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60 free Minotaur trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Minotaur trivia for anyone who loved the Greek myths as a kid or rediscovered them through Percy Jackson and Assassin's Creed. The quiz starts with the story everyone half-remembers - Poseidon's white bull, Pasiphaë and the wooden cow, Daedalus building the Labyrinth at Knossos, the Athenian youths sent as tribute, Theseus and Ariadne's ball of thread, the black sail that killed King Aegeus - and then digs into the details: the monster's real name Asterion, what 'Minotaur' actually means, how many victims were sent and how often, and what the ancient writers disagreed about. It also covers the wider cast (Minos, Icarus, Phaedra, the Cretan Bull that Heracles carried off), the archaeology of Knossos and Arthur Evans, the difference between a labyrinth and a maze, and the Minotaur's long afterlife in Dante's Inferno, Borges, Picasso's Minotauromachy, Mary Renault, Narnia, Dungeons & Dragons and the films Immortals and Wrath of the Titans. Questions run from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Greek mythology and Poseidon quizzes.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Minotaur is classically shown with the body of a man and the head of which animal?
A bull
Ovid's vaguer 'part man and part bull' led some medieval artists to reverse it, putting a man's head on a bull's body.
Q 02The Minotaur was held on which island?
Crete
The Labyrinth was said to stand near the royal palace at Knossos.
Q 03What was the Minotaur's own name in Crete?
Asterion
It means 'star', and he shared it with the king who had raised Minos as a foster-son.
Q 04What does the name 'Minotaur' literally mean?
Bull of Minos
It compounds the king's name with tauros, the Greek word for bull.
Q 05Who was the Minotaur's mother?
Pasiphaë
In some tellings she was also a sorceress who cursed her unfaithful husband to ejaculate scorpions and serpents.
Q 06Which god sent Minos the snow-white bull that started the whole affair?
Poseidon
Minos had prayed for the bull as a sign that he, not his brothers, should rule Crete.
Q 07What did Minos do that so offended the god who sent the bull?
He kept it instead of sacrificing it
He assumed a substitute animal would be accepted; the god disagreed.
Q 08Which goddess helped the sea god punish Minos by making his queen fall in love with the bull?
Aphrodite
In Bacchylides' version she sent the curse herself, because the queen had neglected her worship.
Q 09What did Daedalus build so the queen could approach the bull?
A hollow wooden cow
It was covered in real hide, convincing enough to fool the animal.
Q 10Why, according to the myth, did the Minotaur eat humans?
As an unnatural hybrid it had no natural food
Its mother nursed it as an infant, but it grew huge and ferocious.
Q 11Whose advice led Minos to lock the Minotaur away in the Labyrinth?
The oracle at Delphi
In Apollodorus's account he shut the creature up 'in compliance with certain oracles'.
Q 12How many Athenian youths were sent to the Minotaur at each tribute in the usual telling?
Seven young men and seven young women
Sources disagree on the timing: every year, every seven years or every nine.
Q 13The tribute was Athens' punishment for the death of which son of Minos?
Androgeus
In one version the Athenians killed him out of jealousy after he swept the Panathenaic Games.
Q 21Daedalus's Labyrinth escape instructions, passed on via Ariadne, told Theseus to go which way?
Forwards, always down, never left or right
He tied the thread to the doorpost and found the monster asleep at the heart of the maze.
Q 22What was preserved for centuries in an Athenian harbour and became a famous puzzle about identity?
Theseus's thirty-oared ship
Old planks were replaced as they rotted, prompting the question of whether it was still the same ship.
Q 23Which two people did Minos imprison in the Labyrinth after Ariadne eloped?
Daedalus and Icarus
Q 14On which of the tribute voyages did Theseus volunteer to go?
The third
According to Isocrates, he said he would rather die than rule a city that paid a tribute of children's lives.
Q 15What colour sail did Theseus promise to hoist on the way home if he had succeeded?
White
The ship left Athens carrying the sombre black sail of the tribute.
Q 16What did King Aegeus do when he saw the black sail returning?
Threw himself into the sea
He was watching from Cape Sounion; the sea he died in was named after him.
Q 17Which sea is named after Theseus's father?
The Aegean
The Aegean is the arm of the Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey.
Q 18Where did Theseus abandon Ariadne on the voyage home?
Naxos
The god Dionysus found her sleeping there and married her.
Q 19Dionysus set Ariadne's wedding diadem in the sky as which constellation?
Corona Borealis
The 'Northern Crown' is a small arc of stars near Boötes.
Q 20Besides Ariadne, which younger sister of hers left Crete with Theseus and later became his wife?
Phaedra
Her disastrous passion for her stepson Hippolytus is the subject of Euripides and Racine.
They escaped by air, and the son flew too close to the sun.
Q 24Daedalus's wings were held together with what?
Beeswax
He warned his son that the sun would melt it and that sea spray would soak the feathers.
Q 25Minos hunted for the fugitive Daedalus by asking every city to solve which riddle?
Thread a string through a spiral seashell
Daedalus solved it by tying the string to an ant lured through the shell by a drop of honey, which gave him away.
Q 26What role did King Minos take in the underworld after his death, according to myth?
A judge of the dead
Michelangelo painted him in the Sistine Chapel Last Judgment with a serpent's tail and donkey ears.
Q 27Minos was the son of Zeus and which princess, whom Zeus carried off in the form of a bull?
Europa
The family's bull associations thus began a generation before the Minotaur.
Q 28Which hero captured the Cretan Bull, father of the Minotaur, as one of his labours?
Heracles
It was the seventh labour; Theseus eventually caught the same animal in Attica years later.
Q 29Which archaeologist excavated the Palace of Minos at Knossos from 1900 and coined the term 'Minoan'?
Arthur Evans
His concrete reconstructions of the palace are still controversial.
Q 30Evans suggested 'labyrinth' meant 'house of the double axe', from which Lydian word?
Labrys
The double-axe motif appears in the palace ruins, but the theory lost ground once Linear B was deciphered.