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60 free Ares trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Ares trivia is a study in how much the Greeks disliked their own war god. Zeus calls him the most hateful of the Olympians, Athena flattens him with a boulder, two giants stuff him in a bronze jar for thirteen months, and the whole male pantheon turns up to laugh when Hephaestus catches him in a net with Aphrodite. Even his cult was odd: cities in Asia Minor chained his statue once a year and put it on trial. This quiz covers the mythology (his birth, Aphrodite, Phobos and Deimos, Harmonia, the dragon of Thebes, the Golden Fleece grove, the rooster Alectryon, Cycnus and his temple of skulls), the cult (Sparta's puppy sacrifice, the Scythian sword, the Areopagus, the oracle of Ares in Anatolia, the kings of Aksum), the Roman rebranding as Mars, the moons of Mars named for his sons, and his afterlife in Wonder Woman comics, God of War and the DC films. Easy questions suit anyone who knows he was the god of war; the expert tier assumes you know which fish he turned into to escape Typhon. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Ares and related subjects, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ares is the Greek god of what?
War
He embodied the raw physical side of battle, while his sister Athena handled strategy and generalship.
Q 02Who were the parents of Ares?
Zeus and Hera
That made him a full-blooded Olympian, unlike many of Zeus's children by mortals and nymphs.
Q 03Ares was one of how many Olympian gods?
12
His sister Athena, goddess of strategy, was another; the Greeks usually sacrificed to her rather than to Ares before battle.
Q 04Which goddess was Ares's famous lover, caught with him in a trap set by her husband?
Aphrodite
According to Hesiod their children included Phobos and Deimos, who rode into battle with their father.
Q 05Which god netted Ares and his lover in an invisible trap and invited the Olympians to laugh?
Hephaestus
The goddesses stayed away out of modesty; the male gods came to look and joked that they would happily swap places with Ares.
Q 06Which god spotted the affair and reported it to the wronged husband?
Helios
The story is sung by a bard in the hall of Alcinous in the Odyssey.
Q 07After the net incident, the embarrassed Ares retreated to which region, considered his birthplace?
Thrace
The Greeks associated him with the Thracians, whom they regarded as barbarous and warlike.
Q 08Ares turned his sleepy sentry Alectryon into which animal, which now announces the sun?
A rooster
Alectryon had been posted at the door to warn of the sun's arrival and fell asleep on duty.
Q 09What are the names of Ares's two companions in war, personifying dread and fear?
Deimos and Phobos
The two moons of the red planet were named after them when they were discovered in 1877.
Q 10Which American astronomer discovered the two moons of Mars, named for Ares's sons, in 1877?
Asaph Hall
He found them from the US Naval Observatory in Washington; craters on Deimos are named for Swift and Voltaire, who both wrote of two Martian moons long before.
Q 11Which daughter of Ares married Cadmus, founder of Thebes?
Harmonia
The marriage was Cadmus's way of making peace with Ares after killing the god's dragon.
Q 12In the founding myth of Thebes, Ares was the father of what creature slain by Cadmus?
A water-dragon
Its sown teeth sprang up as the armoured Spartoi, and Cadmus had to serve the god to atone.
Q 13How long did Cadmus serve Ares to atone for killing the dragon?
Eight years
Plutarch says the Boeotian plain around Thebes was anciently called 'the dancing-floor of Ares'.
Q 21Which mortal son of Ares tried to build a temple to his father out of the skulls and bones of travellers?
Cycnus
Heracles fought him, and in one version Zeus had to part Ares and Heracles with a thunderbolt afterwards.
Q 22When the monster Typhon attacked Olympus and the gods fled to Egypt as animals, what did Ares become?
A fish
Specifically the Lepidotus, a fish sacred to the Egyptian war god Anhur, according to Antoninus Liberalis.
Q 23On the Areopagus, Ares was said to have been tried for killing whose son?
Poseidon's
The victim, Halirrhothius, had raped Ares's daughter Alcippe; the gods acquitted him.
Q 14In the Argonautica, who steals the Golden Fleece from a grove sacred to Ares?
Jason
The Birds of Ares also defended an Amazon shrine to him on a Black Sea island by dropping feather darts.
Q 15The giants Otus and Ephialtes imprisoned Ares in a bronze urn for how long?
Thirteen months
That is a lunar year; Artemis later tricked the giants into killing each other.
Q 16Which god rescued Ares from the bronze urn after the giants' stepmother revealed what they had done?
Hermes
The story is told in the Iliad by Dione to her daughter.
Q 17In the Iliad, which Greek hero wounded Ares with a spear driven home by Athena?
Diomedes
Ares fled bellowing to Olympus, and the side he was helping had to fall back.
Q 18In the Iliad, which side did Ares end up fighting for after being persuaded by his lover?
The Trojans
He had promised Athena and Hera he would fight for the Greeks, but changed his mind.
Q 19How did Athena overpower Ares when he attacked her later in the Iliad?
She struck him with a boulder
He was trying to avenge his earlier wounding once Zeus let the gods rejoin the fighting.
Q 20Which son of Ares was killed at Troy, making the god want to switch sides again to avenge him?
Ascalaphus
Athena stopped him from defying Zeus's order that no Olympian should join the battle.
Q 24In the New Testament, which apostle delivered a famous sermon on the Areopagus in Athens?
Paul
Acts 17 says the speech led to the conversion of Dionysius the Areopagite.
Q 25In Sparta, what animal did each company of youths sacrifice to the war god before their 'fight without rules'?
A puppy
The night-time dog sacrifice was later folded into the cult of Ares.
Q 26Spartans offered Ares a cockerel for a victory by onslaught and what for a victory by stratagem?
An ox
The famous story of Spartan human sacrifice to Ares is a centuries-old error; the hekatomphonia was an animal offering to Zeus.
Q 27According to Herodotus, the Scythians worshipped their form of Ares through what cult object?
An iron sword
They doused it with the blood of cattle, horses and human captives.
Q 28What did the Scythians reportedly sacrifice to their Ares from among prisoners of war?
One in every hundred
The blood was poured over the sword; the Alans may have kept a similar sword cult.
Q 29An oracle told Pamphylian cities to bind a statue of Ares each year with what before trying it?
Iron fetters
The promise was that Ares would then drive off pirates and become 'a peaceful deity' and giver of fruits.
Q 30In parts of which region was Ares, unusually, an oracular deity with cults at 29 sites?
Asia Minor
The Hellenistic city of Metropolis in what is now western Turkey built him a monumental temple as its protector.