Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A capital that has moved more than once

Algiers is the capital of Algeria, but the country's administrative history is more restless than the name suggests. During French colonial rule, the city was the seat of government for a vast territory. After independence in 1962, Algiers remained the political centre, and today it is both the largest city and the country's main port on the Mediterranean. Its whitewashed buildings gave it the nickname "Algiers the White".

The Caucasus capital with three possible answers

Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia, and the wrong options here were Yerevan and Baku - the capitals of Armenia and Azerbaijan. That is not a coincidence: the three countries sit side by side in the South Caucasus and share a long, tangled history of empires, trade routes and borders. Tbilisi itself was founded in the fifth century and has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, which is why its architecture mixes Persian, Byzantine and Soviet influences.

Gaul, and why the name survived

The Romans called the region we now know as France Gaul, or Gallia in Latin. It covered more than modern France, stretching into parts of Belgium, Switzerland and northern Italy. The name lingered long after the Roman Empire fell, and "Gaul" is still used in French as a slightly romantic way to refer to the country. The famous comic series about Asterix and Obelix plays directly on this Roman-era setting.

One poet, two epics, centuries of argument

The Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed to Homer, though scholars have debated for centuries whether one person wrote both. The Iliad deals with a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan War; the Odyssey follows Odysseus on his long journey home. Both were composed orally and passed down before being written, which is part of why the question of authorship remains open. Virgil, one of the wrong answers, later wrote the Aeneid in deliberate imitation of Homer.