60 free Spartacus trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Spartacus trivia quiz covers the Thracian gladiator who broke out of a school near Capua in 73 BC with about seventy comrades and kitchen knives, humiliated a string of Roman armies, and led an army of some 70,000 escaped slaves before Crassus crushed it in 71 BC. It also covers what came after: Kubrick and Kirk Douglas's 1960 epic, the I'm Spartacus scene, the ballet, the football clubs and the revolutionaries who took his name. The easy questions cover the outline: where he came from, what he was, who beat him, what happened to the survivors and who played him on screen. The harder half is for readers of Plutarch and Appian: the type of gladiator he was, the ropes of vine on Vesuvius, the two Gauls elected alongside him, the pirates who took the money and sailed away, decimation, the general who stole the credit, the blacklisted screenwriter, the director who was fired after three weeks, the football crowd that recorded the shouting, and the actor who impersonated Olivier for the restored bath scene. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for Spartacus, the Third Servile War and the 1960 film before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our Julius Caesar, Roman Empire and Stanley Kubrick quizzes next.
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Q 01Spartacus was a gladiator from which region, in what is now Bulgaria?
Thrace
He may have belonged to the Maedi tribe near the Strymon river.
Q 02According to Appian, what had Spartacus been before he was enslaved and sold as a gladiator?
A soldier with the Romans
Florus adds that he was a mercenary who deserted and was enslaved before his strength got him picked as a gladiator.
Q 03According to Plutarch, Spartacus's wife, enslaved with him, was what?
A prophetess
She belonged to the Maedi tribe.
Q 04The gladiatorial school Spartacus escaped from was near which city?
Capua
The 6,000 crosses after the war lined the road from Rome to that same city.
Q 05Who owned the gladiatorial school from which Spartacus escaped?
Lentulus Batiatus
Peter Ustinov won an Oscar playing him in the 1960 film.
Q 06What type of heavyweight gladiator was Spartacus?
A murmillo
They carried a large oblong shield and an 18-inch straight-bladed sword.
Q 07Roughly how many gladiators broke out of the school with Spartacus in 73 BC?
About 70
Some 200 had been in on the plot, but it was betrayed before most could act.
Q 08What did the escaping gladiators arm themselves with as they fought their way out?
Kitchen utensils
They then seized wagons of real gladiatorial weapons and armour outside.
Q 09On which mountain did the escaped gladiators first make their defensible camp?
Vesuvius
It would not erupt and bury Pompeii for another 150 years.
Q 10Which two Gallic slaves were chosen as leaders alongside Spartacus?
Crixus and Oenomaus
Roman writers may have projected their own hierarchy onto what was a looser, shared leadership.
Q 11How did Spartacus's men escape the Roman militia besieging them on the volcano?
They climbed down the steep side on ropes made from vines
They then attacked the unfortified Roman camp from behind and killed most of the militia.
Q 12Which praetor led the first Roman force, a militia, that besieged Spartacus on the volcano?
Gaius Claudius Glaber
Rome treated the outbreak as a policing matter, its legions being busy in Spain and against Mithridates.
Q 13To roughly what size did Spartacus's army swell at its height?
70,000
Q 21How many captured survivors of the revolt were crucified along the Appian Way?
6,000
The crosses lined more than 100 miles of road from Rome to Capua.
Q 22According to Plutarch, what did Spartacus want to do after defeating the consular legions in 72 BC?
Escape north over the Alps and send his men home
Appian and Florus instead say he meant to march on Rome; the sources contradict each other.
Q 23Both victorious generals of 71 BC used their armies camped outside Rome to win which office for 70 BC?
The consulship
Rural slaves, herdsmen and shepherds flocked to him, along with some veterans of the Social War.
Q 14Which rebel leader was killed with about 30,000 followers near Mount Garganus in 72 BC?
Crixus
According to Appian, Spartacus avenged him by making 300 Roman prisoners fight each other to the death as gladiators.
Q 15Which Roman, said to be the wealthiest in Rome and the only volunteer, was given command against Spartacus?
Marcus Licinius Crassus
He was put in charge of eight legions, upwards of 40,000 trained soldiers.
Q 16Which ancient punishment did Crassus revive to discipline his legions?
Decimation
One man in ten was killed so the rest would fear their commander more than the enemy.
Q 17Per Plutarch, Spartacus paid which group to ferry 2,000 men to Sicily, only to be abandoned?
Cilician pirates
He had hoped to ignite a fresh slave revolt on the island.
Q 18Crassus trapped the rebels with fortifications across the isthmus at which town near Messina?
Rhegium
Spartacus eventually broke through the lines and headed north again.
Q 19Whose legions, returning from Hispania, made Crassus rush to finish the war for fear of losing credit?
Pompey's
That general later told the Senate that Crassus had won the battle but he had ended the war.
Q 20What happened to Spartacus's body after the final battle in 71 BC?
It was never found
Plutarch, Appian and Florus all say he died in the battle; Appian adds that his corpse was never identified.
One of them was technically too young and had never been praetor or quaestor.
Q 24Which Enlightenment philosopher called the Third Servile War 'the only just war in history'?
Voltaire
No ancient account, however, claims that Spartacus aimed to abolish slavery.
Q 25Which Haitian revolutionary leader has been called the 'Black Spartacus'?
Toussaint Louverture
He led the slave revolt that ended in Haiti's independence.
Q 26Which founder of the Bavarian Illuminati called himself Spartacus in his letters?
Adam Weishaupt
Karl Marx, for his part, called Spartacus the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history.
Q 27Which philosopher called Spartacus a 'real representative of the ancient proletariat'?
Karl Marx
The German Spartacus League of 1915–18 became a forerunner of the Communist Party of Germany.
Q 28What was the Spartakiad?
A Soviet-bloc version of the Olympic Games
The name was also used for mass gymnastics displays held every five years in Czechoslovakia.
Q 29Which NHL team's mascot, Spartacat, is named after Spartacus?
The Ottawa Senators
Countless Spartak sports clubs across the former communist bloc also bear his name.
Q 30Which Soviet Armenian composer wrote the 1956 ballet Spartacus?
Aram Khachaturian
Camille Saint-Saëns had written a Spartacus Overture almost a century earlier, in 1863.