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60 free Achilles trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Achilles trivia for anyone who knows the heel and wants the rest of the story. The quiz opens with the basics - his mother Thetis, the river Styx, the centaur who raised him, the Myrmidons - and then follows him through the Iliad: the quarrel over Briseis, Patroclus in borrowed armour, the new shield from Hephaestus, the fight with a river, the duel with Hector and the night Priam comes to beg for his son's body. It keeps going where Homer stops: Penthesilea and Memnon, the arrow from Paris, the contest for the armour, the ghost in the Odyssey, the cult on Snake Island and the Roman writers who thought he was a butcher. The last section covers Achilles in later culture - Zeno's tortoise, Dante's second circle, Shakespeare, Brad Pitt in Troy, Bob Dylan and The Song of Achilles. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you want the whole war, try our Iliad, Trojan Horse and Greek Mythology quizzes too.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to the famous legend, which part of Achilles's body was his only vulnerable spot?
His heel
The idea appears nowhere before a Roman poet of the 1st century CE; in the Iliad he actually bleeds from a spear graze to the elbow.
Q 02Who plays Achilles in the 2004 film Troy?
Brad Pitt
Pitt tore his own Achilles tendon during filming, which delayed the production for weeks.
Q 03Who is Achilles's mother, a sea nymph?
Thetis
She was one of the Nereids, and both Zeus and Poseidon had wanted to marry her.
Q 04Who is Achilles's father, a king in Thessaly and a former Argonaut?
Peleus
The gods married her off to a mortal because of a prophecy that her son would outdo his father.
Q 05Into which river does Achilles's mother dip him as an infant?
Styx
She holds him by one heel, leaving that spot dry and mortal.
Q 06Which Trojan prince does Achilles kill and drag behind his chariot?
Hector
He chased him three times around the walls of Troy first, and later returned the body to Priam.
Q 07Who kills Achilles by shooting him with an arrow?
Paris
Homer never shows the death; the dying Trojan champion merely prophesies that Paris and Apollo will do it at the Scaean Gates.
Q 08Who is Achilles's beloved childhood companion, killed while wearing Achilles's armour?
Patroclus
His death is what finally drags Achilles back into the fighting.
Q 09Which centaur, the most righteous of his kind, educated the young Achilles?
Chiron
He was reckoned the most righteous of the centaurs and also taught the boy medicine.
Q 10Achilles commands which tribe of warriors at Troy?
Myrmidons
He brought 50 ships with 50 of them apiece and split them under five captains.
Q 11What is the central theme of the Iliad, named in the poem's very first word?
His wrath
The Greek word is menis, and the whole poem covers only a few weeks of a ten-year war.
Q 12The Iliad's quarrel begins when the Greek commander seizes which captive woman from Achilles?
Briseis
He takes her to replace his own captive, whom he had to give back to end a plague.
Q 13Achilles withdraws from battle after being dishonoured by which commander of the Greek forces?
Agamemnon
He then asks his mother to have Zeus help the Trojans, just so the Greeks will miss him.
Q 21Which king of Ethiopia, son of the dawn goddess Eos, does Achilles kill?
Memnon
His grieving mother refused to let the sun rise until Zeus talked her round.
Q 22Which son of Nestor brings Achilles news of Patroclus's death and becomes his closest friend?
Antilochus
His bones were later buried beside those of Achilles on the Hellespont.
Q 23On which island is Achilles hidden, dressed as a girl, at the court of King Lycomedes?
Skyros
He gives himself away by grabbing a spear from a pedlar's tray of women's goods.
Q 24Which Greek hero unmasks the disguised Achilles by hiding a shield and spear among women's wares?
Q 14Which god forges Achilles's new armour, including his famous shield?
Hephaestus
The shield's decoration is described at such length that it became its own genre of poem.
Q 15Achilles fights which river god, who is angry that his waters are choked with corpses?
Scamander
The river tries to drown him and is only stopped by Hera and the fire god.
Q 16How many times does Achilles chase his opponent around the walls of Troy before the final duel?
3
Athena then tricks the Trojan into standing and fighting.
Q 17Athena disguises herself as which brother of Hector to trick him into facing Achilles?
Deiphobus
Once he realises the trick, he charges anyway, wanting to go down fighting.
Q 18Which Trojan king comes to Achilles's tent at night to beg for his son's body?
Priam
Achilles relents and grants a truce for the funeral, which is where the Iliad ends.
Q 19Which god escorts the Trojan king safely to Achilles's tent?
Hermes
Homer calls him Argeiphontes, the slayer of Argus.
Q 20Which Amazon queen does Achilles kill in battle, only to grieve over her afterwards?
Penthesilea
Her story comes from the lost Aethiopis, not the Iliad; she was a daughter of Ares.
Odysseus
In another version he simply has a trumpet sounded and watches who reaches for a weapon.
Q 25Under what girl's name, meaning 'the red-haired one', is Achilles said to have hidden?
Pyrrha
His son was also called Pyrrhus, possibly after the alias.
Q 26What is the name of Achilles's son, who fights at Troy after his father's death?
Neoptolemus
The Molossian kings of Epirus, and through them a famous Macedonian conqueror, claimed descent from him.
Q 27Achilles's son is born to which daughter of Lycomedes?
Deidamia
Handel and Cavalli both wrote operas named after her.
Q 28Which Roman poet's unfinished Achilleid is the earliest source for the vulnerable heel?
Statius
The Epic Cycle poems that describe his death never mention it, and vase paintings show arrows in his torso.
Q 29Achilles's mother foretold that he could either die young with glory or live long in what?
Obscurity
He chose glory, and knew when he sailed for Troy that he would not come home.
Q 30Zeus and Poseidon stopped courting Achilles's mother because of a prophecy her son would be what?
Greater than his father
Prometheus passed on the warning, so the gods married her to a mortal instead.