50 Fun Facts About Ancient Greece and Rome

Which Greek mathematician was killed by a Roman soldier when Syracuse fell in 212 BC, despite orders to spare him?

Archimedes had helped hold the Romans off with weapons of his own design. In Livy's account he was drawing figures in the dust when a soldier who did not recognise him struck him down.

Which Greek king of Epirus beat the Romans at Heraclea and Asculum at such cost that ruinous wins still bear his name?

Pyrrhus is said to have remarked after Asculum in 279 BC that one more such win over the Romans would ruin him. A victory that costs too much has been called Pyrrhic ever since.

Which queen, the last active ruler of Egypt's Greek Ptolemaic dynasty, sided with Mark Antony and lost at Actium?

Cleopatra spoke Koine Greek as her first language and was the only ruler of her dynasty known to have learned Egyptian. Her family descended from a Macedonian general.

Which general from Carthage marched war elephants over the Alps in 218 BC to invade Italy from the north?

Hannibal's elephants went on to fight at the Trebia, but Polybius says the cold that followed killed all but one. He still beat Roman armies at Lake Trasimene and Cannae.

Which month, known to early Romans as Quintilis, did the Senate rename in 44 BC in honour of Caesar's birth?

July was Quintilis, the fifth month, because the early Roman year began in March. The Senate renamed it for Julius Caesar, who was born in that month.

At which battle of 490 BC did the Athenians rout a Persian force that had landed on the coast north-east of Athens?

Marathon gave its name to the long-distance race, created for the 1896 Athens Games after the legend of a messenger who ran to the city with news of the win.

Which armless marble statue of Aphrodite, found on a Greek island in 1820 and kept in the Louvre, bears her Roman name?

The Venus de Milo takes the rest of its name from Milos, the island where it was dug up. It went on show in Paris only a year after the find.

Which Athenian lawgiver's code, said to punish most offences with death, gave English a word for very harsh rules?

Draco, by tradition, gave Athens its first written laws, replacing oral law and blood feud with a code enforced by a court. Their severity is why harsh measures are called draconian.

Which volcano buried the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash and pumice in AD 79?

Vesuvius buried Pompeii under four to six metres of ash and pumice. Pliny the Younger watched from across the Bay of Naples and wrote a first-hand account years later.

Which Greek word for an independent city-state such as Athens or Thebes also gave English its name for law officers?

Polis is the root of politics, police and metropolis, the 'mother city' that sent out a colony. One modern study counted about 1,500 such communities across the Greek world.

Which king of Macedon, tutored as a boy by Aristotle, overthrew the Persian Empire before dying in Babylon in 323 BC?

Alexander the Great invaded in 334 BC and broke Persian power at Issus and Gaugamela. He had planned to make Babylon the capital of his empire.

Which Athenian philosopher, condemned in 399 BC for impiety and corrupting the young, died by drinking hemlock?

Socrates wrote nothing himself, so his ideas are known mainly through the accounts of his students Plato and Xenophon. Both men wrote accounts of his trial.

Spoils from the Roman sack of which city in AD 70 paid for the building of the Colosseum?

Jerusalem fell to Titus, whose father Vespasian began the amphitheatre soon afterwards with the treasure of the Jewish Temple. Titus himself completed it in AD 80.

By what name did the Romans worship the sky god and king of the gods whom they equated with the Greek Zeus?

Jupiter took over the myths and imagery of Zeus in Latin literature and art. In Rome he guarded the state from the Capitoline Hill, alongside Juno and Minerva.

Which small river in northern Italy did Julius Caesar cross with his army in January 49 BC, setting off a civil war?

The Rubicon was a line Caesar could not lawfully cross with troops, because he was barred from commanding an army in Italy proper. The phrase now means passing a point of no return.

At which narrow coastal pass did King Leonidas and about 300 Spartans die holding off a Persian invasion in 480 BC?

Thermopylae was held for two full days by some 7,000 Greeks, until a local man showed the Persians a path behind their lines. Leonidas then fought on with a small rearguard.

Which great-nephew and heir of Julius Caesar, born Gaius Octavius, became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC?

Augustus was a title meaning 'the revered', granted by the Senate, which also named a month after him. He ruled until his death in AD 14.

Which marble temple on the Acropolis of Athens, built from 447 BC, housed a gold-and-ivory statue of Athena by Phidias?

The Parthenon doubled as a treasury and for a time held the funds of the Delian League, the alliance that became the Athenian Empire.

In Rome's founding legend, which animal suckled the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus beside the River Tiber?

A she-wolf nursed the twins in a cave known as the Lupercal. Her image has stood for the city of Rome since at least the 3rd century BC.

At which sanctuary of Zeus in Elis were athletic games, traditionally dated from 776 BC, held every four years?

Olympia also held a gold-and-ivory statue of Zeus that was counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Winners at the games were crowned with olive leaves.

At which Greek sanctuary did a priestess called the Pythia speak for Apollo beside a stone marking the world's centre?

Delphi's oracle was consulted about important decisions throughout the classical world. The stone, called the Omphalos, takes its name from the Greek word for navel.

Which emperor blamed the Christians for the Great Fire that burned through the city of Rome in AD 64?

Nero was himself rumoured to have ordered the fire to clear space for his new palace, the Golden House. The blaze burned for six days, then flared up again for three more.

Which Roman emperor, an ardent admirer of Greek culture, had a 73-mile wall built across northern Britain from AD 122?

Hadrian promoted Athens as the cultural capital of the empire and finished a temple of Zeus there that had been under construction for more than five centuries.

Which Thracian gladiator escaped from a training school near Capua in 73 BC and led a major slave uprising against Rome?

Spartacus broke out with about 70 other gladiators. After the uprising was crushed, 6,000 captured rebels were crucified along one of Rome's main highways.

Which Roman building material, made with lime and volcanic ash, made harbours in the open sea and vast domes possible?

Concrete of the Roman kind could set underwater, which is how the great harbour at Caesarea was built. Lumps of lime in the mix are now thought to have let cracks heal themselves.

Which emperor backed the Edict of Milan legalising Christianity and made the Greek city of Byzantium his new capital?

Constantine renamed the city New Rome, though it soon took his own name instead. It stayed an imperial capital for more than a thousand years.

Which war of 431 to 404 BC, chronicled by Thucydides, ended with Sparta and its allies defeating Athens?

The Peloponnesian War turned when Persia began backing Sparta in 413 BC. A Spartan fleet won the decisive battle in 405 BC, and Athens gave in the next year.

By what Athenian procedure could citizens vote, scratching a name on broken pottery, to banish a man for ten years?

Ostracism takes its name from the ostraka, the pottery sherds used as ballots. The banished man kept his property and could return after ten years without stigma.

Which Greek writer from Halicarnassus did Cicero call the Father of History for his account of the Persian Wars?

Herodotus opened his work by calling it the results of his inquiry. Critics later branded him the Father of Lies for the strange stories and folk tales he passed on.

Which Persian king bridged the Hellespont with boats to invade Greece in 480 BC, then saw his fleet beaten at Salamis?

Xerxes is said to have given the strait three hundred lashes after a storm destroyed his first bridges. His army overran much of mainland Greece before the defeat at sea.

By what name did the Romans usually call Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, whose rites the Senate restricted in 186 BC?

Bacchus was a name the Greeks themselves used for the god, after the frenzy he was said to inspire. His festivals, the Bacchanalia, were curbed in Rome under threat of death.

What name is given to the three conflicts that Rome fought against Carthage between 264 and 146 BC?

The Punic Wars take their name from Punicus, the Latin for Carthaginian, a nod to the city's Phoenician roots. Between them they involved forty-three years of fighting.

What title was held by the two officials elected each year as the highest magistrates of the Roman Republic?

Consul was the office Romans named their years after: each year was known by the pair who began it in office. The two served jointly for a single year.

Which temple in Rome, a church since AD 609, is crowned by a vast dome with a round opening to the sky?

The Pantheon takes its name from the Greek for a temple of all the gods. The opening, the oculus, sits 43 metres above the floor, exactly the width of the space beneath it.

Which Trojan hero, said to have fled the sack of Troy for Italy, did Romans claim as an ancestor of their founders?

Aeneas is cast in Virgil's great Latin epic as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. His son Ascanius, also called Iulus, was said to have founded Alba Longa.

Which philosophy, founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium around 300 BC, did the emperor Marcus Aurelius later embrace?

Stoicism is named after the Stoa Poikile, the painted colonnade where it was taught in public. Marcus Aurelius wrote his own reflections on it, the Meditations, in Greek.

Which plant's leaves adorn the capitals of Corinthian columns, an order little used in Greece before Roman times?

Acanthus capitals were credited by the Roman writer Vitruvius to the Greek sculptor Callimachus, who was inspired by a basket left on a young girl's grave.

Which fast oared warship, crewed by about 170 rowers, made up the Athenian fleet that won at Salamis in 480 BC?

Trireme crews pulled one oar each, and most of the rowers could not see the water, so keeping time took great skill and practice.

Which tight formation of Macedonian pikemen, born of Greek hoplite warfare, did Rome's army break at Pydna in 168 BC?

The phalanx was a wall of pikes the Romans could not get under at Pydna. But as it advanced onto uneven ground the line lost its cohesion, and the Romans broke in.

Which chariot-racing stadium in Rome, the Roman answer to a Greek hippodrome, could hold more than 150,000 spectators?

The Circus Maximus was the first and largest stadium in ancient Rome, more than 600 metres long. Its Latin name simply means 'largest circus'.

Which silver coin, introduced about 211 BC and long Rome's standard, is why old British pence were abbreviated 'd'?

The denarius takes its name from the Latin for 'containing ten', because it was first worth ten bronze asses. Britain's pre-decimal £sd kept its initial until 1971.

Which people of ancient Tuscany passed on to Rome an alphabet they had borrowed from Greek colonists in Italy?

The Etruscans took their letters from Greek colonies around the Bay of Naples in the 8th century BC. Their version became the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet.

Which large island, home to Greek cities such as Syracuse, became the first province of the Roman Republic after 241 BC?

Sicily came under Roman control at the end of a long war with Carthage. During the Republic the island was the main source of grain for the city of Rome.

Which Germanic people, led by their king Alaric, captured and sacked the city of Rome in AD 410?

The Visigoths' sack was the first time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy. It came as a shock to friends and foes of the empire alike.

Which Roman law code of about 450 BC, displayed in the Forum, did Livy say followed an embassy to study Athenian law?

The Twelve Tables stood at the foundation of Roman law and were drawn up by a board of ten men. The Athenian model their envoys studied was the constitution of Solon.

What name was given to the subjugated people of Laconia and Messenia who farmed the land for their Spartan masters?

Helots made up the majority of the population in Sparta's territories. Every autumn the Spartans formally declared war on them, so that killing one carried no religious guilt.

On which of Rome's seven hills, where Romulus was said to have founded the city, did emperors build their residences?

The Palatine is the source of the word palace, through the Latin palatium, because the imperial residences stood on it. It is the centremost of the seven hills.

Which Roman central heating system, found in baths and villas, circulated hot air beneath the floor of a room?

Hypocaust comes from the Greek words for 'under' and 'burnt'. The hot air could also be led up through pipes to warm the walls.

Which Roman road, begun in 312 BC as a military route south, eventually linked Rome with the port of Brindisi?

The Appian Way is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the censor who began it. The poet Statius recorded its common nickname, the queen of the long roads.

What did the Greeks call the central public square of a city, the counterpart of the forum in a Roman town?

Agora literally means 'gathering place'. It was the centre of a city's political, business and social life, and only later filled with merchants' stalls and shops.