelly, and the unfortunate Echo was so devastated that she let herself waste away in grief, leaving only her voice behind. Narcissus' hard-hearted attitude was punished by Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution, who made him fall in love with his own reflection - until he also wasted away in grief, his last words repeated by Echo's disembodied voice.

Answer: Harmonia

Harmonia ("agreement") was the offspring of the adulterous affair of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and wife of Hephaestus, with Ares, the god of war. She embodied harmony and concord, in particular in the context of marriage, as well as presiding over the harmonious action of soldiers in war; her Roman counterpart was Concordia. Zeus gave Harmonia as wife to the hero Cadmus, who had slain a water-dragon and founded the city of Thebes near the spring guarded by the monster. However, at their wedding Hephaestus, still angry about Aphrodite's infidelity, gave her a cursed necklace that doomed the couple's descendants (one of whom was Oedipus) to an endless series of tragedies.

After the tragic death of much of their family, Cadmus and Harmonia left Thebes for Illyria, where they waged war against some native tribes. According to some accounts, they were eventually changed into snakes, and after some time they were allowed to take their place among the gods. The cursed necklace, on the other hand, continued to wreak havoc on the lives of those who came in possession of it.

Answer: Themis

Themis was the goddess of divine law and order (also the meaning of her name), and one of the original twelve Titans, the pre-Olympian deities who, according to Hesiod's "Theogony", were the offspring of the sky god Uranus and the earth goddess Gaia. She was also associated with oracles and prophecies, in particular the famed Oracle of Delphi, which she was said to have built. Her divine voice instructed humankind on fundamental moral laws, precepts and customs, while she did not concern herself with human-created laws.

According to Hesiod, Themis was Zeus' second wife, and the mother of two sets of triplets - the Horai, or Seasons, and the Moirai, or Fates, associated respectively with life and death. One of the Horai was Dike, the goddess of human justice: both mother and daughter were often depicted holding a balance scale (as in modern depictions of Justice). In Ancient Greece there were many temples dedicated to Themis, including one near the Acropolis of Athens.

Answer: Hecate

In Hesiod's "Theogony", Hecate ("the far-reaching one") is the daughter of the Titans Perses and Asteria. Other sources describe her as a daughter of Zeus and Demeter, and thus sister to Persephone, the queen of the Underworld. In various classical texts, Hecate helped Demeter in her search for her daughter, abducted by Hades, and eventually became Persephone's minister and companion. Sometimes described as a virgin goddess, Hecate shared some of the attributes of Artemis and Selene, both deities associated with the moon. She was often depicted with three joined bodies, a reference to her manifold nature, holding flaming torches, keys or daggers, or accompanied by her familiars - a black dog, a polecat or a snake, all animals connected to the underworld.

Though widely worshipped both in Greece and Rome, Hecate was more of a fringe deity than a mainstream one, particularly because of her strong association with the occult: in Euripides' tragedy "Medea", she is mentioned as the source of Medea's magical powers. However, she was also revered as a protector of households, boundaries and crossroads. Indeed, in Ancient Rome she was given the epithet of Trivia ("three ways"), on account of her triple form that allowed her to keep watch over various directions. Hecate briefly appears as a character in William Shakespeare's "Macbeth".

Answer: Leto

A daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, Leto ("the hidden one") was one of Zeus' divine consorts; she was called Latona by the Romans. She was a protector of womanly modesty (as implied by the meaning of her name), also associated with motherhood and the care of young children. These associations are emphasized by her usual depiction as a woman lifting her veil to cover her face.

In Hesiod's "Theogony", Leto is the sixth of the seven wives of Zeus before his marriage to Hera, while in other accounts she is one of the god's many dalliances after his marriage, and because of that is relentlessly pursued by the jealous Hera. Pregnant by the god, Leto was driven to wander around, looking in vain for a safe place where she could give birth. Only the floating island of Delos gave her shelter, and there the twins Apollo and Artemis were born. In another myth, Leto took her revenge against the hubris of Niobe, the queen of Thebes who had boasted of being a better mother than Leto because of her fourteen children, by having Apollo and Artemis slay all of Niobe's children with their arrows.

Answer: Echidna

Though Echidna ("viper") is generally referred to as a monster, a female dragon ("drakaina"), rather than a deity, in Hesiod's "Theogony" she is described as divine, immortal and ageless, the offspring of Phorcys, an ancient sea god, and Ceto, the goddess of the dangers of the sea (in particular sea monsters). In later sources, she is a daughter of Gaia, the Earth, and Tartarus, the primordial god of the abyss. With the head and upper body of a beautiful nymph and the tail of a huge serpent, she was a fearsome sight, who dwelt in a cave deep beneath the Earth.

From Echidna's union with the equally fearsome Typhoeus, a storm-giant with two snakes for legs, a slew of monsters were born. Sources differ as to which of the monsters that appear in well-known Greek myths were Typhoeus and Echidna's offspring. Hesiod mentions the monstrous dogs Orthros and Cerberus (the guardian of the Underworld), the Lernaean Hydra and the Chimera, while others also include the Sphinx, the Nemean lion and various dragons or giant serpents.

Answer: Calliope

The nine Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of memory. They presided over literature, science and the arts, dispensing knowledge and inspiration. According to some sources, Calliope ("beautiful-voiced") was the oldest of them, who came to be associated with eloquence - a gift she bestowed on selected mortals - and epic poetry. In fact, she is often identified with the unnamed Muse invoked at the beginning of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", while she is explicitly named in Virgil's "Aeneid". She was often depicted playing the lyre, or holding a writing tablet in her hand.

In various classical texts, Calliope is mentioned as the mother of the legendary musician and bard Orpheus: most often, his father is Oeagrus, king of Thrace. Another famous musician and poet said to be Calliope's son by Oeagrus was Linus, the first of the lyrical poets. In a myth narrated in Ovid's "Metamorphoses", Calliope defeated the daughters of Pierus, king of Thessaly, who had dared to challenge her to a singing match, and turned them into magpies.

Answer: Nike

The daughter of the Titan Pallas, god of battle, and Styx, the goddess of the eponymous river of the underworld, Nike ("victory") was the goddess of victory in war and in peaceful competition. With her siblings Zelos (Rivalry), Kratos (Force) and Bia (Violence), she was recruited into Zeus' service at the beginning of the war between Titans and Olympians, and became the god's charioteer, renowned for her speed and strength. She was usually depicted as a winged maiden, holding a laurel wreath or a palm frond, both symbols of victory, or other objects meant for celebration, such as a libation cup or a lyre. The most famous depiction of Nike is the magnificent, headless statue known as the Winged Victory of Samothrace (early 2nd century BC), on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Nike was associated with both Zeus and Athena, and often regarded as an aspect of the latter deity: in fact, one of the temples on the Acropolis of Athens was dedicated to Athena Nike. The statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, held a small winged Nike in his right hand - as did the monumental statue of Athena Parthenos in the naos (inner chamber) of the Parthenon.

Answer: Hesperides

In Hesiod's "Theogony", the Hesperides ("those of the evening") were the daughters of Nyx, the primordial goddess of night, born without a father; in some later sources, their father was the Titan Atlas. Though classical texts disagree about their names (or even their number), in most sources one of them is called Aegle ("dazzling light"). Sometimes called the "Maidens of the West", the Hesperides were the goddesses of evening and the golden light of the sunset - whose source were the fabled golden apples that grew on a tree gifted by the earth goddess Gaia to Hera on the occasion of her wedding to Zeus. The tree was planted in a garden situated at the westernmost corner of the Earth (often identified with the Atlas Mountains of Morocco), guarded by the hundred-headed dragon Ladon.

For his eleventh labour, Heracles was tasked with stealing the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides - which he did by slaying the dragon, or, according to another version of the myth, by tricking Atlas into helping him. The Hesperides were also the keepers of a number of treasures of the Olympian gods - in particular the magical objects that the hero Perseus used to slay the Gorgon Medusa. Because of their connection to evening, the Hesperides were also revered as the goddesses of the bridal night.

Answer: Ariadne

Ariadne ("most holy") was a daughter of Minos, king of Crete. As her father was a son of Zeus, and her mother, Pasiphaë, a daughter of the sun god Helios, she had divine blood. She is best known for her role in helping the Athenian hero Theseus to slay the Minotaur, who was her half-brother, born from the union of Pasiphaë with the Cretan bull. In the most famous version of the myth, Ariadne gave the hero a ball of thread to help him find his way in the Labyrinth where the monster lived, and a sword to kill the creature. Having fallen in love with Theseus, she fled Crete with him, but was abandoned by him on the island of Naxos while she was sleeping. There she was found by the god Dionysus, who made her his bride and an immortal. Theseus eventually married Ariadne's sister, Phaedra - which brought him grief and tragedy.

In Ancient Greek art, Ariadne was often depicted with Dionysus - either riding beside him on his chariot, followed by a retinue of satyrs and maenads, or being discovered by the god while sleeping. She was worshipped as a goddess in Cyprus (where she was identified with Aphrodite) and Naxos, where festivals called Ariadneia were held in her honour. Various classical sources narrate that Ariadne's wedding crown was placed among the stars as the constellation Corona Borealis.

Answer: Erinyes

According to Hesiod's "Theogony", the Erinyes (etymology uncertain) were born from the drops of Uranus' blood that fell to Earth after his castration at the hands of his son Cronus; in later sources, they are daughters of Nyx, the primordial goddess of Night, or Hades, the god of the underworld. Traditionally, their names were given as Alecto ("endless anger"), Tisiphone ("vengeful destruction") and Megaera ("jealous rage"). The Erinyes were often depicted as black-clad, winged women with snakes in their hair, sometimes wielding whips or dressed as huntresses. They dwelt in Erebus, the darkest part of the underworld, and kept watch over Tartarus, the dungeon of the damned.

As chthonic deities of vengeance against such offenses as homicide, impiety and perjury, the Erinyes were especially relentless in pursuing those who had killed a family member - hence their English name of Furies. Their wrath manifested itself with particular virulence against patricides and matricides, who were struck with madness - as was the case of Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who had killed his mother to avenge his father. In Aeschylus' trilogy "Oresteia", Orestes is tormented by the Erinyes - who, however, in the third play are persuaded by Athena to break the cycle of blood vengeance, and accept the euphemistic epithet of Eumenides ("The Gracious Ones").