Ancient Rome Trivia Questions

Roman trivia questions and answers: tap a choice for the answer and its reason.

Question 1 of 10

The offices of the Republic were at first open only to which class?

FreedmenKnightsPatriciansPlebeians

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Unofficial practice questions, not affiliated with any school, exam board or quiz show. Bank checked October 3, 2026.

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How it works

Ancient Rome trivia questions and answers in four rounds: kings and the Republic, Julius Caesar, the emperors, and daily life and buildings.

Read the full guide

Trivia questions about Julius Caesar

The Julius Caesar round follows him from the pirates' ransom to the First Triumvirate, Pharsalus, the three famous words, the calendar and the senators of 44 BC.

Roman Empire trivia questions

The emperors runs from the long peace to 476: the dynasty Augustus founded, the five good emperors, the wall in Britain, Diocletian and Constantine. For Roman history trivia questions and answers from before the emperors, play Kings and the Republic.

Tips

Daily life and buildings is the round for a Latin class: insulae, the toga, the denarius.

Questions and answers

What are some easy ancient Rome trivia questions?

How many kings did Rome have? Which calendar did Caesar create? On the flooded grounds of which building was a mock sea battle staged? The answers are seven, the Julian calendar and the Colosseum.

Is ancient Greece in this quiz?

No. This pack is Rome alone, from the kings to 476. Greece has its own pack of ancient Greece trivia on this site, linked below.

Who were the five good emperors?

Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. Under them Rome reached its greatest territorial extent; Marcus Aurelius, the last, wrote the Meditations.

How were the answers checked?

Each was read on October 3, 2026 in the English Wikipedia article Ancient Rome or Julius Caesar, linked under the question. The cruelties those articles record in detail are not asked.

All 41 questions with answers

Kings and the Republic 10

How long did Hannibal's invasion of Italy last? Answer: Over 16 years. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
How many kings did Rome have, by tradition? Answer: Seven. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
In which year did the Roman Kingdom give way to the Republic? Answer: 509 BC. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
The offices of the Republic were at first open only to which class? Answer: Patricians. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Tribunes, quaestors, aediles and praetors were magistrates of the Republic. Which office completes the list? Answer: Censors. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which culture of north-central Italy did early Rome absorb, along with the Greek culture of the south? Answer: Etruscan. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which king did a Greek colony in Italy call in against Rome in 281 BC? Answer: Pyrrhus of Epirus. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which poet told the legend of Rome's Trojan beginnings in an epic poem? Answer: Virgil. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which two magistrates held the highest office of the Republic together? Answer: The two consuls. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Who was the last king of Rome? Answer: Tarquin the Proud. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome

Julius Caesar 10

After which quick victory did Caesar write "veni, vidi, vici"? Answer: Zela. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
As a young man Caesar was held by pirates. How large a ransom did he pay, according to Plutarch and Suetonius? Answer: Fifty talents. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
At which battle did Caesar decisively defeat Pompey on August 9, 48 BC? Answer: Pharsalus. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
In which wars did Caesar lead the Roman armies before the civil war? Answer: The Gallic Wars. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
Of which three-man alliance was Caesar a member? Answer: The First Triumvirate. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
To which country did Pompey flee after Caesar defeated him in 48 BC? Answer: Egypt. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
Which calendar did Caesar create? Answer: The Julian calendar. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
Which title did Caesar take in 44 BC? Answer: Dictator perpetuo. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
Which two senators led the group that assassinated Caesar in 44 BC? Answer: Brutus and Cassius. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar
Who was Caesar's great-nephew and adoptive heir? Answer: Octavian. Source: Wikipedia: Julius Caesar

The emperors 13

After the death of which emperor, who ruled from 379 to 395, was the Empire divided into East and West? Answer: Theodosius I. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
During whose reign did Josephus and Pliny the Elder write their works? Answer: Vespasian's. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
In which year was Diocletian hailed as Imperator by the eastern army? Answer: 284 AD. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Under which emperor did the conquest of Britannia begin? Answer: Claudius. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
What did the Romans call the long peace of the early Empire? Answer: The Pax Romana. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
What does the name Constantinople mean? Answer: City of Constantine. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which chieftain dethroned Romulus Augustus in 476? Answer: Odoacer. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which dynasty did Augustus establish? Answer: The Julio-Claudian dynasty. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which edict of 313 granted Christians the liberty to profess their religion? Answer: The Edict of Milan. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which emperor's wall separated Roman Britannia from the tribes of what is now Scotland? Answer: Hadrian. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which emperor, known as the Philosopher, wrote the Meditations? Answer: Marcus Aurelius. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which son of Marcus Aurelius became emperor after him and is not counted among the Five Good Emperors? Answer: Commodus. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Who took control after the Year of the Four Emperors and founded a new dynasty? Answer: Vespasian. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome

Daily life and buildings 8

By the 6th century BC the Romans were building a temple to Jupiter Optimus Maximus on which hill? Answer: The Capitoline. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
In which century BC was Roman concrete invented? Answer: The late 3rd century BC. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
On the flooded grounds of which building was a mock naval battle staged in the games of the emperor Titus? Answer: The Colosseum. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Paintings found in which buried city let art historians divide Roman painting into four periods? Answer: Pompeii. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
What were the apartment blocks called in which most city people lived? Answer: Insulae. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Where in Rome were chariot races usually held? Answer: The Circus Maximus. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which garment, common in the time of Julius Caesar, was gradually given up by every class of the Empire? Answer: The toga. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome
Which silver coin did Nero begin to debase? Answer: The denarius. Source: Wikipedia: Ancient Rome

How this list was compiled

Written for this site; nothing was copied from another list. Questions and wrong choices are our own. Each explanation restates, in our own sentences, a fact from the English Wikipedia article named and linked beside the question (https://en.wikipedia.org, text under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license): Ancient Rome and Julius Caesar. The text of each article was fetched on October 2 or 3, 2026, and on October 3, 2026 the passage that states each fact was read in it before the question was kept. Left out on purpose: the cruelties the articles record in detail (murders within the imperial families, the arena), counts of dead, and what other trivia sets on this site already ask (the legend of the founding twins, the amphitheater's other name, the year Carthage fell, the saying about the Ides of March, the first treatise on architecture). Levels are our estimate: easy is fair for any table, medium suits people who know the subject, hard will stump most tables. Each question also carries the date its article was read (checkedOn). Licence: own work