It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn Quiz

Answer: Fire

Prometheus was tasked by Zeus with creating a race of humans, after the Golden Race - the original humans - died out and their successors, the Silver Race, were imprisoned in Tartarus. He created the Bronze Race, humans who resembled the gods. Prometheus was fond of his creations and helped settle a dispute over which parts of a sacrificed bull to give to Zeus by putting its bones in a bag, with a few nice bits of meat on top. Zeus retaliated for the trick by refusing to give humans fire, but Prometheus stole it from the gods and hid it in a fennel stalk, and taught humans how to use it.

The gods were not too happy about this and punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and having an eagle eat his liver, which would regrow so he would have to suffer all over again.

The hero Heracles rescued Prometheus many years later and killed the eagle. Meanwhile, humans used their new gift to cook food, keep warm and forge tools.

Answer: An olive tree

Poseidon and Athena competed to be the patron of Greece's biggest city, and they agreed that whoever provided the better gift would have the city named after them. Cecrops, the king of the city, acted as a judge. Poseidon made a salt water stream come out of a rock, which gave the city access to the sea and created a useful trading route (though in the Virgil version of the myth, he gave the city its first horse). Athena's gift was the olive tree, a tree which provided both food and oil for the locals and brought money in through trade, and Cecrops pronounced it the better gift. You guessed it - the city in question was none other than Athens, the capital of Greece.

A shrine to Athena, the Parthenon, was accordingly built on the Acropolis, a hill overlooking Athens.

Answer: A vial of poison

A bit of background: Perseus' grandfather, Acrisius, had been warned by an Oracle that his grandson would kill him, so he shut his daughter Danae up in a tower. Zeus sneaked into the tower as a golden cloud and impregnated her, and Acrisius banished Danae and her baby.

They washed up on the island of Seriphos and its king, Polydictes, fell in love with Danae and sent Perseus on what he thought would be a suicide mission. However, the gods came to the rescue: Athena gave Perseus a mirrored shield; the messenger god Hermes lent him his winged sandals; Hades, god of the underworld, gave him his invisibility helmet; and the smith god Hephaestus gave him a sword. Perseus sneaked up on Medusa by turning invisible and used the mirrored shield to look at her without looking her in the eye, as doing so would turn him to stone.

He cut off her head and put it in a magic bag, and returned to Seriphos with the help of the winged sandals, rescuing and marrying the princess Andromeda on the way. Upon finding out that Polydictes was about to marry Danae, Perseus took Medusa's severed head out of the bag, and as soon as Polydictes looked at it, he turned to stone. (Unfortunately for Acrisius, the prophecy did indeed come true when Perseus accidentally threw a discus at him and killed him.)

Answer: Pygmalion

Pygmalion was a Cypriot king, a sculptor and a devotee of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Although he was initially not interested in real women, he carved a statue of a beautiful woman out of ivory and fell in love with it. While making an offering to Aphrodite on her feast day, he wished that he could marry a woman who looked like the statue.

When he went home, he kissed the statue's lips and noticed they felt warm; when he kissed her again, she came to life and became human, as Aphrodite had heard and granted his wish. Pygmalion named her Galatea and the two were married. (The George Bernard Shaw reference is a reference to his play 'Pygmalion', the basis for the musical 'My Fair Lady', in which the phonetics professor Henry Higgins attempts to turn the working-class flower seller Eliza Doolittle into a 'proper lady'.)

Answer: Elysium

There were three different types of afterlife in Greek mythology. On crossing the river Styx, passing the guard dog Cerberus and entering the Underworld, a soul would meet with the Judges of the Underworld, who would decide where to send it based on what the person did in life.

The Asphodel Fields, a shadowy place filled with unearthly flowers, was for ordinary people; Tartarus, a Hell equivalent, was where evil people went to be tortured forever; and Elysium, or the Elysian Fields, was a beautiful place where exceptionally good people and heroes went when they died.

It initially started off as a place for demigods and heroes, but in later myths, exceptionally good people were also allowed in. In Elysium, the weather was always pleasant and there was no work. Elysium was sometimes conflated with the Isles of the Blessed, where a soul could spend eternity if it had been reincarnated three times and gone to Elysium each time.

Answer: Ganymede

Ganymede was tending sheep in his homeland of Phrygia when Zeus came down in the form of an eagle (or sent an eagle on his behalf) and carried him off to Mount Olympus to be his personal cupbearer, although some myths have him being cupbearer to the gods in general; the goddess Hebe originally had the job, but gave it up on marrying Heracles. Zeus also gave Ganymede eternal youth and immortality.

In the 'Iliad', Zeus gave Ganymede's father Tros some fine horses, via Hermes, as compensation for his son. Astronomers will no doubt be aware that the largest moon of Jupiter is named after Ganymede, and both he and the eagle were placed in the sky as constellations, becoming Aquarius and Aquila respectively.

Answer: Dolphins

The story of Arion and the dolphins is one of the more heartwarming stories from Greek myth. Although the story itself is fictional, Arion was a real poet and kitharode, or lyre player, credited with inventing the dithyramb, a hymn praising the god Dionysus which was sung by a male chorus, and teaching it in Corinth.

In the myth, Arion won several prizes at a musical competition in Sicily. On his voyage home, a group of sailors plotted to steal his prizes and gave him the choice of either being forced to commit suicide and have a land burial, or be thrown into the sea and drown. Arion chose the latter and bought time by asking to sing a final song.

He sang a song of praise to Apollo, who sent a group of dolphins to rescue him. Arion jumped overboard and a dolphin carried him to the sanctuary of Poseidon at Cape Tainaron.

The dolphin was rewarded for its deed by being turned into the constellation Delphinus by Apollo.

Answer: Orestes

Orestes was Agamemnon's son, and was ordered by the Oracle at Delphi to avenge his father's death at the hands of his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. Orestes killed both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, with his sister Electra's encouragement, but he incurred the wrath of the Furies (avenging angel-like figures, often portrayed as birds with the heads of dogs) who hounded him and drove him to despair.

He went to the Temple at Delphi, but Apollo was unable to protect him and Orestes begged Athena to put him on trial.

She acted as a judge, with Apollo as Orestes' lawyer, and Orestes was acquitted as the votes came in. Although most of the Furies left him alone, a few still harassed him and the Oracle told him to go to Tauris and bring back a statue of Artemis. Orestes and his cousin Pylades went to Tauris and were nearly sacrificed, but the priestess sent to kill them turned out to be Iphigenia, Orestes' sister, who was thought to have been sacrificed by Agamemnon but had actually been rescued by Artemis.

The three of them escaped with the statue and the curse on the family was finally lifted. Orestes married Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen of Troy, and lived the rest of his life in peace.

Answer: Selene

If you're a fan of 'Sailor Moon', you might remember that in his past life, Mamoru/Darien/Tuxedo Mask was Endymion, Prince of the Earth, who fell in love with Serenity, the Moon Princess. Creator Naoko Takeuchi got the idea from the Greek myth of Selene, a Titan goddess and the personification of the Moon (sometimes conflated with Artemis), and Endymion, a handsome man who was either a shepherd or an astronomer, depending on the version of the myth. Endymion was one of Zeus' many sons and Selene fell in love with him when she saw him sleeping in a cave and was struck by how handsome he was.

She asked Zeus to grant Endymion eternal youth and make him sleep forever, so that he would never grow old or leave her. She had fifty daughters with him, who were said to represent the fifty lunar months of the Olympiad (a four-year period associated with the Olympic Games).

Some myths also have Endymion wishing to sleep forever so that he could spend all his time dreaming of Selene.

Answer: hope

I wanted to end this quiz on the very motive for the badgelet itself: hope.

Zeus wanted to punish humans for their part in Prometheus' theft of fire, so he commissioned Hephaestus to make a woman out of clay, brought her to life and sent her to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus with a jar, which he warned her not to open under any circumstances. Prometheus warned Epimetheus not to accept anything from Zeus but Epimetheus was smitten with the woman, whose name was Pandora, and married her. Pandora kept asking Epimetheus what was in the jar. One day, she could no longer resist the temptation and opened the jar, releasing all kinds of vile things in the form of winged creatures: death, sickness, war, age, sorrow, and many other evils which plagued the world. Pandora heard a small voice from inside the jar, from one more creature who stayed inside. That small voice belonged to Elpis, or Hope, who had been stored in the jar to comfort people if all the evils inside it got out. In 'The Inquisitive Girl', the Nathaniel Hawthorne version of the Pandora story, Hope is a tiny fairy with rainbow wings who heals Pandora and Epimetheus of the stings that the evils of the world gave them.