147 Fun Facts About Ancient Rome

Rome's first emperor shunned the titles of king and dictator and styled himself princeps, meaning what?

First citizen: Augustus kept the Republic's offices and assemblies in place and posed as merely its leading man, while quietly holding the real power himself.

Which Roman god was the equivalent of the Greek god Poseidon, ruling over the sea and freshwater?

Neptune probably began as a god of fresh water; only once the Romans matched him with Poseidon, by 399 BC, did he take charge of the sea.

Under which Roman Emperor did the construction of the Colosseum begin?

Vespasian began the Colosseum around AD 72 on the site of a drained artificial lake, returning the land to public use; his son Titus inaugurated it in AD 80 with 100 days of games.

Which ancient Roman road was famously known as the 'Regina Viarum' or 'Queen of Roads'?

Via Appia: after the slave revolt of Spartacus was crushed in 71 BC, some 6,000 captured rebels were crucified along it, all the way from Rome to Capua.

Which month did Romans call Quintilis, 'fifth', until it was renamed in 44 BC for a murdered dictator?

July: Quintilis became Julius in honour of Julius Caesar, who was born in that month; Sextilis, the sixth, was later renamed August for his heir.

Who were brought in to work the huge retractable awning that shaded the Colosseum's crowds?

Sailors worked the awning, the velarium: used to ropes and canvas, hundreds of them hauled it out along masts fixed around the top storey.

Which Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility is equated with the Greek Aphrodite?

Venus was honoured as the ancestor of the Roman people through her son Aeneas; Julius Caesar, whose family claimed descent from her, built her a temple in his new forum.

Which city, originally Byzantium, became the Roman Empire's new capital in AD 330?

Constantinople was dedicated in 330 as a 'New Rome' and outlived the empire's western half by almost a thousand years, falling to the Ottomans only in 1453.

In the Roman numeral system, which letter represents the number 1000?

M: the Roman word for a thousand was mille, and a Roman mile, mille passus, was a thousand paces, which is how English got the word 'mile'.

Which pale stone, quarried at Tivoli near Rome, forms the Colosseum's outer wall?

Travertine blocks were pinned together with iron clamps; the pockmarks all over the walls are where later scavengers hacked the metal out.

According to Roman legend, which twin brothers were the mythical founders of the city of Rome?

Romulus and Remus were said to have been suckled by a she-wolf; in the best-known version Romulus then killed Remus for mocking and jumping over his new city wall.

Which silver coin, introduced around 211 BC, was the standard unit of a legionary's pay?

Denarius: the name outlived the coin, surviving in the dinar and in the 'd' that stood for pence in British money.

What was the earliest written code of Roman law, drawn up around 450 BC?

The Twelve Tables were posted in public so that anyone could read the law; the originals are said to have been lost when Rome was sacked around 390 BC.

What did Romans call the eagle standard that carried a legion's honor?

The aquila was worth dying for: when Caesar's men hesitated to land in Britain, the Tenth's eagle-bearer jumped into the surf with it, and they followed rather than see it lost.

What alone moved water along Rome's aqueducts, with no pumps to push it?

Gravity: each channel fell by a gentle, carefully surveyed slope, and most of the route ran in buried conduits rather than on the famous arches.

Which island, won from Carthage in 241 BC, became Rome's first overseas province?

Sicily: to win it Rome, a land power, had to build a large war fleet almost from scratch, probably copying Carthaginian ships it had captured.

Which Roman emperor wrote the Stoic notebook 'Meditations' to himself?

Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations in Greek as a private notebook for his own guidance, probably in army camps during his wars in central Europe.

Which of Rome's seven hills held the legendary first city and, later, the emperors' homes?

Palatine: the emperors' residences there were so grand that the hill's name, Palatium, became the word 'palace'.

Which officials of the Roman Republic, elected to defend the common people, could veto the acts of other magistrates?

Tribunes were declared sacrosanct: the people swore that anyone who laid hands on one could be killed without penalty.

In which naval battle of 31 BC did Octavian's fleet under Agrippa crush Antony and Cleopatra?

Actium was settled when Cleopatra's squadron made for the open sea and Antony slipped away after her with a few ships, abandoning the rest of his fleet; both killed themselves the following year.

Which Roman naturalist died at Stabiae in AD 79 while trying to rescue eruption victims?

Pliny the Elder commanded the fleet at Misenum and sent its galleys across the bay toward the eruption, boarding one himself; his nephew's letters describe how he died on the shore.

What was the predominant language spoken in the western part of the Roman Empire?

Latin never really died: everyday spoken Latin slowly turned into Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.

Which Roman goddess, wife of Jupiter, was queen of the gods?

Juno, queen of the gods, was also worshipped as Juno Moneta; Rome's coins were struck at that temple, which gave English both 'money' and 'mint'.

Which Roman emperor made Nicene Christianity the state religion with the Edict of Thessalonica in AD 380?

Theodosius I: ten years later Bishop Ambrose of Milan barred him from communion until he had done months of public penance for a massacre at Thessalonica.

What was the primary initial purpose of the extensive Roman road network?

Moving troops rapidly was the aim, and surveyors drove the roads as straight as the ground allowed, cutting into hillsides and bridging valleys rather than going round.

Which gladiator of ancient Rome fought like a fisherman, with a weighted net and trident?

Retiarius means 'net-man': if his throw missed he had to run, gathering the net for a second cast while his opponent, the secutor or 'chaser', hunted him round the arena.

Which Roman historian wrote the Annals and the Germania?

Tacitus, a senator himself, gave Rome's enemies some of his best lines: in his life of his father-in-law Agricola, a Caledonian chief says the Romans 'make a solitude and call it peace'.

What was the draped woollen garment worn by male Roman citizens on formal occasions?

The toga was a Roman man's formal dress, and those standing for office whitened theirs with chalk: the toga candida, which is where the word 'candidate' comes from.

What is the Colosseum's formal name, after the dynasty of the three emperors who built it?

The Flavian Amphitheatre was the gift of the three Flavian emperors; the name 'Colosseum' came centuries later, most likely from the colossal bronze statue of Nero that stood beside it.

Which Roman goddess of the hunt, twin sister of Apollo, was equated with the Greek Artemis?

Diana's priest at Lake Nemi was always a runaway slave who had won the post by killing the man who held it, and who kept it only until a challenger killed him.

Which Roman officer led a unit of about 80 men and carried a vine-wood staff to beat them into line?

Centurion: one was nicknamed 'Fetch-Another' by his men, an ancient historian records, because he kept breaking his staff over their backs and shouting for a new one.

What was the common name for the large public bath complexes in ancient Rome?

Thermae could be vast: centuries later Michelangelo built a church into the surviving central halls of Rome's largest baths.

Which family name links the man said to have founded the Roman Republic with Julius Caesar's most famous assassin?

Brutus: Lucius Junius Brutus is said to have driven out Rome's last king in 509 BC; graffiti later taunted Marcus Brutus, who claimed him as an ancestor, to live up to the name, and he helped kill Caesar.

Which Roman deity was the god of war, often depicted with a helmet and spear?

Mars gave his name to March, the month when the campaigning season opened, and to the Campus Martius, the 'Field of Mars' just outside Rome's sacred boundary.

An Imperial Roman legion of about 5,000 men was organised into ten of which units?

Cohorts: a unit judged guilty of cowardice could be decimated, with one man in every ten picked by lot and clubbed to death by his own comrades.

Which stadium was ancient Rome's most famous venue for chariot racing?

The Circus Maximus survives in outline: the long valley where the chariots ran was cleared in the 20th century and is now a public park used for concerts and big gatherings.

Romans jotted their notes by scratching with a pointed stylus into wooden boards coated with what?

Wax could be smoothed flat and written on again, using the flat end of the stylus as an eraser; that wiped board is the 'tabula rasa' still used to mean a blank mind or a fresh start.

Which Roman historian wrote 'Ab Urbe Condita', a history of Rome from its founding?

Livy became so famous for it that one admirer is said to have travelled all the way from Cadiz just to set eyes on him, then turned round and went home.

Which Roman stone-throwing siege engine was named after the wild ass because of its violent kick?

The onager threw with a single arm, and its recoil was so savage that crews bedded it on turf or mud-brick: set on a stone wall, it would shake the masonry apart.

Which Roman god, with winged sandals, was the messenger of the gods and patron of trade?

Mercury's speed made him the natural namesake of the fastest-moving planet, and probably of quicksilver too, the restless liquid metal that medieval scholars called mercurius.

Which sea did the Romans call Mare Nostrum, 'Our Sea'?

Mediterranean: with the fall of Egypt in 30 BC, Roman power stretched along its shores from Spain to the Nile.

The satirist Juvenal sneered that the Roman people now longed for only which two things?

Bread and circuses, panem et circenses: Juvenal's jibe was that a people who once handed out commands and high office now cared only for the free grain dole and the races.

Which Roman goddess of wisdom, war and handicrafts was the counterpart to Athena?

Minerva, in the best-known telling, turned the boastful weaver Arachne into a spider after a contest between them at the loom.

Which general crossed the Alps with war elephants to invade Italy in the Second Punic War?

Hannibal got his war elephants over the Alps in 218 BC and won crushing victories in Italy, yet never took Rome itself.

What did the Romans call the land that covered most of modern France?

Gaul was conquered by Julius Caesar between 58 and 50 BC; his own account of the war opens with the line 'All Gaul is divided into three parts'.

What Roman numeral represents the number 100?

C matches centum, the Roman word for a hundred, which is why a dollar has a hundred cents and a centipede is credited with a hundred legs.

Which half-man, half-goat deity of Roman mythology was associated with forests, shepherds and nature?

Faun: Linnaeus took the name of Fauna, the female counterpart of the god Faunus, for his 1746 catalogue of Sweden's animals, which is how 'fauna' came to mean animal life.

Which Roman god of doorways and beginnings was shown with two faces looking in opposite directions?

Janus: the doors of his shrine in the Forum stood open whenever Rome was at war and were shut only in peacetime, which happened so rarely that each closing was recorded.

Which emperor agreed with Licinius in 313 AD to treat Christians benevolently, in what became the Edict of Milan?

Constantine I met Licinius at Milan early in 313 and agreed to tolerate Christians; Galerius had already issued an edict of toleration in 311, and the 'Edict of Milan' survives as Licinius's letter to eastern governors.

Which emperor, long mocked for his limp and stammer, added Britain to the Roman Empire in AD 43?

Claudius came to power by accident: after Caligula's murder a soldier is said to have found him hiding behind a curtain and hailed him emperor.

Which Greek god was the equivalent of Jupiter, king of the Roman gods?

Zeus and Jupiter are the same name at root: both go back to a prehistoric 'sky father', Dyeus pater, worshipped before the two peoples' languages went their separate ways.

Which wall, begun in AD 122, ran from the Tyne to the Solway across Britain?

Hadrian's Wall ran 73 miles from coast to coast; the Antonine Wall, built further north some twenty years later, was given up within a generation and the garrisons fell back to it.

In a Roman bath complex, what was the room with the hot plunge bath called?

Caldarium: its floor stood on short pillars so that hot air from a wood-fired furnace could flow underneath and heat the room from below.

Which volcano buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD?

Mount Vesuvius had been quiet for so long that vineyards and gardens covered its slopes almost to the summit when it erupted in AD 79.

Which elite unit was meant to protect Rome's emperors yet murdered or deposed several of them?

The Praetorian Guard murdered the emperor Pertinax in AD 193 and then sold the throne to the highest bidder, the rich senator Didius Julianus.

What was the Roman term for the common people, distinct from the aristocratic patricians?

Plebeians won their rights by walking out: in 494 BC, tradition says, they left the city in a body and refused to serve in the army until the patricians gave way.

Which mid-December Roman festival featured feasting, role reversals and gift-giving?

Saturnalia honoured the god Saturn: gambling was allowed even to slaves, and each household chose a mock king whose silly orders had to be obeyed.

Which Roman orator exposed Catiline's conspiracy as consul and was later killed on Mark Antony's orders?

Cicero's head and hands were cut off and displayed on the speakers' platform in the Forum: the head that had spoken against Antony and the hands that had written against him.

What Roman building material made large durable structures like the Pantheon's dome possible?

Concrete let the Pantheon's builders change the recipe as the dome rose: heavy stone in the mix at the base, light volcanic pumice near the open oculus at the top.

Which Roman emperor divided the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern halves in 285 AD?

Diocletian made Maximian his Caesar in 285 and co-Augustus in 286 to rule the West while he kept the East, the first step toward the four-man Tetrarchy of 293.

What was the primary function of the Roman Forum?

The Forum was Rome's central public square, its religious, legal and commercial heart: when Julius Caesar's body was burned there, a temple to him as a god was built on the spot.

Under which emperor did the Roman Empire reach its greatest territorial extent?

Trajan pushed the frontier to the Persian Gulf, but the first act of his successor was to give the new eastern conquests back as too costly to hold.

Spartacus, leader of the Third Servile War, was a gladiator from which region?

Thrace was his homeland, north of Greece; in 73 BC he broke out of a training school at Capua with about seventy others, armed at first with kitchen cleavers and spits.

Which barbarian general deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476, ending the Western Roman Empire?

Odoacer spared the boy emperor, pensioned him off to Campania and ruled Italy as king, telling the eastern emperor that the West no longer needed an emperor of its own.

Which people, led by King Alaric, sacked Rome in AD 410?

The Visigoths' sack was the first time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, though the western emperor's court had by then moved to Ravenna.

Virgil's Aeneid follows a hero who fled the fall of which city to become the Romans' ancestor?

Troy's survivor Aeneas is Virgil's hero, but the poet died with the epic unfinished and asked for it to be destroyed; his friends refused, and it was published anyway.

The emperor Caligula's nickname, given by his father's soldiers, means what?

Caligula means 'little boot': as a toddler in his father Germanicus's army camps he wore a miniature soldier's uniform, boots and all, and the troops gave him the nickname as a joke.

Which river did Caesar cross with a single legion in 49 BC, starting a civil war?

The Rubicon marked the edge of Italy proper, where no general was allowed to lead an army; Caesar is said to have crossed it with the words 'the die is cast'.

Caesar was stabbed in 44 BC in a hall attached to a theatre built by which old rival?

Pompey: the Senate was meeting in a hall of his theatre complex while its own house was rebuilt, and Caesar is said to have fallen at the foot of his dead rival's statue.

Which 216 BC battle in Apulia was Rome's most crushing defeat of the Second Punic War?

At Cannae the outnumbered Carthaginian centre gave ground on purpose while the wings swung round, trapping and destroying a Roman army of over 80,000.

Which Roman general won the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, ending the Second Punic War?

Scipio Africanus took his surname from this African victory; at Zama he left lanes through his line so the charging war elephants ran harmlessly down them.

Which Roman commander lost three legions to Arminius in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9?

Varus fell on his sword in the rout; the emperor in Rome is said to have beaten his head against a door, crying 'Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!'

Boudica, who led a revolt against Roman rule in AD 60 or 61, was queen of which British tribe?

Boudica's Iceni lived in what is now Norfolk; after Roman officials are said to have flogged her and raped her daughters, the rising burned Camulodunum, Londinium and Verulamium before Suetonius Paulinus crushed it.

A famous spiral-relief column in Rome depicts wars of 101–106 AD against which people?

Dacians lived in what is now Romania; the spoils of their conquered kingdom helped pay for the emperor's building programme in Rome, including the forum where the column stands.

Who was the first of AD 69's four emperors, raised to power after a revolt in Hispania?

Galba refused to pay the soldiers the bounty promised in his name, saying he chose his troops and did not buy them; within months they murdered him.

Which emperor, who styled himself as Hercules, performed as a gladiator in the arena?

Commodus fought as a gladiator in the Colosseum, his opponents submitting by arrangement; at the Plebeian Games of November 192 he appeared every afternoon, and he was strangled by the wrestler Narcissus that 31 December.

Which emperor's edict of AD 212 granted citizenship to nearly all free men of the Roman Empire?

Caracalla's Constitutio Antoniniana of AD 212 extended Roman citizenship to nearly all free inhabitants of the empire; Cassius Dio claimed his motive was to widen the base for inheritance and manumission taxes.

Which triumvir, said to be Rome's richest man, died fighting Parthia at Carrhae in 53 BC?

Crassus invaded Parthia without the Senate's approval and was lured into the desert by horse archers; legend has it molten gold was poured down the dead man's throat.

Rome's Vestal Virgins were charged with guarding what in the Temple of Vesta?

Sacred fire: a Vestal who let it go out was whipped, and one who broke her vow of chastity could be buried alive.

What was garum, a condiment found on tables across the Roman world?

Garum was a fermented fish sauce, made by salting fish and their innards in the sun; rich in glutamates, it delivered umami much as soy sauce does, and Campania's colatura di alici descends from it.

Which three-word boast did Caesar send after his victory at Zela?

'Veni, vidi, vici', 'I came, I saw, I conquered': the campaign against Pharnaces of Pontus was over within days, and the three words were later carried on a placard in Caesar's triumph.

Which city at the mouth of Rome's river served as the city's ancient seaport?

Ostia was where the grain that fed Rome came ashore; the river has laid down so much silt since that the old port's ruins now lie about 3 km from the sea.

Which desert fortress was the last holdout of Jewish rebels, besieged by Rome in AD 73?

At Masada the Romans raised a huge ramp against the cliff to bring a battering ram up to the wall; Josephus, the only account, says the 960 defenders killed themselves rather than be taken.

The Arch of Titus in Rome celebrates the capture of which city in AD 70?

Jerusalem: the arch's relief shows soldiers carrying off the Temple's golden menorah, and the same plunder is said to have paid for the Colosseum nearby.

Who was the first of the so-called Five Good Emperors, taking power in AD 96?

Nerva, an elderly senator, reigned less than a year and a half, but by adopting a respected general as his heir he began a run of emperors chosen by adoption rather than birth.

Which poet was banished in AD 8 to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he died?

Ovid, author of the Metamorphoses, was banished by Augustus's decree without trial, for 'a poem and a mistake' as he put it; Tomis is now Constanța in Romania.

Which Roman was named dictator, won in about two weeks, then went back to his plough?

Cincinnatus is said to have left his plough to take command in 458 BC, and tradition has him called back as dictator in 439, laying the office down again as soon as the crisis passed.

Who was the legendary seventh and last king of Rome, driven out in a popular uprising?

Tarquinius Superbus, 'Tarquin the Proud', is said to have bought the Sibylline Books only after the seller burned six of the nine and still asked the full price.

Whose costly wins at Heraclea and Asculum gave us a phrase for a ruinous victory?

Pyrrhus of Epirus, hired by the Greek city of Tarentum, beat Rome at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC at such cost that he reportedly said one more such victory would finish him, hence 'Pyrrhic victory'.

Which general marched on Rome, ran proscriptions and revived the dormant post of dictator?

Sulla marched on Rome in 88 and 82 BC, posted proscription lists, and took a dictatorship unused since the Second Punic War; after rewriting the constitution he laid it down, served as consul in 80 BC and retired in 79.

Rome's second king, Numa Pompilius, is traditionally credited with adding which two months to a ten-month calendar?

January and February: the older year is said to have begun in March, which is why September to December still carry the numbers seven to ten in their names.

What was the Cloaca Maxima, which tradition credits to Rome's kings?

A sewer: it began as an open channel dug to drain the marshy valley of the Forum, and it had its own goddess, Cloacina, with a shrine in the Forum.

Which Stoic philosopher, tutor to a young emperor, was forced to kill himself in AD 65?

Seneca, tutor and adviser to the young Nero, had earlier spent eight years exiled on Corsica; Nero ordered his death after the Pisonian conspiracy of AD 65, which he may not have joined.

At which mid-February Roman festival did young men run through the streets striking bystanders with goat-hide thongs?

Lupercalia: at the festival of 44 BC Mark Antony, one of the runners, offered Julius Caesar a crown before the crowd, and Caesar made a show of refusing it.

Who lost the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on 28 October 312 and drowned in the river?

Maxentius drowned in the river as his routed army fled back across it; his body was later pulled from the water, and his head was paraded through Rome the next day.

At which battle in AD 378 did the Goths destroy a Roman army and kill the emperor Valens?

Adrianople: Valens had let the Goths cross the Danube two years earlier, hunger drove them to revolt, and he attacked without waiting for the western army; his body was never found.

Which people, led by King Gaiseric, looted Rome for two weeks in AD 455?

Gaiseric's Vandals sailed from Carthage and looted Rome for fourteen days in June 455; Pope Leo I persuaded him to spare the inhabitants and the buildings, and the word 'vandalism' remembers the event.

In a Roman arena such as the Colosseum, what was a vomitorium, despite the popular banquet myth?

A crowd exit passage, named from a verb meaning 'to spew forth', let spectators pour out quickly after a show. The idea of a room for vomiting between courses is a modern misconception.

Which small rodent did wealthy Romans fatten in special clay jars and serve as a banquet delicacy?

Dormouse was a luxury dish: the animals were kept in a dark, ventilated clay jar called a glirarium, which tricked them into fattening up as if for hibernation.

Roman launderers, known as fullers, cleaned and whitened woollen cloth by treading it in tubs of which liquid?

Urine was the fuller's detergent: its ammonium salts cleansed and whitened the wool, and the trade depended on it so heavily that Rome taxed it.

At a formal Roman dinner party held in a triclinium, in what position did the guests usually eat?

Reclining on couches was the rule: each diner lay on the left side, and the three couches set around a low table gave the triclinium its name.

Which staple of Italian cooking was unknown in ancient Rome, reaching Europe from the Americas only centuries later?

Tomatoes arrived only after Columbus, along with potatoes, maize and chilli peppers, so no Roman cook ever saw one.

The Roman latrine tool known as a tersorium was a wooden stick with what fixed to one end?

A sea sponge on a stick is traditionally thought to have been shared and rinsed in vinegar or salt water between users, though recent research suggests it was really a toilet brush.

Why do September to December mean 'seventh' to 'tenth' month, a relic of the early Roman calendar?

The year began in March in early Rome, so September really was month seven. July and August were not added later: they are the old fifth and sixth months, Quintilis and Sextilis, renamed.

In Roman legend, which birds raised the alarm when invaders tried a night climb of the Capitoline Hill around 390 BC?

Geese kept on the hill as sacred birds heard what the guards and dogs missed, waking Marcus Manlius in time to knock the first climber off the top.

What did the Romans call the 15th day of March, the date a dictator was famously stabbed to death in 44 BC?

The Ides fell on the 15th in March, May, July and October and on the 13th in other months, and Romans dated the days before it by counting down to it.

Roman water pipes were usually made of which metal, whose Roman name gives English the word 'plumbing'?

Lead was plumbum to the Romans, which is why a plumber works on pipes and why the metal's chemical symbol is still Pb.

In Rome's founding legend, which animal nursed the abandoned infant twins until a shepherd named Faustulus found them?

A she-wolf cared for the infants at her den, and the image of the wolf with the twins became the emblem of the city, stamped on its coins.

Which two-faced Roman god of doorways had a temple whose gates stood open in wartime and were shut in peace?

Janus looked forward and back at once as the god of beginnings and endings, which is why the month that opens the year, January, carries his name.

Which Roman goddess of grain, mother of Proserpina, was honoured every April with a week-long festival?

Ceres gives English the word 'cereal': Romans credited her with the discovery of wheat and ploughing, before which people were said to have lived on acorns.

Which Roman poet, the son of a freed slave, coined the phrase 'carpe diem' in his Odes?

Horace meant something gentler than 'seize': carpe is the verb for picking fruit, so the line is closer to 'pluck the day' while it is ripe.

Which Roman orator exposed Catiline's conspiracy in 63 BC and was later killed on the orders of Mark Antony?

Cicero paid for his speeches against Antony with his life: his severed head and hands were put on display on the speakers' platform in the Forum.

Which invader, nicknamed the Scourge of God, ravaged Italy in 452 but withdrew after meeting Pope Leo I?

Attila promised to withdraw after the talks, though disease and starvation in his camp may have weighed more than the pope's words, and he died the following year.

Which Roman, claiming descent from the Republic's founder, became the most famous of the assassins of 44 BC?

Brutus fled Italy and raised an army in the east, but two years later he was beaten at Philippi and took his own life.

Which apostle wrote the New Testament's Epistle to the Romans, a letter to Rome's Christians dated to about AD 57?

Paul wrote it, probably from Corinth, before he had ever visited Rome, planning to stop there on his way to preach in Spain.

What name is given to the underground burial tunnels dug outside Rome's walls and used by early Christians and Jews?

Catacombs lay outside the walls because Roman law banned burials inside the city, and the soft volcanic rock there was easy to tunnel and hardened afterwards.

What name is given to the roughly 200 years of stability and relative peace that began under Rome's first emperor?

Pax Romana means 'Roman Peace', though the two centuries still saw revolts and wars abroad; the era is usually reckoned to end in AD 180.

Which modern capital city grew from the Roman town of Lutetia, where remains of a forum, baths and an arena survive?

Paris takes its name from the Parisii, the local tribe: the town's full Roman name meant 'Lutetia of the Parisii'.

Which plant's leaves formed the crown worn by a victorious Roman general as he rode in his triumph?

Laurel crowned the general as he rode a four-horse chariot dressed in purple and gold, regalia that marked him out as near-divine or near-kingly for the day.

Which Roman army officer, who carried a vine-wood staff as his badge of rank, commanded a unit of about 80 men?

Centurion means commander of a 'century', which despite its name held about 80 men; the vine staff was also used to beat soldiers who tried to flee.

Which Roman army punishment, as ancient writers tell it, saw every tenth man of a disgraced unit killed by comrades?

Decimation, as the ancient accounts describe it, shamed the survivors too: they were put on barley rations and made to camp outside the fortified lines.

Which Roman infantry formation locked shields in front and overhead so soldiers could advance under missile fire?

Testudo means 'tortoise', after the shell the overlapping shields resembled; the formation was slow and was used above all when attacking walls during sieges.

Which word, meaning 'I forbid', names the power Rome's tribunes used to block the act of any magistrate?

Veto power let a single tribune halt the business of the state, a check created to shield ordinary citizens from the aristocrats who dominated high office.

Roman schoolchildren and clerks wrote with a pointed stylus on reusable wooden tablets coated in which material?

Wax could be scraped smooth with the flat end of the stylus and written on again, the idea behind the phrase 'tabula rasa', a clean slate.

Which Roman emperor left the capital in AD 26 for a clifftop villa on Capri and ruled from the island?

Tiberius left daily government to his prefect Sejanus, then had him executed for treason in AD 31 by means of a letter read out in Rome.

Which emperor, said to have been found hiding behind a curtain when hailed as ruler, began Rome's conquest of Britain?

Claudius had been shut out of office by his own family because of a limp and a stammer, and he became emperor only after his nephew was assassinated.

What is the name of the round opening to the sky at the centre of the Pantheon's great dome in Rome?

Oculus means 'eye', and it sits exactly as high above the floor as the dome is wide, 43 metres, so a perfect sphere would fit inside the building.

The costly purple dye used for the robes of Roman emperors was extracted from which sea creatures?

Sea snails each gave only a trace of dye, so a batch took tens of thousands of them, which is what made purple a badge of rank.

Which Roman heating system sent hot air from a furnace through a space beneath floors raised on small pillars?

Hypocaust heating needed constant attention to the fire and a great deal of fuel, so it was usually found only in large villas and bathhouses.

Which word, meaning 'islands', did Romans use for the apartment blocks that housed most of the capital's people?

Insulae were built of timber and brick and were notorious for fires and collapse; the cheapest rooms were at the top, up the most flights of stairs.

Rome's four great chariot-racing factions, backed by fiercely loyal fans, were each named after what?

A colour identified each team: the Reds, Whites, Blues and Greens. The Blues and Greens grew so powerful that emperors took control of them and appointed officials to run them.

Which bundle of wooden rods bound around an axe was carried before Roman magistrates as a symbol of their power?

Fasces were carried by attendants called lictors, and two thousand years later Mussolini's party took its name, and the word 'fascism', from them.

What was the traditional punishment for a Vestal Virgin found guilty of breaking her vow of chastity?

Buried alive in a vault stocked with a couch, a lamp and a little food, she was meant to seem to die willingly, because a Vestal's blood could not be spilled.

Which physician from Pergamon, doctor to several Roman emperors, dominated Western medicine for over 1,300 years?

Galen based his anatomy on apes and pigs because human dissection was forbidden, and his errors stood uncontested until Vesalius published in 1543.

Which Roman architect's treatise inspired Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing of a man inside a circle and square?

Vitruvius wrote the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, and it held that every building should have strength, utility and beauty.

Which people of ancient Tuscany, known for lavishly painted tombs, dominated central Italy before the rise of Rome?

Etruscans formed a federation of city-states and grew very rich through trade, which is how their leading families came to fill large tombs with imported luxuries.

Which three-tiered Roman aqueduct bridge near Nîmes in southern France still stands almost 49 metres high?

Pont du Gard belongs to a channel graded so finely that it falls on average just 1 metre in 3,000, and the bridge outlived the empire as a toll crossing.

The Punic Wars take their name from the Roman word for which seafaring people, ancestors of Rome's great rival?

Phoenicians had founded the rival city as a colony, so to the Romans its people were 'Poeni', and the adjective for anything of theirs was 'Punicus'.

Which bull-slaying god, worshipped in underground temples, was especially popular with soldiers of the Roman army?

Mithras was honoured in secret: initiates swore an oath of secrecy, rose through seven grades and called themselves 'those united by the handshake'.

Which queen of Palmyra broke with Rome and annexed Egypt before a Roman emperor defeated her in 272?

Zenobia was spared execution so that she could be paraded in the victor's triumph; accounts of her later fate differ, from a quiet villa near Rome to beheading.

What name is given to the small cut tiles of stone or glass that make up a Roman floor mosaic?

Tesserae were usually cut square; the earliest mosaics had instead been laid with naturally coloured pebbles.

Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill in Rome standing 35 metres high, is made almost entirely of what?

Broken oil jars, the remains of an estimated 53 million amphorae, were dumped there and apparently sprinkled with lime to mask the smell of the rancid dregs.

Which two brothers, both tribunes, were killed after pushing to redistribute public land to Rome's rural poor?

The Gracchi died 12 years apart, and the crises their reforms set off are widely seen as unsettling the Republic and hastening its collapse.

Which emperor, the last non-Christian ruler of Rome, tried to restore the old gods before dying on campaign in Persia?

Julian had been brought up in the Christian faith before publicly turning to the old religion, which is why the Church remembered him as 'the Apostate'.

Which marsh-ringed city on the Adriatic became the Western Roman Empire's capital in 402 and is famed for its mosaics?

Ravenna was chosen partly because its swamps made it look easy to defend, and it was there that the last western emperor was deposed in 476.

The Rostra, the speakers' platform in the Roman Forum, took its name from which war trophies fixed to its side?

Rams of captured warships, six of them, were mounted there after a naval victory over Antium in 338 BC, and the word 'rostrum' for a speaker's stand comes from them.

Which emperor, born at Leptis Magna in what is now Libya, died at York in 211 during a campaign in Britain?

Septimius Severus grew up a native Punic speaker in Africa and died while trying to conquer Caledonia, modern Scotland, with an army of 50,000 men.