Roman Emperors
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50 free Roman Emperors trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For about five hundred years one man at a time held more power than anyone else in the western world, and the job was as dangerous as it was grand. Some emperors were gifted administrators and generals. Others are remembered for cruelty, vanity or sheer oddness, and a surprising number were murdered by the very people paid to protect them. This quiz covers the whole story: the first emperor and his family, the notorious rulers of the first century, the builders and soldiers of the empire at its height, the chaos of the third century, the turn to Christianity, and the long afterlife of the empire in the East. Expect questions on famous monuments, titles, wives and mothers, rivals and enemies, as well as on the emperors themselves. It is pitched for anyone who enjoys ancient history, from students revising the Roman Empire to fans of films, novels and documentaries about Rome. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess teaches you something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which emperor, the victor in the civil wars of AD 69, placed a tax on urine collected from Rome's public toilets?
Vespasian
Vespasian answered his son's complaint about the tax by holding up a coin and asking whether it smelled. Street urinals in France and Italy are still named after him.
Q 02Which high office did the emperor Caligula reportedly plan to give his favourite racehorse, Incitatus?
Consul
Consul had been the top job in the Roman Republic, and ancient writers agree the plan was never carried out. Incitatus reportedly did get a marble stable and an ivory manger.
Q 03Which emperor, who really did fight in the arena, is the villain of the 2000 film Gladiator?
Commodus
Commodus died far from the arena: conspirators sent his wrestling partner, Narcissus, to strangle him in his bath on the last day of 192.
Q 04Which emperor wrote the private Stoic notebooks now published as Meditations while on military campaign?
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius wrote them in Greek, not Latin, as private notes for his own self-improvement. One book is headed as written among the Quadi, in what is now Slovakia.
Q 05Which emperor ordered a 73-mile wall built from coast to coast across northern Britain, beginning in AD 122?
Hadrian
Hadrian visited Britain in 122, and three legions, some 15,000 men, spent about six years building most of the wall.
Q 06Nero is popularly said to have fiddled while Rome burned, but which instrument did the emperor really play?
The lyre
The lyre was his passion: Nero sang to it on stage and entered public contests as a performer. The historian Tacitus placed him at Antium, away from Rome, when the fire started.
Q 07Which emperor, the adopted son and heir of Rome's first emperor, was reigning when Jesus was crucified?
Tiberius
Tiberius had by then left Rome for a villa on the island of Capri, where he spent much of his final years while a prefect ran the capital for him.
Q 08Which Roman landmark did the emperor Titus open in AD 80 with a hundred days of games?
The Colosseum
The Colosseum opened with games in which more than 9,000 wild animals were reportedly killed. Modern estimates put its capacity at around 50,000 people.
Q 09Which colour, made from a costly sea-snail dye, was eventually reserved by law for Roman emperors alone?
Purple
Purple dye was so scarce that 12,000 snails yielded only enough to colour the trim of one garment. To say a man had donned it came to mean he had taken the throne.
Q 10Which Roman family name, later a title for every emperor, gave German the word Kaiser and Russian the word tsar?
Caesar
Caesar was the surname of the dictator Julius Caesar, whose adopted heir became the first emperor. It turned from a surname into a title in AD 68, when that founding family died out.
Q 11Which ruler, born Gaius Octavius, defeated Antony and Cleopatra and became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC?
Augustus
Augustus was an honorific the Senate voted him in 27 BC, meaning roughly 'the revered'. In 8 BC the month of Sextilis was renamed August after him.
Q 12Which emperor won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 and became the first to convert to Christianity?
Constantine
Constantine put off his own baptism until he lay on his deathbed in 337, a quarter of a century after the battle.
Q 13Which emperor gave up power in 305 and retired to a palace on the Adriatic, where he grew cabbages?
Diocletian
Diocletian was the first emperor to abdicate voluntarily. Urged to take back power, he replied that nobody who saw the cabbages he had planted with his own hands would ask.
Q 21The nickname Caligula, given to the future emperor Gaius by his father's soldiers, means what in Latin?
Little boot
Little boot came from the miniature soldier's outfit, army boots included, that he wore as a small boy in his father's camp. His real name was Gaius.
Q 22Which volcano erupted in AD 79, a few months after Titus became emperor, burying two towns in southern Italy?
Mount Vesuvius
Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Titus won praise for his generosity to the survivors. A fire in Rome the next year gave him a second disaster to manage.
Q 23Which Stoic philosopher and playwright served as tutor and adviser to the young emperor Nero?
Seneca
Q 14Which emperor, sidelined by his family for a limp and stammer, conquered Britain and narrates two Robert Graves novels?
Claudius
Claudius is said to have been hiding behind a curtain after his nephew's murder when a soldier found him and hailed him as emperor.
Q 15Which Spanish-born emperor ruled when the Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent, around AD 117?
Trajan
Trajan was born at Italica, near modern Seville, and the Senate formally honoured him as 'optimus', the best. His ashes were laid beneath his own victory column in Rome.
Q 16Which Greek city on the Bosporus was refounded in AD 330 as a new imperial capital modelled on Rome?
Byzantium
Byzantium kept its old name in learned use for a thousand years, and in the sixteenth century historians borrowed it as a label for the whole eastern empire.
Q 17Which elite unit, stationed in Rome to protect the emperor, murdered Pertinax in 193 and auctioned off the throne?
Praetorian Guard
The Praetorian Guard sold the throne to a rich senator, who was killed after only 66 days. The emperor who followed dismissed the entire unit.
Q 18Which city did the future emperor Titus capture in AD 70, a victory still shown on his arch in Rome?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem's Temple treasures, among them the great menorah, are carved on the arch being paraded through Rome. That carving became the model for the emblem of Israel.
Q 19Which Germanic general deposed the last Roman emperor in the West in 476 and became the first King of Italy?
Odoacer
Odoacer spared the boy emperor and let him retire to a fortress in Campania. He ruled Italy until 493, when Theodoric murdered him at a banquet meant to seal their peace.
Q 20Which woman, mother of the emperor Nero, swam ashore from a sabotaged boat in AD 59 but was killed soon after?
Agrippina
Agrippina was also a sister of Caligula. In Tacitus's telling, the boat had a lead-weighted ceiling built to collapse on her, but a couch broke its fall, and her son had to send men to finish the job.
Seneca was recalled from exile on Corsica to take the job. In AD 65 his former pupil forced him to take his own life over a plot he may have had no part in.
Q 24Which sixth-century eastern Roman emperor built Hagia Sophia and had centuries of Roman law gathered into one code?
Justinian
Justinian caused a scandal by marrying Theodora, a former actress, after his uncle changed the law to allow it. She became one of the most influential figures of his reign.
Q 25Which queen of Palmyra seized Egypt and much of the Roman East before the emperor Aurelian captured her in 272?
Zenobia
Zenobia was spared execution, and most accounts say she was paraded in Aurelian's triumph and lived out her days near Rome. She is said to have claimed a family link to Cleopatra to strengthen her hold on Egypt.
Q 26Which king's army sacked Rome in 410, its first fall to a foreign enemy in almost 800 years?
Alaric
Alaric features in a famous, likely apocryphal tale: told that Rome had perished, the emperor Honorius panicked, thinking his pet chicken of that name had died.
Q 27Which emperor, raised a Christian, tried to revive the old pagan gods in the 360s and is nicknamed the Apostate?
Julian
Julian was the last non-Christian ruler of the empire. His revival ended abruptly in 363, when he was mortally wounded during a retreat from Persia.
Q 28The Antonine Wall, begun in AD 142 on the orders of the emperor Antoninus Pius, crosses which modern country?
Scotland
Scotland's wall was built of turf on a stone base and was abandoned only eight years after it was finished, when its garrisons pulled back south.
Q 29Which Latin name is given to the roughly 200 years of stability that began under the first Roman emperor?
Pax Romana
Pax Romana means 'Roman peace' and is usually dated from 27 BC to AD 180. The empire's population is estimated to have peaked in those years at about 70 million.
Q 30According to Suetonius, what did Caligula order his troops to collect as spoils after abandoning an invasion of Britain?
Seashells
Seashells were, he declared, plunder from the Ocean that was owed to Rome. Suetonius adds that he then built a tall lighthouse to mark the victory.