Q 01/05

Marcus Aurelius was the last of which line of Roman rulers?

A) The Five Good Emperors

B) The Twelve Caesars

C) The Flavian dynasty

D) The Severan dynasty

Answer · why

A) 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 ow...

Q 02/05

Marcus Aurelius is remembered as a practitioner of which school of philosophy?

A) Epicureanism

B) Stoicism

C) Cynicism

D) Neoplatonism

Answer · why

B) 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 03/05

What does Ta eis heauton, the traditional title of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, literally mean?

A) On the nature of duty

B) Things to himself

C) Against the tide

D) The inner citadel

Answer · why

B) 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-c...

Q 04/05

Which famous text shares the Meditations' Koine Greek?

A) The Iliad

B) The New Testament

C) Sappho's poems

D) Sophocles' Antigone

Answer · why

B) 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 Gre...

Q 05/05

The first book of the Meditations is a list of what?

A) Battles

B) Thanks

C) Prayers

D) Laws

Answer · why

B) 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...