Mythology Trivia: Gods, Legends and Ancient Tales

Mythology is a treasure chest of quiz material: gods, monsters and heroes whose stories have been told for thousands of years. These myths also live on in everyday language, planet names and the days of the week. Here are 20 facts to master the legends round.

Greek and Roman Mythology

1. Zeus was king of the Greek gods and ruler of the sky and thunder. The Romans called him Jupiter.
2. The twelve Olympians were believed to live on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece.
3. Heracles (Hercules) completed twelve labours as penance, including slaying the Nemean lion and capturing Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the underworld.
4. Pegasus, the winged horse, sprang from the neck of Medusa when the hero Perseus cut off her head.
5. Pandora's "box" was originally a jar. The Greek word pithos means a large storage jar; "box" came from a later mistranslation.
6. Achilles was invulnerable except for his heel, according to a later version of the story in which his mother dipped him in the River Styx while holding him by the heel. The Achilles tendon is named after him.
7. The planets are named after Roman gods: Mercury the messenger, Venus the goddess of love, Mars the god of war, Jupiter the king, Saturn the god of agriculture and Neptune the god of the sea.

Norse Mythology

8. Thor, the god of thunder, wields the hammer Mjölnir, which returns to his hand when thrown.
9. Odin, chief of the Norse gods, gave up one of his eyes in exchange for a drink from the well of wisdom.
10. Yggdrasil is the world tree, an immense ash tree whose branches and roots connect the nine worlds of Norse cosmology.
11. Loki is the trickster. In one story he turns into a mare and gives birth to Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse.
12. Ragnarök is the end of the world in Norse myth — a final battle in which many gods die, followed by a new world rising from the sea.

Egyptian Mythology

13. Ra was the sun god, believed to sail across the sky by day and through the underworld by night.
14. Anubis, with the head of a jackal, was the god of mummification who guided souls into the afterlife.
15. Osiris, god of the afterlife, was murdered by his brother Set and brought back by his wife Isis. Their son Horus avenged him.
16. The heart was weighed against a feather. In the afterlife, the dead person's heart was weighed against the feather of Ma'at, goddess of truth. A heavy heart meant it was devoured.

Legends Around the World

17. Hindu mythology describes the Trimurti: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is the remover of obstacles.
18. Quetzalcoatl, the "feathered serpent", was a major god in Aztec and other Mesoamerican cultures, linked to wind, learning and the morning star.
19. Anansi the spider is a trickster hero from the folklore of the Akan people of Ghana. His stories travelled to the Caribbean and the Americas.
20. Many cultures share a great flood story. One of the oldest is in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, where a man named Utnapishtim survives in a boat.

Myths Hiding in Everyday Words

Mythology questions often come in disguise. These everyday words all come from myths:

• Panic — from Pan, the Greek god of the wild, whose shout could cause sudden fear.
• Echo — a nymph cursed to repeat only the last words spoken to her.
• Narcissism — from Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection.
• Atlas — the Titan condemned to hold up the sky. A book of maps is named after him.
• Nike — the Greek goddess of victory, now a sportswear brand.
• Thursday — Thor's day. Wednesday is Woden's (Odin's) day and Friday is probably named after Frigg, Odin's wife.

How to Keep the Gods Straight

The trickiest part of mythology is matching Greek and Roman names. Make a short table — Zeus/Jupiter, Hera/Juno, Ares/Mars, Aphrodite/Venus, Hermes/Mercury, Poseidon/Neptune, Athena/Minerva, Artemis/Diana — and learn it in pairs. Planet names will help you remember the Roman side.

Keep a few of these legends in mind and the mythology round becomes easy points. Fancy a challenge? Start the free World Mythology quiz and put your knowledge of the gods to the test.