Greek Tragedy Quiz
Questions: 16 · 10 minutes
1. Electra recognizes her brother after his return, and together they pursue vengeance for Agamemnon’s murder. Who is that brother?
Menelaus
Neoptolemus
Orestes
Polynices
2. The audience already knows that Oedipus is searching for himself when he curses Laius’s unknown killer. Which device makes this moment especially powerful?
Comic parody
Epic invocation
Pastoral allegory
Dramatic irony
3. A tragedy is being staged competitively during Athens’s City Dionysia. To which god is the festival dedicated?
Apollo
Zeus
Ares
Dionysus
4. At the end of Euripides’ Medea, how does Medea escape from Jason?
She boards a ship bound for Corinth
She takes refuge inside Athena’s temple
She departs in a divine chariot associated with Helios
She descends through a passage beneath the palace
5. Which Euripidean tragedy focuses on captive Trojan women confronting enslavement and loss after Troy’s defeat?
Helen
Iphigenia in Tauris
The Phoenician Women
The Trojan Women
6. According to Aristotle’s discussion of tragedy, the emotions most closely associated with catharsis are which pair?
Love and jealousy
Pity and fear
Anger and shame
Joy and surprise
7. In The Bacchae, which ruler resists the worship of Dionysus and suffers a catastrophic fate?
Pentheus
Admetus
Peleus
Creon
8. A small cast must portray numerous named characters in the same production. Which established stage practice helps make this possible?
Using masks and assigning multiple roles to individual actors
Having the chorus silently perform every named role
Changing the playwright between dramatic episodes
Performing each character’s scenes on a separate day
9. A character defies a royal decree because she believes sacred duties to her dead brother carry greater authority. Who is she?
Cassandra
Antigone
Iphigenia
Andromache
10. Which of the three major surviving Greek tragedians belonged to the latest generation?
Thespis
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
11. Which playwright wrote the three plays collectively known as the Oresteia?
Euripides
Sophocles
Aeschylus
Aristophanes
12. Why is Prometheus punished in Prometheus Bound?
He gives fire and other benefits to humanity against Zeus’s will
He helps the Greeks enter Troy using the wooden horse
He reveals Oedipus’s parentage to the people of Thebes
He refuses to return Persephone from the underworld
13. Which work is the only complete trilogy of Greek tragedies to survive from antiquity?
The Oresteia
The Prometheia
The Theban plays
The Trojan Cycle
14. What is a central dramatic function of the chorus in Greek tragedy?
To replace every character who dies during the action
To respond to events and offer a collective perspective on them
To provide comic sketches unrelated to the main plot
To announce which performer has won before the play ends
15. A protagonist makes a grave error based on limited judgment rather than acting from simple wickedness. Which tragic concept most closely describes that error?
Parodos
Hamartia
Stasimon
Mimesis
16. A ruler vows to find the person responsible for a former king’s death, only to discover that he himself is the culprit. Which tragedy follows this investigation?
Agamemnon
Hippolytus
Oedipus Rex
The Persians