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50 free Aphrodite trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Aphrodite trivia that goes beyond 'goddess of love'. The quiz starts with the myths - the two rival birth stories (foam from Uranus's severed parts, or a daughter of Zeus and Dione), the marriage to Hephaestus and the invisible net that trapped her with Ares, Adonis and the boar, Anchises and Aeneas, the golden apple and the Judgement of Paris, Pygmalion's statue, Atalanta's golden apples and the stinking women of Lemnos. It then looks at her cult and origins - Cythera and Cyprus, Corinth's courtesans, the Aphrodisia, her links to Astarte, Ishtar and Inanna, and the epithets Urania, Pandemos and 'smile-loving' - and at her Roman counterpart Venus, ancestress of Caesar and namesake of Friday. The last section is Aphrodite in art: Praxiteles' nude at Knidos, Apelles, Botticelli's Birth of Venus and the armless Venus de Milo. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Athena, Apollo and Greek Mythology quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty and what?
Pleasure and procreation
In Laconia, oddly, she was also worshipped as a warrior goddess.
Q 02What is Aphrodite's Roman counterpart called?
Venus
The Roman goddess had started out as a deity of gardens, vegetation and springtime.
Q 03In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born from sea foam produced by what?
Uranus's severed genitals
Cronus castrated his father and threw the parts into the sea; the Greek word for foam is aphros.
Q 04In Homer's Iliad, by contrast, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and which goddess?
Dione
Plato decided the two birth stories belonged to two different Aphrodites, a heavenly one and a common one.
Q 05Aphrodite was married to which god of fire and metalworking?
Hephaestus
In the Iliad, though, she seems to be unmarried and the smith god's wife is a goddess called Charis.
Q 06With which god did Aphrodite carry on her most famous affair?
Ares
Later poets such as Pindar and Aeschylus simply treat the war god as her husband.
Q 07How did Aphrodite's husband catch her in bed with her lover, in the Odyssey?
With an invisible net
Helios tipped him off; he then invited the other gods in to laugh at the trapped pair.
Q 08Which god agreed to pay the smith god for the release of the trapped lovers?
Poseidon
Apollo and Hermes were sympathetic too, though Hermes reportedly said he'd happily swap places with Ares.
Q 09Aphrodite's mortal lover Adonis was killed by which animal?
A wild boar
Depending on the version the beast was sent by a jealous Ares or by Artemis; anemones grew where his blood fell.
Q 10Aphrodite fought a custody battle over the infant Adonis with which underworld goddess?
Persephone
Zeus ruled that he spend a third of the year with each and a third as he pleased.
Q 11Zeus made Aphrodite fall in love with which mortal shepherd near Troy, father of her son Aeneas?
Anchises
It was Zeus's revenge for all the gods she had made fall for mortals.
Q 12Because Aphrodite bore Aeneas, the Romans honoured Venus Genetrix as what?
Ancestress of the Roman people
Rome's most famous general claimed descent from Aeneas's son Iulus and pushed her cult hard.
Q 13Which Roman leader claimed to be directly descended from Aphrodite through Aeneas's son Iulus?
Julius Caesar
Venus Genetrix got a temple in his new forum.
Q 21Aphrodite's main festival, held every midsummer, was called what?
The Aphrodisia
In Athens the priests purified her temple with the blood of a sacrificed dove.
Q 22Aphrodite's epithets Cytherea and Cypris come from the two places that both claimed what?
To be her birthplace
Cythera is an island south of the Peloponnese; Cyprus lies far to the east.
Q 23Aphrodite's cult may derive from Astarte, a Phoenician goddess cognate with which Mesopotamian deity?
Ishtar
That chain runs back to the Sumerian Inanna, whose lover Dumuzid is the likely model for Adonis.
Q 14What did Aphrodite promise Paris in exchange for judging her the fairest goddess?
The world's most beautiful woman
That woman was Helen, already married to Menelaus, and the Trojan War followed.
Q 15Who threw the golden apple 'for the fairest' that Aphrodite, Hera and Athena all claimed?
Eris, goddess of discord
She was the only god not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis.
Q 16In Book 5 of the Iliad, which Greek hero wounds Aphrodite in the wrist as she rescues her son?
Diomedes
He calls her a 'weakling' goddess; she borrows Ares's chariot to flee back to Olympus and complain to her mother.
Q 17Aphrodite brought to life the ivory statue carved by which Cypriot sculptor?
Pygmalion
He had sworn off women entirely before falling for his own carving.
Q 18Aphrodite helped Hippomenes win Atalanta's footrace by giving him what to throw?
Three golden apples
Atalanta had beheaded every previous suitor who lost to her.
Q 19When the women of Lemnos refused to sacrifice to her, Aphrodite cursed them how?
They stank horribly
Their husbands turned to Thracian slave women, and the wives murdered every man on the island.
Q 20Aphrodite is almost always accompanied by which winged god of desire?
Eros
Hesiod makes him a primeval force older than the gods, who only later joins her retinue.
Q 24Aphrodite's common Homeric epithet Philommeides means what?
Smile-loving
It is often mistranslated as 'laughter-loving'.
Q 25In Plato's Symposium, what title does the 'heavenly' Aphrodite carry, as opposed to Pandemos?
Urania
The 'common' one, born of Zeus and Dione, was the goddess of everyday desire.
Q 26Which Greek city, famous for its expensive courtesans, had a major temple of Aphrodite on its acropolis?
Corinth
The old idea that this involved 'sacred prostitution' is now generally regarded as wrong.
Q 27Which day of every month was sacred to Aphrodite?
The fourth
The rose and the myrtle were her sacred plants.
Q 28Aphrodite's magical undergarment, forged by her husband, is usually translated as her what?
Girdle
Hera borrows it in the Iliad to seduce Zeus and distract him from the war.
Q 29Which of Aphrodite's children by Ares was the goddess of harmony?
Harmonia
Her brothers Phobos and Deimos, fear and terror, rode with their father into battle.
Q 30The fertility god Priapus was usually said to be Aphrodite's son by which god?
Dionysus
Jealous Hera smeared a potion on the pregnant goddess to make the child hideous.