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Exploring Ancient Rome: A Historical Quiz

Test your knowledge of Ancient Rome with this engaging quiz that covers significant events, figures, and achievements of Roman history.

#Ancient Rome #History #Roman Empire #Quiz #Education

1 The Rise of Rome, Books 1-5, translated from ________ by T.J.

2 [57] In 410, the Visigoths, under the leadership of ________, sacked the city of Rome itself.

3 The largest such activities were the ________ and quarrying of stones, which provided basic construction materials for the buildings of that period.

4 [56] In the 4th century, the westward migration of the ________ caused the Visigoths to seek refuge within the borders of the Roman Empire.

5 In late 1st century BC, Rome also began to use glassblowing soon after its invention in ________ about 50 BC.

6 [58] The ________ invaded Roman provinces in Gaul, Hispania, and northern Africa, and in 455 sacked Rome.

7 In the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which later became the ________, Latin was never able to replace Greek, and after the death of Justinian, Greek became the official language of the Byzantine government.

8 [105] Its alphabet was based on the Etruscan alphabet, which was in turn based on the ________.

9 [15] A constitution set a series of checks and balances, and a ________.

10 What does the following picture show?  The seven hills of Rome   The Appian Way (Via Appia), a road connecting the city of Rome to the southern parts of Italy, remains usable even today.   Gaius Marius, a Roman general and politician who dramatically reformed the Roman military   Modern replica of lorica segmentata type armor, used in conjunction with the popular chainmail after the 1st century CE

đź’ˇ Interesting Facts

  • the Capitoline Games of Ancient Rome became so popular that the Romans counted periods of time by them, rather than their previous unit of lustrum.
  • the Crouching Venus, a Hellenistic type of Aphrodite or Venus (pictured), is known from dozens of Roman copies.
  • the Hotel Monaco in Washington, D.C. is located inside a National Historic Landmark building that was patterned after the Roman Temple of Jupiter.
  • the Port of Mainz was an important war harbour for the Roman fleet from which Roman ships patrolled the Rhine.
  • the barrel vault (pictured) was developed chiefly by the ancient Greeks and Romans, but endured to be a mainstay of medieval and even modern architecture.
  • the University of Cambridge's West Cambridge site includes the site of an ancient Roman settlement.
  • the Roman era of the early history of Switzerland began when the armies of Julius Caesar drove the Helvetii back from Gaul.
  • the Roman orator Cicero once publicly criticized Julius Caesar's father-in-law for enjoying too much Colli Piacentini wine.
  • the law professor Boudewijn Sirks has written on papyrology, food distribution in ancient Rome, and Sailing in the Off-Season with Reduced Financial Risk.
  • the Samnite gladiator type likely went out of fashion in Ancient Rome when the people of Samnium, whom it was intended to mock, became assimilated into the Roman Empire.
  • the Solarium Augusti in ancient Rome was the largest sundial in history.
  • the late Roman Red Church near Perushtitsa in Bulgaria featured frescoes of apocryphal scenes such as the flight of Elizabeth and the murder of Zechariah, John the Baptist's parents.
  • the mines of the Iberian Pyrite Belt have been active since before Roman times.
  • the only recorded use of the phrase "We who are about to die salute you" in Ancient Rome was at a naumachia, a theatrical naval spectacular, not said by gladiators as is widely believed.
  • the history of winemaking in Luxembourg, primarily in vineyards overlooking the Moselle River, goes back to Ancient Roman times.
  • the forces of the ancient state of Epirus invaded Latium, threatening Rome itself, during the Pyrrhic War in 280 B.C..
  • the creators of the Alcazaba fortification in Málaga, Spain, reused materials from nearby Roman ruins.
  • the eighth century bishop and saint Rupert of Salzburg set up his base in the old Roman town of Juvavum and renamed it Salzburg.
  • the first known arch dam was the Glanum Dam, built by the Romans in modern day France during the 1st century BC.
  • the Roman emperor Probus may have introduced Syrah vines to the CĂ´te-RĂ´tie wine region with cuttings from the Sicilian province of Syracuse.
  • the Ancient Romans played a game called Trigon, which likely involved three players standing in a triangle and passing a hard ball back and forth.
  • Halotus was an Ancient Roman royal servant who, despite being a prime suspect in the poisoning of Claudius in 54 AD, was granted royal stewardship by Galba in 68 AD, even when the public was calling for his death.
  • Jewish pirates from Joppa raided traders between Rome and Alexandria, interrupting Rome's grain supply during the First Jewish–Roman War.
  • Mavia was an Arab queen who in 378 AD personally led her troops out of southern Syria in revolt against Roman rule.
  • Eddie Hasha's (pictured) death led to board track racing being compared to Roman gladiators, contributing to the sport's demise.
  • Cividade de Terroso (map pictured) was one of the main fortified cities of the Castro culture, a stone civilization in Iberia, eventually destroyed by the Romans.
  • neoclassical Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi portrayed George Washington with a Roman haircut and a toga.
  • Tarquin the Proud modified the Roman festival of Compitalia to include the sacrifice of children's heads, but upon his expulsion, Brutus substituted heads of garlic and poppies instead.
  • wine from the Greek island of Chios, prized in both classical Greece and ancient Rome, was according to mythology the first red wine.
  • Monte Testaccio (pictured) in Rome is an artificial hill, 35 m (115 ft) high and 1 km (3,300 ft) in circumference, consisting entirely of the fragments of 53 million ancient Roman amphorae.
  • Ulpian's life table predicted a life expectancy of 19 to 23 years for citizens of the Roman Empire.
  • a type of cast net was used by gladiators in Ancient Rome in a parody of fishing.
  • at the Roman festival of Quinquatria in 59, Emperor Nero invited his mother Agrippina to his villa, as part of his plan to assassinate her.
  • during the winter the Romans of the Mosel wine region would drink their wine hot like a tea.
  • a silver dish thought to be the Ancient Roman Risley Park Lanx was on display in the British Museum for several years before being determined to be a complete fabrication.
  • a colony of the crab species Potamon fluviatile (pictured) may have lived in Rome since before the Romans.
  • L'AnnĂ©e philologique (The Year in Philology) annually gathers scholarly work related to ancient Greece and Rome from approximately 2,000 sources.
  • a client was an Ancient Roman who traded his vote for protection, in a similar way to the activities of modern organized crime.
  • a horreum was a type of public warehouse used in Ancient Rome to store foodstuffs such as grain and olive oil.
  • ancient Roman brides sat in the lap of Mutunus Tutunus before marriage.
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