Trivia (Roman mythology)

Trivia was the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Hecate. She was the three-faced deity of those crossroads where three roads came together, and her name meant "of the three ways". In ancient Greece such a crossroads was an ill-omened place, where a dog might be sacrificed and buried, to placate Hecate. In Rome, the Trevi Fountain occupies a square where three ways (tre vie) have met since antiquity.

'Trivia,' an urbane satire by English poet John Gay (1716), invokes an invented 'Trivia,' goddess of streets and ways, to lead him on a ramble through London. The poem is a goldmine of information on contemporary social history.

In medieval universities, the Trivium, or the studies of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic, being considered the lesser three ways to mastering the seven Liberal Arts, (compare Quadrivium), Trivia has consequently come to describe information of lighter weight or questionable worth: knowledge for its own sake. It is frequently tested in pub quizzes.

See also: Trivial Pursuit and List of trivia lists