Marcus Aurelius Trivia
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60 free Marcus Aurelius trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Marcus Aurelius trivia quiz covers the last of the Five Good Emperors as ruler, philosopher and family man. The easy questions handle the dates of his reign, the school of philosophy he followed, the book he wrote to himself and the son who succeeded him. From there it moves into the details of his life: the hill he was born on, the priesthood he joined as a boy, the tutors who shaped him, the wife the army called Mother of the Camp, and the co-emperor with whom he shared power for the first time in Roman history. The harder end is for Roman history readers and Stoicism enthusiasts: the base where he wrote the second book of the Meditations, the city where it was first printed, the Parthian king who started his eastern war, the general who was proclaimed emperor on a false rumour, the magician credited with the rain miracle, and why his bronze statue was the one Roman equestrian to survive the Middle Ages. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Marcus, the Meditations, his family, the plague and the monuments, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our Roman Empire, Stoicism and Roman emperors quizzes are natural next stops.
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Q 01Marcus Aurelius was the last of which line of Roman rulers?
The Five Good Emperors
The Five Good Emperors. The four before him had no surviving sons, so each adopted his successor; Marcus ended the run by handing the empire to his own son, Commodus.
Q 02Marcus Aurelius is remembered as a practitioner of which school of philosophy?
Stoicism
Stoicism. As a boy he took up the philosopher's rough cloak and slept on the ground, until his mother talked him into using a bed.
Q 03What does Ta eis heauton, the traditional title of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, literally mean?
Things to himself
Things to himself. Marcus probably gave his notes no title at all: this one is first recorded around 900, and the name Meditations dates from a 17th-century edition.
Q 04Which famous text shares the Meditations' Koine Greek?
The New Testament
The New Testament. Koine was the shared Greek of the eastern empire, and Rome's elite prized the language for learning: the young Marcus had three Greek masters of oratory to one Latin one.
Q 05The first book of the Meditations is a list of what?
Thanks
Thanks. He credits those who shaped him one by one, down to the great-grandfather who saw that he had good teachers at home and taught him such things are worth the money.
Q 06In which city did Marcus Aurelius fund salaried teaching chairs in philosophy during his eastern tour of 176?
Athens
Athens. Cassius Dio says he set up the posts for the benefit of the whole world, and he used the same visit to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Q 07The second book of the Meditations was written at which Roman legionary base on the Danube?
Carnuntum
Carnuntum. Marcus ran his northern war from the base for about three years, and in 193 the legion stationed there proclaimed its governor, Septimius Severus, emperor.
Q 08Marcus Aurelius was born on which of Rome's hills?
Caelian
Caelian. He grew up in his mother's villa there, and when adoption made him an imperial heir in his teens he is said to have moved out with regret, listing the evils of power.
Q 09Marcus Aurelius's paternal family, the Annii Veri, came to Rome from a small town in which modern country?
Spain
Spain. His great-grandfather left a town near Córdoba to become a Roman senator, the same road the emperor Trajan's family had taken from the same province.
Q 10Marcus Aurelius's mother inherited a fortune built partly on which business?
Brickworks
Brickworks. Rome was in a building boom and her family's kilns outside the city fed it, part of an inheritance counted among the largest fortunes of the day.
Q 11In a much-quoted passage of the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius argues himself out of staying where?
In his warm bed
In his warm bed. Book 5 opens with him telling himself he was not made to huddle under the blankets, since even the ants, spiders and bees get up and do their work.
Q 12As a boy Marcus Aurelius joined the Salii, priests who carried sacred shields for which god?
Mars
Mars. When the priests tossed their crowns at the god's banquet couch, the boy's is said to have landed on the god's brow, later read as an omen that he would rule.
Q 13In the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius deflates his own imperial purple robe as mere sheep's wool dyed with what?
Shellfish blood
Q 21The Antonine Plague, which struck the empire from about 165, is thought by most scholars to have been what?
Smallpox
Smallpox. The diagnosis rests on one doctor's notes of fever and a blistering rash, so it is not certain; what the accounts agree on is that troops brought it home from the eastern war.
Q 22The Antonine Plague is also named after which physician who described it?
Galen
Galen. He slipped out of Rome as the epidemic closed in, only to be summoned to the emperors' army camp in northern Italy two years later, and he ended up as court physician.
Q 23In one Roman tale, the Antonine Plague escaped when a soldier cut open what in Apollo's temple?
A golden casket
Shellfish blood. It is his exercise in seeing things stripped of glamour: in the same passage a prized vintage is only grape juice and a roast is the dead body of a pig.
Q 14Which emperor adopted Antoninus Pius in 138 on condition that Antoninus in turn adopt Marcus Aurelius?
Hadrian
Hadrian. His first choice of heir had just died, so the ailing emperor settled the succession two steps ahead, and one of the two boys he named was the one he had nicknamed Verissimus, 'most true'.
Q 15Marcus's tutors included Herodes Atticus and which orator, whose letters to Marcus survive?
Cornelius Fronto
Cornelius Fronto. The letters were lost for centuries until 1815, when a scholar in Milan found them under the text of a parchment that had been scraped and reused.
Q 16Whom did Marcus Aurelius marry in 145?
Faustina, Antoninus's daughter
Faustina, Antoninus's daughter. She had first been promised to another boy and Marcus to that boy's sister; once Antoninus was emperor he cancelled both betrothals and matched the cousins.
Q 17The widowed Marcus Aurelius reportedly took a concubine to spare his children what?
A stepmother
A stepmother. His ancient biography says the woman he had once been engaged to angled to marry him, and he chose the daughter of one of his late wife's stewards as a companion instead.
Q 18What honorary title did the army give Faustina, who accompanied Marcus on his northern campaigns?
Mother of the Camp
Mater Castrorum in Latin; she was deified after dying at the military camp of Halala in 175.
Q 19With whom did Marcus Aurelius share the throne on his accession in 161?
Lucius Verus
Lucius Verus. The Senate meant to confirm Marcus alone, but he refused to take office unless his adoptive brother got equal powers, giving Rome two emperors at once for the first time.
Q 20Which eastern power attacked Rome's client kingdom of Armenia in 161, starting Marcus Aurelius's first war?
The Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire. Its king wiped out a Roman legion in Armenia and pushed on into Syria, so Marcus sent his co-emperor east to take command while he stayed in Rome.
A golden casket. The story, set in Babylonia, has a deadly vapour rise out of it and follow the army home, province by province, all the way to Rome.
Q 24Envoys claiming to represent 'Andun', Chinese for Marcus Aurelius's name Antoninus, reached which dynasty's court in 166?
Han
Han. Chinese annals say the visitors brought ivory, rhinoceros horn and turtle shell, and add that tribute so ordinary aroused suspicion.
Q 25The Marcomanni, who crossed the Danube in 166 and began Marcus Aurelius's northern wars, came from where?
Bohemia
Bohemia. Within a few years they and their allies were over the Alps, destroying the town of Opitergium and besieging Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic.
Q 26The Historia Augusta says Marcus Aurelius planned two new provinces beyond the Danube: Marcomannia and which other?
Sarmatia
Sarmatia. His biographer says a general's revolt in the East pulled him away just as he was ready to annex the land, and that he died a year short of finishing the job.
Q 27Marcus Aurelius paid for his northern wars by publicly auctioning what?
Palace treasures
Palace treasures. Gold goblets and his wife's gold-embroidered silks went under the hammer in Trajan's Forum, and once the war was won he offered buyers their money back.
Q 28Which general was proclaimed emperor in 175 after a false report of Marcus Aurelius's death?
Avidius Cassius
Avidius Cassius. His 'dream of empire' lasted three months and six days before one of his own centurions killed him, and Marcus refused to look at the severed head and had it buried.
Q 29What reportedly saved Marcus Aurelius's army from dying of thirst?
A rainstorm
A rainstorm. Pagan writers credited the emperor's prayers or an Egyptian magician in his retinue, Christians claimed it for their own soldiers' prayers, and the scene is carved on his column.
Q 30One ancient tradition says Marcus Aurelius died in 180 at a legionary camp on the site of which modern capital?
Vienna
Vienna. The camp was Vindobona, though another ancient writer names Sirmium in modern Serbia; Cassius Dio claimed the emperor's doctors hastened his end to please Commodus.