Western Civilization
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50 free Western Civilization trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Western Civilization is the survey course almost every college student meets: the long story of how ideas about law, faith, government and science grew up around the Mediterranean and spread across Europe and beyond. It is a story of city-states and empires, monks and merchants, reformers and rebels. This quiz follows the same road as a Western Civ I and II syllabus. It starts with the law-givers and scribes of the ancient Near East, moves through classical Greece and the rise and fall of Roman power, then on to the medieval church, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the birth of modern science. The later questions cover absolute monarchs, Enlightenment thinkers, the fall of old regimes, industry, nationalism and the wars and settlements of the twentieth century. It suits students revising for a midterm or final, teachers who want a ready multiple-choice review, and history fans who like to test how much of the big picture has stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches you something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Babylonian king's law code, carved on a basalt stele, now stands in the Louvre in Paris?
Hammurabi
Hammurabi had his laws inscribed on a stone more than two metres tall. Raiders carried it off to Susa, in present-day Iran, as plunder 600 years later, and it was rediscovered there in 1901.
Q 02Which Athenian philosopher was sentenced to die by drinking hemlock in 399 BC for corrupting the youth?
Socrates
Socrates authored no texts of his own, so nearly everything known about him comes from accounts his students wrote after his death. The jurors at his trial for impiety voted for the death penalty.
Q 03Which general crossed the Alps with war elephants to invade Italy during the Second Punic War?
Hannibal
Hannibal left Iberia with 37 elephants, and most of them reached Italy to fight at the Trebia. He went on to beat the Romans at Lake Trasimene and at Cannae.
Q 04Which Frankish king did Pope Leo III crown emperor in Rome on Christmas Day in the year 800?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne is often called the father of Europe for uniting most of its western and central lands. He was the first emperor to rule from the West in about three centuries.
Q 05Which document did rebel barons force King John of England to seal at Runnymede in 1215?
Magna Carta
Magna Carta was annulled by Pope Innocent III soon afterwards, and the First Barons' War followed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, had drafted it to make peace.
Q 06Which German goldsmith from Mainz introduced a movable-type printing press to Europe in the 1450s?
Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg borrowed 800 guilders from a wealthy moneylender to get started. Movable type was already in use in East Asia, but his press made printing far faster.
Q 07Which professor at the University of Wittenberg wrote the Ninety-five Theses against the sale of indulgences in 1517?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther grew alarmed when parishioners came back from buying Johann Tetzel's indulgences saying they no longer needed to repent. His protest set off the Protestant Reformation.
Q 08Which Italian astronomer did the Roman Inquisition try in 1633 and confine to house arrest for life?
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei was found vehemently suspect of heresy and forced to recant. While confined to his villa he wrote Two New Sciences, one of his finest works.
Q 09Which Paris fortress-prison, holding only seven inmates, did a crowd storm on 14 July 1789?
The Bastille
The Bastille was already scheduled for demolition, but revolutionaries saw it as a symbol of the monarchy's abuse of power. France still keeps the anniversary as its national holiday.
Q 10At which 1815 battle in present-day Belgium did Wellington and Blücher end Napoleon's rule for good?
Waterloo
Waterloo sent the defeated emperor into exile on Saint Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821. Prussian troops breaking through on the French flank sealed the rout.
Q 11Which ancient script, pressed into clay tablets with a stylus, had been deciphered by scholars by 1857?
Cuneiform
Cuneiform is named from the Latin cuneus, for the wedge-shaped impressions that form its signs. Sumerian scribes first drew pictographs, then switched to a wedge-tipped tool pushed into the clay.
Q 12Which ancient land of seafaring city-states, including Tyre and Sidon, gave the Greeks the basis of their alphabet?
Phoenicia
Phoenicia grew rich selling fine textiles dyed with Tyrian purple, and the Greek word for its people also meant that colour. The Latin and Cyrillic scripts both descend from its letters.
Q 13Which Greek philosopher founded the Academy near Athens and wrote the dialogue known as the Republic?
Plato
Q 21Which Germanic people, led by their king Alaric, sacked the city of Rome in August 410?
The Visigoths
The Visigoths took a city that had not fallen to a foreign enemy in almost 800 years. The shock revealed how vulnerable the Western Roman Empire had become.
Q 22Which Byzantine emperor had Roman law rewritten as the Corpus Juris Civilis and rebuilt the Hagia Sophia?
Justinian I
Justinian I caused a scandal by marrying his mistress Theodora, who became very influential in imperial politics. His legal code is still the basis of civil law in many modern states.
Q 23Which early Roman law code, said to have been posted publicly on bronze, followed agitation by the plebeians?
The Twelve Tables
Plato set up his school near the sacred olive grove of Hecademus in roughly 383 BC. His brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus both appear as characters in his most famous work.
Q 14Which Macedonian king, undefeated in battle, conquered the Persian Empire and died in Babylon aged 32?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great rode a horse named Bucephalas, meaning ox-head, as far as what is now Pakistan. When the animal died there he named a city after it.
Q 15At which battle in 490 BC did outnumbered Athenians defeat a Persian invasion force sent by King Darius?
Marathon
Marathon gave its name to the long-distance race that Michel Bréal proposed for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, after the legend of a messenger running to Athens with news of victory.
Q 16Which Athenian statesman launched the building of the Parthenon and died in the plague of 429 BC?
Pericles
Pericles drew the money for his building plan from the treasury of the alliance Athens led. The historian Thucydides acclaimed him as the first citizen of the city.
Q 17Which Greek writer from Halicarnassus did the Roman orator Cicero call the Father of History?
Herodotus
Herodotus was also branded the Father of Lies by critics, on account of the many strange stories and folk-tales he reported. His birthplace is now Bodrum in Turkey.
Q 18Which Roman general ignited a civil war in 49 BC by leading a single legion across the Rubicon?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar was proclaimed dictator in perpetuity in early 44 BC. Fearing he might make himself king, senators led by Brutus and Cassius assassinated him on the Ides of March.
Q 19Which Roman, born Gaius Octavius, became the first emperor in 27 BC and ruled until AD 14?
Augustus
Augustus also became the first Roman pharaoh of Egypt, though he never visited the country again after 30 BC. To avoid the look of monarchy he took the title princeps.
Q 20Which Roman emperor legalised Christianity through the Edict of Milan and summoned the Council of Nicaea in 325?
Constantine I
Constantine I was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He also built a new imperial residence in the Greek city of Byzantium, which was officially renamed New Rome.
The Twelve Tables stated the rights and duties of the Roman citizen in public, so that all could read and know them. One ancient writer says they were inscribed on ivory instead.
Q 24At which battle of 1066 did Duke William defeat King Harold Godwinson to begin the conquest of England?
Hastings
Hastings was fought just 19 days after Harold had rushed north and defeated a Norwegian invasion at Stamford Bridge. That earlier victory left the duke as his only serious opponent.
Q 25Which pandemic, carried into Europe in 1347 on Genoese ships, killed perhaps half of the continent's people?
The Black Death
The Black Death was not called black in any European language at the time. It most likely travelled from Crimea with fleas living on the black rats aboard merchant vessels.
Q 26Which French peasant girl helped raise the siege of Orléans in 1429 and was burned at the stake?
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was about nineteen when she died, and she was canonized as a saint in 1920. She had vowed to lead Charles VII to Reims for his coronation.
Q 27What name was given to the land a medieval lord granted to a vassal in return for service?
A fief
A fief stayed the lord's property: he kept ultimate ownership and could recover the land for disloyalty. Feudalism takes its name from feudum, the medieval Latin word for such a grant.
Q 28Which Dominican friar wrote the Summa Theologica, blending the philosophy of Aristotle with Christian teaching?
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas was nicknamed the dumb ox by fellow students, but his teacher Albertus predicted that his bellowing would one day be heard throughout the world. He left his best-known work unfinished.
Q 29Which city did the armies of the First Crusade storm and capture in July 1099?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem fell fourteen days before the death of Pope Urban II, who had urged the armed pilgrimage at the Council of Clermont. News of the capture had not yet reached him.
Q 30Which sixth-century abbot of Monte Cassino wrote the monastic rule that shaped monasteries across Western Christendom?
Benedict of Nursia
Benedict of Nursia was declared a patron saint of Europe by Pope Paul VI in 1964. He had founded a dozen communities for monks at Subiaco before moving to his mountain abbey.