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49 free Centaurs trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This centaurs trivia quiz gallops from Thessaly to the edge of the solar system. The easy questions are ones anyone who knows a little mythology could answer: what a centaur is made of, the wise centaur who tutored Achilles, the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles, and the star system next door named for the constellation. The harder end is for classicists and stargazers: the cloud shaped like Hera that mothered the race, the wedding brawl with the Lapiths, the hero who beat the invulnerable Caeneus into the ground, why Chiron gave up his immortality and who was freed as a result, the jar of wine that started a massacre at Pholus's cave, the centauress who killed herself in Ovid, the ox-horned centaurs of Cyprus, the donkey and fish varieties of the bestiaries, the Venetian doge's barge, Botticelli's painting, the Parthenon metopes in London, the constellation with the brightest globular cluster, the ringed body found in 1977 that named a whole class of objects, and the rocket stage that first burned liquid hydrogen. Fantasia, Narnia, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson get questions too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the myths, the artworks and the astronomy before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Greek mythology, mythical creatures and constellations quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What two creatures combine to make a centaur?
Man and horse
A centaur has the head and torso of a man on the body and legs of a horse; the tribe was said to roam the mountains of northern Greece.
Q 02Which Greek region was the centaurs' traditional home?
Thessaly
Thessaly: the centaurs haunted the wooded mountains of Magnesia in north-eastern Greece; other tales place some in the Foloi oak forest of Elis in the Peloponnese.
Q 03Who were the usual mythical parents of the centaurs?
Ixion and Nephele
Nephele was a cloud shaped like Hera, made to expose Ixion's lust.
Q 04Which lyric poet's ode for Hieron of Syracuse tells how Ixion fathered the centaur race?
Pindar
Pindar's second Pythian ode, addressed to Hieron of Syracuse, tells how Ixion lay with a cloud in Hera's shape and so became father of Centaurus and the centaur race.
Q 05What was Ixion's eternal punishment for lusting after Hera?
Bound to a spinning fiery wheel
Zeus ordered Hermes to bind him to the winged wheel in Tartarus.
Q 06Which Roman poet has Nestor recount the Lapith-centaur wedding brawl at length?
Ovid
In Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 12, Nestor tells the Greeks at Troy the story of the wedding brawl in more than 300 lines, the fullest ancient account of the fight.
Q 07In another version, Centaurus fathered the race by mating with what?
Magnesian mares
In Pindar's version Centaurus, Ixion's son, mated with the Magnesian mares in the foothills of Magnesia, and the horse-bodied centaurs were the result.
Q 08What was unusual about the centaurs of Cyprus, according to Nonnus?
They were ox-horned
Zeus fathered them by spilling his seed after Aphrodite eluded him.
Q 09Which tribe fought the centaurs in the Centauromachy?
Lapiths
The Lapiths, a Thessalian tribe, fought the centaurs in the Centauromachy; in one origin myth the two peoples were cousins, descended from the brothers Lapithes and Centaurus.
Q 10At whose wedding did the centaurs try to carry off the bride and start the battle?
Pirithous
The wedding of the Lapith king Pirithous to Hippodamia; the drunken centaur Eurytion seized the bride, and Theseus, Pirithous's friend, helped drive the centaurs off.
Q 11How did the centaurs kill the invulnerable Lapith hero Caeneus?
Beat him into the earth with rocks and trees
No weapon could pierce him, so they hammered him into the ground.
Q 12Which Renaissance artist carved the relief Battle of the Centaurs?
Michelangelo
Michelangelo carved the marble relief Battle of the Centaurs around 1492, aged about 17, in Lorenzo de' Medici's circle in Florence, and kept the piece all his life.
Q 13On which side of the Parthenon are the Centauromachy metopes?
South
They are the best preserved; fifteen are in the British Museum.
Q 21How did the peaceful Pholus die?
Wounded by one of Heracles' venomous arrows
He dropped it on his foot while marvelling that so small a thing could kill a centaur.
Q 22Which centaur tried to violate Heracles' wife Deianeira and was shot by the hero?
Nessus
Nessus, ferrying Deianeira across the river Evenus, tried to assault her and was shot by Heracles; dying, he told her his blood was a love charm, a lie that later killed Heracles.
Q 23What poison in the shirt that killed Heracles was actually at work?
The Lernaean Hydra's venom
Q 14What is the most common theory for the origin of the centaur myth?
A non-riding culture's first sight of horsemen
Bernal Díaz reported the Aztecs made the same misapprehension about Spanish cavalry.
Q 15Who was Chiron's father?
Cronus
Cronus took the form of a horse to impregnate the nymph Philyra.
Q 16Which god found the abandoned infant Chiron and taught him medicine and archery?
Apollo
Apollo took in the infant Chiron, abandoned by his mother out of shame at his horse shape, and taught him medicine, archery, music and prophecy.
Q 17Which of these heroes was among Chiron's pupils?
Achilles
Achilles was entrusted to Chiron by his father Peleus and raised on the centaur's mountain; Asclepius, Jason, Actaeon and Aristaeus also studied under him.
Q 18Whom did Zeus free from punishment when Chiron gave up his immortality?
Prometheus
Prometheus: crippled by an incurable wound, the immortal Chiron asked to die, and Zeus allowed Prometheus, the fire-thief, to take over his immortality and go free.
Q 19Which hero received an ash spear from Chiron as a wedding gift?
Peleus
Chiron gave Peleus an ash spear at his wedding to Thetis; his son Achilles later carried it at Troy, where no other Greek could wield it.
Q 20What smell drove the centaurs mad and into Pholus's cave when Heracles visited?
Fragrant wine
Heracles slew most of them and the rest fled to Cape Maleas.
The centaur's blood on the shirt carried the Lernaean Hydra's venom from the arrow that had killed him; Deianeira sent it to Heracles as a love charm, fearing he loved the captive Iole.
Q 24Which centauress in Ovid killed herself when her husband Cyllarus died in the wedding war?
Hylonome
Hylonome, the most beautiful of the centauresses in Ovid's Metamorphoses, threw herself on the spear that had killed her mate Cyllarus in the wedding brawl.
Q 25What is a centaur holding a bow called?
A sagittary
A sagittary is the heraldic name for a centaur drawing a bow, from Latin sagitta, arrow; the zodiac's archer Sagittarius is the same figure.
Q 26What is an onocentaur part-human and part what?
A donkey
An onocentaur, from Greek onos, donkey, has a human upper body on an ass's hindquarters; medieval bestiaries often gave it only two legs.
Q 27Which two sea personifications are depicted as ichthyocentaurs?
Aphros and Bythos
Aphros and Bythos, whose names mean sea foam and sea depth, appear as ichthyocentaurs, fish-tailed centaurs, lifting Aphrodite's shell on a Roman mosaic from Zeugma.
Q 28What was the bucentaur?
The ceremonial barge of Venice's doges
The Bucentaur was the ceremonial barge of Venice's doges; each Ascension Day it carried the doge out to the Lido to wed Venice to the sea by casting a ring into the water.
Q 29Which Florentine painted Pallas and the Centaur around 1482?
Botticelli
Botticelli painted Pallas and the Centaur around 1482 for the Medici, the goddess gripping the centaur's hair as he reaches for his bow; it is in the Uffizi.
Q 30In Dante's Inferno, which centaurs guard the river of boiling blood in the seventh circle?
Chiron and Pholus
In Canto XII Chiron, the centaurs' captain, and Pholus patrol the bank of the Phlegethon shooting sinners who rise too far; Chiron assigns Nessus to carry the poets across the ford.