Cleopatra Trivia
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70 free Cleopatra trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Cleopatra trivia quiz covers the last active pharaoh of Egypt: a Macedonian Greek queen who spoke a stack of languages, ruled as sole lawgiver, financed Roman civil wars and ended the Hellenistic age with her death in 30 BC. The easy questions cover the famous outline: her dynasty, her language, Caesar and Antony, the son called Caesarion, the pearl in the vinegar and the asp. The harder half is for readers of Plutarch and Stacy Schiff: the debt she inherited from her father, the sacred bull she installed in her first act as queen, the pleasure barge on the Kydnos, the calendar-maker at her court, the will Octavian stole from the Vestal Virgins, her flagship at Actium, the words Livy says she spoke to Octavian, the king who burned her Red Sea fleet, and what became of her daughter, her statues and her hairstyle. Every answer was checked against Cleopatra's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our Ancient Egypt, Egyptian mythology and Roman mythology quizzes next.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which famous object in the British Museum carries a decree of 196 BC honouring Cleopatra's ancestor Ptolemy V?
The Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone. Priests, apparently at Memphis, had the same decree carved in three scripts, and matching the one scholars could read against the other two let Champollion announce in 1822 that he could read hieroglyphs.
Q 02The founder of Cleopatra's dynasty, Ptolemy I Soter, had been a general and companion of which conqueror?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great. When the king died in 323 BC, Ptolemy took Egypt as his share of the empire and even hijacked the royal corpse on its way home to Macedon, burying it in his own new kingdom.
Q 03What was Cleopatra's first language?
Koine Greek
Koine Greek. Her dynasty were Macedonians who had run Egypt for almost three centuries, and even Roman visitors, with Latin of their own, would have addressed her in Greek.
Q 04Which French thinker wrote that the face of the world would have changed had Cleopatra's nose been shorter?
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal. In his Pensées he used her nose to show how a trifle can steer history: a passing attraction too slight to explain, he wrote, shakes princes, armies and the entire world.
Q 05What does the Greek name Cleopatra mean?
Glory of her father
Her adopted title Thea Philopatora means goddess who loves her father.
Q 06Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII, was nicknamed Auletes for his love of playing which instrument?
The flute
The flute. Auletes means 'flute-player', and the king kept his throne only by paying Roman politicians enormous bribes for their backing, debts that his daughter inherited along with the crown.
Q 07Which Irish playwright turned Cleopatra into a frightened sixteen-year-old schooled by Julius Caesar in an 1898 play?
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw. Tired of the worship of Shakespeare's doomed lovers, he wrote Caesar and Cleopatra with no romance in it at all, making her five years younger than the real queen was when the two met.
Q 08Which video game series set its 2017 instalment in the Egypt of Cleopatra's war with her brother?
Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed. Origins casts the ousted young queen as a schemer who uses the hero to pick off her rivals, and its makers later turned the game's map into an educational tour of ancient Egypt guided by historians.
Q 09In her first recorded act as queen, Cleopatra sailed to Hermonthis to install what?
A sacred bull
A sacred bull. The Buchis bull, white-bodied and black-faced, was revered as the living spirit of the war god Montu, and when each one died it was mummified and buried in a cemetery of its own.
Q 10Pompey fled to Egypt in 48 BC after losing which battle to Caesar?
Pharsalus
Pharsalus. Pompey's army far outnumbered Caesar's there yet was routed, and he made for Egypt because he had been the patron of Cleopatra's father and counted on a welcome.
Q 11What did Ptolemy XIII send to Caesar after having Pompey murdered near Pelousion?
His severed, embalmed head
His severed, embalmed head. Ptolemy expected thanks for the gift; instead Caesar turned away from it in horror and wept over the signet ring of his old rival.
Q 12According to Plutarch, Cleopatra was smuggled into the palace to meet Caesar hidden inside what?
A bed sack
A bed sack. Her friend Apollodorus tied it up with a cord and carried it indoors to Caesar, who is said to have been captivated by the nerve of the trick.
Q 13How did Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy XIII die in 47 BC?
He drowned when his boat capsized
Q 21How did Cleopatra's brother and co-ruler Ptolemy XIV allegedly die in 44 BC?
Poisoned on her orders
Poisoned on her orders: that is the charge the historian Josephus made over a century later, without proof. Whatever killed the teenage king, his death let her crown her own small son as co-ruler.
Q 22In 41 BC Cleopatra sailed up a river in a gilded barge to meet Antony at Tarsos, in which modern country?
Turkey
Turkey. Antony had summoned her there to answer for her conduct in the civil war; she ignored several letters, made her entrance, and by winter he had followed her home to Alexandria.
Q 23When she met Antony at Tarsos, Cleopatra was dressed as which goddess?
Aphrodite
He drowned when his boat capsized. Routed by Caesar's relief army on the Nile, the young king fled aboard a vessel that went over under the crowd of soldiers scrambling onto it.
Q 14Which sister of Cleopatra was paraded in Caesar's triumph and later exiled to Ephesus?
Arsinoe IV
Arsinoe IV. The sight of a princess in chains moved the Roman crowd to pity, and Caesar let her live; years later Antony had her killed at Cleopatra's urging.
Q 15Which of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world stood in Cleopatra's capital city?
The Pharos lighthouse
The Pharos lighthouse. Her ancestors built the tower, about 100 metres high, some two centuries before she was born, and its island's name became the word for a lighthouse in French, Italian and Spanish.
Q 16By what nickname is Ptolemy XV, Cleopatra's eldest son and last co-ruler, best known?
Caesarion
Caesarion. The nickname means 'little Caesar': Cleopatra proclaimed him the dictator's son, yet Caesar's will passed over the boy and adopted a great-nephew as heir instead.
Q 17After his stay in Cleopatra's Egypt, Caesar took a scholar's advice and reformed what?
The Roman calendar
The Roman calendar. It had drifted about three months out of step with the seasons, so Caesar stretched 46 BC to 445 days and then began a 365-day year with a leap day every fourth.
Q 18Caesar set a golden image of Cleopatra in a Roman temple of which goddess, his family's claimed ancestor?
Venus
Venus. Caesar's clan, the Julii, claimed descent from the goddess, and the gilded Cleopatra outlasted them: the historian Appian reported it still standing beside her some two centuries later.
Q 19The orator Cicero, who wrote 'I can't stand the Queen' after meeting Cleopatra, complained that she was what?
Arrogant
Arrogant. Writing to his friend Atticus, Cicero said he could not recall her insolence 'without a pang', and grumbled about promises of 'learned' gifts her agent had made him.
Q 20Where was Cleopatra when Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC?
In Rome
In Rome. She was living as Caesar's guest in his villa across the Tiber when he was killed, and within weeks she had fled home to Alexandria with their young son.
Aphrodite. Plutarch has her reclining under a gold-spangled canopy, fanned by boys costumed as Cupids, while the crowd drained away to watch and left Antony sitting alone in the marketplace.
Q 24What were the twins born to Cleopatra and Antony in 40 BC named?
Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene
Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene. The surnames, Sun and Moon, came later: Antony first set eyes on the twins when they were three, at a reunion in Syria where he acknowledged them as his.
Q 25Which Roman noblewoman did Antony marry in 40 BC to seal a pact with her brother?
Octavia the Younger
Octavia the Younger. Only months a widow, she needed a special decree of the Senate to remarry so soon; the wedding sealed a truce between Antony and her brother Octavian.
Q 26Which future king arrived at Cleopatra's court as a refugee in December 40 BC before going on to Rome?
Herod
Herod. Cleopatra tried to keep him with the offer of a command, but he sailed on through winter storms, and in Rome Antony had the Senate name him king of Judea.
Q 27Antony gave Cleopatra the prized balsam groves around which city near the River Jordan?
Jericho
Jericho. Its groves yielded balsam, a perfume and medicine worth a fortune, so Judea's king found himself paying Cleopatra rent to farm land inside his own kingdom.
Q 28Cleopatra named her youngest son Ptolemy Philadelphus, after an ancestor whose surname means what?
Sibling-loving
Sibling-loving. Ptolemy II earned the name by marrying his own sister, and it shares its roots with Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love; Cleopatra revived it for her last child in 36 BC.
Q 29Antony's disastrous 36 BC campaign, which left him waiting on Cleopatra for supplies, was an invasion of where?
Parthia
Parthia. Antony meant to avenge the Roman defeat at Carrhae, but he lost his siege engines, retreated through Armenia in the snow and sat on the Syrian coast until Cleopatra's ships came in.
Q 30In his 34 BC victory parade in Alexandria, Antony rode into the city dressed as which god?
Dionysus
Dionysus. Wreathed in ivy and riding the wine god's chariot, Antony paraded the captive king of Armenia in golden chains and presented him to Cleopatra on her throne.