Prometheus
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40 free Prometheus trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Prometheus is the great rebel of Greek mythology: the Titan who sided with humankind against the king of the gods and paid for it in chains. His story explains where fire came from, why the Greeks sacrificed the way they did, and why defying Zeus was never a small matter. It has been retold for nearly three thousand years. This quiz covers the whole tale: the theft itself, the trick that started the quarrel, the punishment on the rock and the rescue, plus the family and the gods caught up in it. Later questions follow the myth into plays, poems, paintings, music, and even outer space and the cinema. It suits students meeting the myth for the first time, mythology fans who want a tougher test, and quiz hosts after a ready-made round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which novel, begun as a ghost-story dare at Lake Geneva, is subtitled The Modern Prometheus?
Frankenstein
Frankenstein casts its scientist as a new fire-thief: he seizes the secret of life and pays dearly for it. Mary Shelley was 18 when she began the story.
Q 02Which organ of the chained Prometheus grew back every night, only to be torn out again each day?
Liver
Liver tissue really can regrow: it is the only internal organ able to regenerate. The ancient Greeks also thought of it as the seat of human emotions.
Q 03Which bird, a symbol of Zeus, came every day to feed on Prometheus as he hung in chains?
Eagle
The eagle was the emblem of Zeus himself. Greek vase painters showed the scene, often with an archer taking aim at the bird.
Q 04Which hero, a son of Zeus, shot the bird tormenting Prometheus and set the prisoner free?
Heracles
Heracles had his father's permission for the rescue. Known to the Romans as Hercules, he came upon the prisoner while travelling on one of his twelve labours.
Q 05Which first mortal woman did Zeus send among humans as payback for Prometheus's theft of fire?
Pandora
Pandora arrived carrying a sealed jar of miseries. Centuries later a translation slip, usually pinned on the scholar Erasmus, turned that jar into the famous box.
Q 06Which brother of Prometheus was sentenced, after the Titans' defeat, to carry a burden for ever?
Atlas
Atlas fought on the losing side, and his sentence was to hold up the sky. Collections of maps have carried his name since the 16th century.
Q 07American Prometheus, a Pulitzer-winning 2005 biography, tells the life story of which scientist?
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Oppenheimer led the project that built the first atomic bombs, the stolen fire of the title. The book inspired Christopher Nolan's 2023 film about him.
Q 08Which New York landmark has a gilded statue of Prometheus overlooking its winter ice rink?
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center has had the gilded bronze since 1934. Sculptor Paul Manship shows the Titan falling through a ring marked with the signs of the zodiac.
Q 09The 2012 Ridley Scott film Prometheus, about a deep-space expedition, is part of which franchise?
Alien
Alien, the 1979 original, was also a Ridley Scott film. The newer movie takes its title from the expedition's spaceship, the Prometheus.
Q 10In later Greek and Roman tellings, from what material did Prometheus sculpt the first humans?
Clay
Clay ties him to the potters of Athens, who counted him as a patron of their craft. Their quarter, the Kerameikos, shares its Greek root with the English word ceramics.
Q 11In the best-known telling, from which mountain did Prometheus carry off fire for humankind?
Mount Olympus
Mount Olympus is a real peak, the highest in Greece. Other tellings have him take the flame from a divine workshop or from the chariot of the sun.
Q 12The name Prometheus is usually taken to mean what, the opposite of his brother Epimetheus's name?
Forethought
Forethought is the usual reading, though the name's true origin is uncertain. The myths match it: he is the clever planner, his brother the foolish one.
Q 13Inside the hollow stalk of which plant did Prometheus smuggle fire away from the gods?
Fennel
Fennel of the giant kind is the plant meant. Followers of Dionysus carried its stalks as ritual staffs, often topped with a pine cone.
Q 21Which early Greek poet gives the oldest surviving account of Prometheus, in his Theogony?
Hesiod
Hesiod tells the story twice. The Theogony has the sacrifice trick and the punishment, and his Works and Days adds the first woman and her jar of evils.
Q 22In one telling, which wise centaur, incurably wounded, gave up his immortality so Prometheus could go free?
Chiron
Chiron was the tutor of heroes, with Achilles and Jason among his pupils. Being immortal he could not die of the wound, so he traded his endless life away.
Q 23Prometheus knew which sea nymph, courted by Zeus, was fated to bear a son greater than his father?
Thetis
Thetis was married off to a mortal instead, and her son was Achilles. The secret is the one hold the chained Titan has over Zeus in Prometheus Bound.
Q 14In most tellings, in which mountain range was Prometheus chained to a rock?
Caucasus
The Caucasus lay at the far edge of the world the Greeks knew. Some place the rock on Mount Elbrus or Mount Kazbek, two volcanic peaks in the range.
Q 15Which god reluctantly fastens Prometheus to the rock at the start of Prometheus Bound?
Hephaestus
Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods, takes no pleasure in the task. In the older poems he is also the one who shapes the first woman at Zeus's command.
Q 16At Mecone, Prometheus tricked Zeus into choosing which part of an ox, hidden under glistening fat?
Bones
Bones wrapped in fat became the gods' share at every Greek sacrifice from then on, while people kept the meat. Zeus struck back by hiding fire from humans.
Q 17Which son of Prometheus survived Zeus's great flood in a chest built on his father's advice?
Deucalion
Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha then refilled the empty earth by throwing rocks over their shoulders, and each stone turned into a person.
Q 18Which tragedian, who fought at Marathon, is traditionally credited with the play Prometheus Bound?
Aeschylus
Aeschylus is the traditional author, though some scholars doubt he wrote it. The play is thought to have opened a trilogy whose other parts survive only in fragments.
Q 19Prometheus is also a small moon, discovered in Voyager 1 images in 1980, that orbits which planet?
Saturn
Saturn's narrow F ring is kept in line by this moon, whose gravity shepherds the ring's inner edge. The moon is oddly stretched, more than twice as long as it is thick.
Q 20What alone stayed in the jar of evils opened by the first woman, sent to punish Prometheus's theft?
Hope
Hope was left under the lid when the jar was shut. The Greek word can also mean a deceptive expectation, so readers still argue whether it was a comfort or one last curse.
Q 24Which maiden, turned into a cow and chased by a gadfly, meets the chained Titan in Prometheus Bound?
Io
Io was a princess of Argos, transformed after Zeus fell for her and Hera took revenge. The playwright brings her in as a fellow victim of Zeus.
Q 25Which divine messenger arrives in Prometheus Bound to demand the prisoner's secret, and is refused?
Hermes
Hermes brings threats from Zeus: an earthquake, and a mountain falling to bury the prisoner. The Titan still refuses, and the play ends as the storm breaks.
Q 26Which enforcer of Zeus in Prometheus Bound shares his name with the hero of the God of War games?
Kratos
Kratos, whose name means strength, leads the captive on stage with his sister Bia. A director of the games called the shared name a happy mistake.
Q 27Which Titan, named by Homer as a prisoner in Tartarus, was the father of Prometheus?
Iapetus
Iapetus was later identified with the biblical Japheth, a son of Noah, partly because the two names sound so alike.
Q 28Which composer's only full ballet, premiered in Vienna in 1801, is The Creatures of Prometheus?
Beethoven
Beethoven liked the finale's main theme enough to reuse it in a set of piano variations and in the last movement of his Eroica Symphony.
Q 29Which Romantic poet, host of the 1816 Villa Diodati gathering, wrote a poem called Prometheus?
Lord Byron
Lord Byron shows the Titan as unrepentant to the end. The Romantics loved Prometheus as a lone rebel who suffers for helping humankind.
Q 30Which German writer's defiant early poem Prometheus was later set to music by Schubert?
Goethe
Goethe wrote it in the 1770s, at the height of the Sturm und Drang movement. His Titan scolds Zeus to his face and boasts of making humans in his own image.