Hades Trivia
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59 free Hades trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Hades trivia covering the god, the place and the pop culture. The quiz starts with the Greek myth: the eldest son of Cronus swallowed and regurgitated, the helm of invisibility, the drawing of lots that gave him the underworld, the abduction of Persephone and the pomegranate seed, and the mortals who crossed him - Sisyphus, Pirithous, Orpheus and Heracles. Then it maps his realm: Charon and the obol, the five rivers, the Asphodel Meadows, Elysium and Tartarus, the three judges, and the three-headed dog at the gate. It also covers the names the Greeks used to avoid saying his (Plouton, 'the rich one', which became the Roman Pluto), his cult and his sacrifices. The last section is for gamers and film fans: Supergiant's roguelike Hades and its Hugo Award, Zagreus, and James Woods's fast-talking Hades in Disney's Hercules. Every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you want the whole pantheon, try our Greek Mythology, Poseidon and Athena quizzes too.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which all-seeing deity told Demeter that Hades had carried off her daughter?
Helios
Helios had watched it all from his chariot in the sky, and he told her to stop grieving: Hades was no unworthy son-in-law, being her own brother and lord of a third of the world.
Q 02Which two gods are Hades's brothers, with whom he divided the cosmos?
Zeus and Poseidon
Zeus and Poseidon took the sky and the sea, but in the Iliad Poseidon bristles at an order from Zeus, insisting that the three are equals and that the earth still belongs to them all.
Q 03Persephone was doing what when Hades carried her off to be his queen?
Picking flowers
Persephone was picking flowers in a meadow when Hades burst from the earth in his chariot and seized her, an abduction her father Zeus had sanctioned.
Q 04What is the name of the three-headed dog that guards the underworld?
Cerberus
Cerberus fawns on the dead as they arrive but devours any who try to leave; Hesiod, the first to describe him, gave him fifty heads before later writers settled on three.
Q 05Hades was a son of which couple, who ruled the gods before Zeus?
Cronus and Rhea
Cronus and Rhea ruled before the Olympians; Cronus had seized that throne by attacking his own father, Uranus, with a sickle that his mother Gaia made for the purpose.
Q 06What did Hades's father do to him and his siblings at birth?
Swallowed them whole
Swallowed them whole: he feared a prophecy that his own child would overthrow him, but the youngest was hidden, a swaddled stone went down instead, and that son later forced him to disgorge the rest.
Q 07Which magical item did the Cyclopes forge for Hades to use in the war against his father's generation?
A helm of invisibility
The Cyclopes forged Hades a helm of invisibility, the Cap of Hades; Athena wears it in the Iliad to hide from Ares, and Perseus borrows it against the Gorgons.
Q 08How did the three brothers decide who would rule sky, sea and underworld?
They drew lots
The story comes from a single famous passage in Book 15 of the Iliad.
Q 09What did Hades secretly give Persephone to eat, binding her to the underworld?
A pomegranate seed
A pomegranate seed: a spirit of the underworld named Ascalaphus saw her eat it and told, and for informing on her he was turned into an owl.
Q 10In Greek myth, Persephone's time in the underworld explains what?
The changing seasons
The changing seasons, as the myth is usually read: while Persephone is below, her grieving mother lets nothing grow; the Homeric Hymn keeps her there for a third of the year, Ovid for a full half.
Q 11Which dreaded goddesses of the underworld hounded those who killed their own kin?
The Furies
The Furies were so dreaded that Greeks avoided their real name and called them the Eumenides, the 'gracious ones', instead; they hounded Orestes for killing his own mother.
Q 12Which god does Zeus send down to persuade Hades to release Persephone?
Hermes
Hermes, the messenger god, is sent by Zeus in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; he finds Hades with Persephone beside him and drives her back up in the chariot.
Q 13Which musician charmed Hades into freeing Eurydice, on condition he did not look back?
Orpheus
Orpheus played his lyre so movingly that Hades and Persephone let Eurydice follow him out, on condition he not look back before reaching daylight; he looked, and lost her.
Q 21Who ferries the dead across the river into Hades's realm in exchange for a coin?
Charon
Charon, the ferryman, rows the buried dead across the river; an obol was placed in the corpse's mouth to pay his fare.
Q 22By the water of which river did even the gods swear their oaths?
Styx
Styx: in Hesiod's Theogony the gods swear their binding oaths by its water, and a god who breaks one lies breathless for a year, then is shut out of their feasts for nine more.
Q 23Which underworld river's name means 'oblivion', its waters erasing memory?
Lethe
Lethe, whose name means forgetfulness, wiped away memory of earthly life; in Aeneid Book VI souls drink its water before being reborn, while Orphic initiates sought the pool of Mnemosyne instead.
Q 14Which king of Corinth was condemned in the underworld to roll a boulder uphill forever?
Sisyphus
Sisyphus, in one telling, trapped Death himself so that nobody could die; in the underworld his boulder rolls back down each time he gets it near the top.
Q 15Which friend of Theseus went to the underworld to steal Persephone and was trapped there?
Pirithous
Pirithous, king of the Lapiths, wanted Persephone for his bride; once the two friends sat down in the underworld they could not get up again, and in Apollodorus's telling Heracles later pulled only Theseus free.
Q 16What did Greeks do when they prayed to Hades?
Beat the ground with their hands
Beat the ground with their hands: in the Iliad, Meleager's mother kneels and pounds the earth as she calls on Hades and Persephone to bring death on her own son.
Q 17Before fetching the hound of Hades, Heracles was initiated into which town's mysteries?
Eleusis
Eleusis: Apollodorus says Heracles was purified for killing the centaurs and initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis before descending for the hound.
Q 18Hades is said to have complained to Zeus about which healer who kept raising the dead?
Asclepius
Asclepius, son of Apollo, grew so skilled that he revived the dead; in Diodorus's telling Hades protested that his realm was emptying, and Zeus struck the healer down with a thunderbolt.
Q 19Hades's nymph lover, a rival of Persephone, was turned into which plant?
Mint
Mint: the nymph Minthe became the mint plant; Ovid has Persephone transform her, while Oppian says Demeter trampled her for boasting she outshone Persephone.
Q 20Persephone and Aphrodite both wanted which beautiful youth, who had to divide his year between them?
Adonis
Adonis, in Apollodorus's telling, was hidden in a chest as a baby and left with Persephone, who refused to give him back; Zeus split his year in three, and Adonis gave his own free third to Aphrodite.
Q 24In Greek myth, the underworld river Phlegethon ran with what?
Fire
Fire: in the Aeneid its torrents of flame circle the fortress of the damned; Dante kept the river in his Inferno but turned it to boiling blood, a bath for the violent.
Q 25Whose shade refused to speak to Odysseus in the underworld, still bitter over losing the contest for Achilles's armour?
Ajax
Ajax had killed himself after the dead Achilles's armour was awarded to Odysseus instead; when Odysseus begs his forgiveness among the dead, Ajax turns away without a word.
Q 26In the Odyssey, the souls of the dead dwell in which part of the underworld?
The Fields of Asphodel
The Fields of Asphodel: in the Odyssey even Achilles's shade strides off across this meadow, after telling Odysseus he would rather be a poor man's hired hand than king of all the dead.
Q 27Which part of the underworld is reserved for the punishment of the impious and evil?
Tartarus
Tartarus is where Zeus locked away the enemies he beat in the war for heaven, behind a fence of bronze, as far below the earth as the sky is above it.
Q 28Which three kings became the judges of the dead in the underworld?
Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus
Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were all sons of Zeus; in Plato's Gorgias he sends Rhadamanthus to judge the dead of Asia and Aeacus those of Europe, with Minos settling any doubtful case.
Q 29What was Hades's name generally understood to mean since antiquity?
The unseen one
The unseen one: Greeks heard a- (not) and idein (to see) in the name, though Plato's Socrates argues that it more probably comes from 'knowing' all noble things.
Q 30What does Plouton, the Greek euphemism used for Hades, mean?
The rich one
'The rich one': Plouton comes from ploutos, 'wealth', because crops and precious metals come from beneath the earth; the name avoided speaking the dreaded Hades aloud.