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50 free Hera trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Hera trivia quiz is devoted to the queen of the Greek gods: daughter of Cronus and Rhea, sister and wife of Zeus, goddess of marriage and childbirth, and the most formidable grudge-holder on Mount Olympus. It covers her birth and swallowing by Cronus, her seduction by Zeus in the form of a cuckoo, the wedding feast that lasted three hundred years, her children Ares, Hebe, Eileithyia and Hephaestus, and the sacred cow, cuckoo, peacock and pomegranate of her iconography. The heart of the quiz is her vengeance: Io and the hundred-eyed Argus, Semele's fatal request, Echo's stolen voice, Callisto the bear, Lamia, Gerana the crane, Ixion's fiery wheel, Tiresias blinded for taking Zeus's side, and above all Heracles, whose very name means Glory of Hera and whose spurt of stolen milk made the Milky Way. It also visits her cults: Argos and Samos, the Heraion at Olympia where the Olympic flame is lit, the girls' footraces of the Heraean Games, and her Roman counterpart Juno. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Hera and the figures around her, and each explanation adds one further fact. Ideal for mythology fans, classics students and anyone who has already conquered our Greek mythology and Zeus quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hera is the Greek goddess of what?
Marriage, women and family
She presides over weddings and protects women in childbirth, and is queen among the twelve Olympians.
Q 02Who are Hera's parents?
The Titans Cronus and Rhea
That makes her Zeus's sister as well as his wife; her siblings are Hestia, Demeter, Hades and Poseidon.
Q 03What did Cronus do to the newborn Hera?
Swallowed her whole
He was fated to be overthrown by a child; Rhea saved only Zeus with a swaddled stone, and Zeus later made his father vomit up the rest.
Q 04According to the Iliad, who raised Hera after her mother handed her over?
Tethys
Pausanias offers a different version, with the three daughters of the river Asterion as her nurses.
Q 05Which of these is NOT one of Hera's sacred animals?
The owl
The owl belongs to Athena; Hera is also often shown holding a pomegranate as a symbol of immortality.
Q 06Into what bird did Zeus transform himself to seduce Hera?
A cuckoo
Near Hermione there were paired temples on Mount Cuckoo for Zeus and Mount Pron for Hera.
Q 07According to Callimachus, how long did the wedding feast of Zeus and Hera last?
Three hundred years
The nymph Chelone snubbed the party and was turned into a tortoise; Gaia's wedding gift was the golden apples of the Hesperides.
Q 08What did Gaia give Zeus and Hera as a wedding present?
The apples of the Hesperides
Heracles was later ordered by Eurystheus to steal those very apples as one of his labours.
Q 09Which god was Hera said to have produced on her own, without Zeus?
Hephaestus
She threw the lame smith-god off Olympus in some accounts; his cult was based on Lemnos.
Q 10Which monster did the Homeric Hymn to Apollo say Hera bore by herself and gave to Python to raise?
Typhaon
She whelped it in a cave in Cilicia, a monstrous echo of her solo birth of Hephaestus.
Q 11Which Greek city was Hera's special tutelary home, called in literature 'the house of Hera'?
Argos
In the Iliad she names Argos, Sparta and Mycenae as the three cities she loves best; Homer calls her Argeiē.
Q 12On which island did the Greeks build perhaps the first enclosed roofed temple, for Hera around 800 BC?
Samos
It was later replaced by the Heraion of Samos, one of the largest of all Greek temples.
Q 13What happens at the altar of the Temple of Hera at Olympia every Olympiad since 1936?
The Olympic flame is lit
A parabolic mirror concentrates the sun's rays; the Heraion is the oldest temple at Olympia and was once shared with Zeus.
Q 21How did Hera punish the nymph Echo for distracting her while Zeus's lovers escaped?
She could only repeat the last words spoken to her
Unable to speak for herself, Echo could only watch as Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection.
Q 22Into which animal did a furious Hera transform Callisto, later placed among the stars as Ursa Major?
A bear
Some versions credit Artemis with the change; Zeus set Callisto in the sky as her son was about to kill her.
Q 23Which Libyan queen, robbed of her children by Hera, became a monster that hunted other people's children?
Lamia
Q 14Who competed in the Heraean Games held every four years at Olympia?
Young girls in a footrace
Sixteen women organised them, wove a peplos for Hera and arranged the choral dances.
Q 15At which spring near Nauplia was Hera said to renew her virginity every year?
Kanathos
Stymphalia even had a triple shrine to Hera as Girl, Adult Woman and Separated.
Q 16Homer's common epithet for Hera, boōpis, means what?
Cow-eyed
One proposed etymology for her name is 'young cow, heifer', matching the epithet.
Q 17Which priestess of Hera was turned into a heifer and guarded by Argus Panoptes?
Io
After Hermes killed Argus, Hera sent a gadfly to sting her all the way to Egypt, where she bore Epaphus.
Q 18What did Hera do with the hundred eyes of Argus after Hermes killed him?
Set them in the peacock's tail
Ovid gives the number as a hundred; another version has the whole giant turned into a peacock.
Q 19What insect did Hera send to torment Io on her flight into Asia and Egypt?
A gadfly
The Greek word oistros is the root of 'oestrus'; Zeus restored Io to human form in Egypt.
Q 20Disguised as her nurse, Hera persuaded Semele to demand what of Zeus?
That he appear in his true form
Bound by an oath on the Styx, his lightning destroyed her; Zeus sewed the unborn Dionysus into his thigh.
Torment disfigured her; her name became a byword for child-devouring bogeywomen.
Q 24Hera turned Gerana, a queen of the Pygmies who boasted of her beauty, into which bird?
A crane
She decreed that cranes would wage eternal war on the Pygmy folk.
Q 25Zeus tricked the lustful Ixion with a cloud shaped like Hera. What was the cloud later named?
Nephele
Their union produced Centaurus, and Ixion was bound to a spinning fiery wheel for eternity.
Q 26Why did Hera strike Tiresias blind?
He sided with Zeus on which sex enjoys love more
Having lived seven years as a woman, he said women got more pleasure; Zeus compensated him with prophecy.
Q 27What does the name Heracles mean?
Glory of Hera
Ironically, Hera was his lifelong stepmother-enemy, and other names like Heraclitus and Herodotus also derive from hers.
Q 28How did Hera cheat Heracles out of the kingship Zeus had promised to that day's child?
She made Eurystheus arrive early, at seven months
She had first made Zeus swear the oath, then delayed Heracles's birth by sitting at the door.
Q 29According to one myth, how was the Milky Way created?
Hera's milk spurted across the sky as she pushed baby Heracles away
Zeus had tricked her into nursing him; a few drops that fell to earth became the lily.
Q 30What creature did Hera send to bite Heracles's feet while he fought the Lernaean Hydra?
A crab
She tried to make almost every one of the twelve labours harder for him.