Ancient Greece and Rome
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50 free Ancient Greece and Rome trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Greece and Rome are usually taught as separate chapters, but they are really one long story. The Greeks worked out drama, philosophy, geometry and the idea of the citizen. The Romans conquered them, then borrowed their gods, their columns and their schooling, and carried the lot across an empire. This quiz covers both halves and the places where they meet: the wars against Persia, the great thinkers and lawgivers, the rise of a small Italian republic, its generals and emperors, and the engineering that kept the Roman world running. Several questions ask which Greek original lies behind a Roman name, or the other way round. It is written for history students, teachers and quiz hosts, and for anyone who enjoys the classical world. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Greek mathematician was killed by a Roman soldier when Syracuse fell in 212 BC, despite orders to spare him?
Archimedes
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.
Q 02Which Greek king of Epirus beat the Romans at Heraclea and Asculum at such cost that ruinous wins still bear his name?
Pyrrhus
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.
Q 03Which queen, the last active ruler of Egypt's Greek Ptolemaic dynasty, sided with Mark Antony and lost at Actium?
Cleopatra
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.
Q 04Which general from Carthage marched war elephants over the Alps in 218 BC to invade Italy from the north?
Hannibal
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.
Q 05Which month, known to early Romans as Quintilis, did the Senate rename in 44 BC in honour of Caesar's birth?
July
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.
Q 06At which battle of 490 BC did the Athenians rout a Persian force that had landed on the coast north-east of Athens?
Marathon
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.
Q 07Which armless marble statue of Aphrodite, found on a Greek island in 1820 and kept in the Louvre, bears her Roman name?
Venus de Milo
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.
Q 08Which Athenian lawgiver's code, said to punish most offences with death, gave English a word for very harsh rules?
Draco
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.
Q 09Which volcano buried the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash and pumice in AD 79?
Vesuvius
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.
Q 10Which Greek word for an independent city-state such as Athens or Thebes also gave English its name for law officers?
Polis
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.
Q 11Which king of Macedon, tutored as a boy by Aristotle, overthrew the Persian Empire before dying in Babylon in 323 BC?
Alexander the Great
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.
Q 12Which Athenian philosopher, condemned in 399 BC for impiety and corrupting the young, died by drinking hemlock?
Socrates
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.
Q 13Spoils from the Roman sack of which city in AD 70 paid for the building of the Colosseum?
Jerusalem
Q 21At which Greek sanctuary did a priestess called the Pythia speak for Apollo beside a stone marking the world's centre?
Delphi
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.
Q 22Which emperor blamed the Christians for the Great Fire that burned through the city of Rome in AD 64?
Nero
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.
Q 23Which Roman emperor, an ardent admirer of Greek culture, had a 73-mile wall built across northern Britain from AD 122?
Hadrian
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.
Q 14By what name did the Romans worship the sky god and king of the gods whom they equated with the Greek Zeus?
Jupiter
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.
Q 15Which small river in northern Italy did Julius Caesar cross with his army in January 49 BC, setting off a civil war?
Rubicon
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.
Q 16At which narrow coastal pass did King Leonidas and about 300 Spartans die holding off a Persian invasion in 480 BC?
Thermopylae
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.
Q 17Which great-nephew and heir of Julius Caesar, born Gaius Octavius, became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC?
Augustus
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.
Q 18Which marble temple on the Acropolis of Athens, built from 447 BC, housed a gold-and-ivory statue of Athena by Phidias?
Parthenon
The Parthenon doubled as a treasury and for a time held the funds of the Delian League, the alliance that became the Athenian Empire.
Q 19In Rome's founding legend, which animal suckled the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus beside the River Tiber?
A she-wolf
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.
Q 20At which sanctuary of Zeus in Elis were athletic games, traditionally dated from 776 BC, held every four years?
Olympia
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.
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.
Q 24Which Thracian gladiator escaped from a training school near Capua in 73 BC and led a major slave uprising against Rome?
Spartacus
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.
Q 25Which Roman building material, made with lime and volcanic ash, made harbours in the open sea and vast domes possible?
Concrete
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.
Q 26Which emperor backed the Edict of Milan legalising Christianity and made the Greek city of Byzantium his new capital?
Constantine
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.
Q 27Which war of 431 to 404 BC, chronicled by Thucydides, ended with Sparta and its allies defeating Athens?
Peloponnesian War
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.
Q 28By what Athenian procedure could citizens vote, scratching a name on broken pottery, to banish a man for ten years?
Ostracism
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.
Q 29Which Greek writer from Halicarnassus did Cicero call the Father of History for his account of the Persian Wars?
Herodotus
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.
Q 30Which Persian king bridged the Hellespont with boats to invade Greece in 480 BC, then saw his fleet beaten at Salamis?
Xerxes
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.