Ancient Leaders and their States Quiz

Answer: Israel

According to the accounts in the Old Testament, principally in the books of Samuel and Kings, David, son of Jesse from the tribe of Judah, was the second king of Israel. There is not much external evidence for David and his rule over Israel, but scholars agree that his reign begins around 1000 BC.

He is said to have moved the capital from Hebron to the city of Jerusalem after he had captured that city.

Answer: Troy

In Greek myth and legend Priam is the king of Troy during the Trojan War, best-known from Homer's epic poem, "The Iliad". He is said to have fathered fifty sons, the best-known of whom are Hector, the valiant defender of Troy, and Paris, whose abduction of Helen sparked the war with the Greeks.

The standard version of the fall of Troy has Priam killed at the altar of Zeus by Neoptolemos, the young son of Achilles.

Answer: Rome

Trajan, the second of what are known as the "Five Good Emperors" (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius), ruled the Roman Empire from AD 98 to 180. He was both a successful military leader and very capable political administrator, and under his rule the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent. He is also the first emperor to have come from a Spanish background.

Answer: Persia

Cyrus the Great ruled the Persian Empire from 559 to 530 BC. His accession to the throne marked a change of dynasty from the previous Median kings to what we call the Achaemenid (or Persian) dynasty, to which Cyrus belonged through his mother's side.

In his reign the Persian Empire expanded greatly in all directions, reaching the steppes of central Asia, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Caucasus region. His son Cambyses would add Egypt to the empire. Herodotus tells a charming, but fictitious, story of how Cyrus came to power. Cyrus' tomb is still standing at Pasagarde in Iran.

Answer: Athens

The fifth century BC in Athens is often called "the Age of Pericles" after the leading political figure of the time. Pericles was connected with an aristocratic family of Athens and first came to political prominence in 461 BC. For the next thirty years he was virtually unchallenged as leader of Athens and was connected with leading writers, artists and thinkers of the time.

He died in 429 as a result of the plague which struck in the first years of the Peloponnesian War.

Answer: Sparta

Leonidas is best known from the cult movie "The 300", but there is a real story behind it. He was one of the two kings of Sparta in the 480s, the period of the Persian Wars. He and 300 Spartans attempted to hold the narrow land pass at Thermopylae in central Greece, to halt the Persian land invasion of Greece and give the Athenians time to destroy the Persian fleet.

It is reported that when told the Persian archers were so numerous that their arrows would block out the sun, he replied, "All the better, we shall fight in the shade".

Answer: Carthage

Hannibal came from the prominent Carthaginian family of the Barcas. His father Hamilcar Barca had led the Carthaginian forces in the First Punic War (264-241 BC) and passed on a hatred of Rome to his son Hannibal. Hannibal's attack on the Roman ally of Saguntum in Spain in 219 brought about the Second Punic War (218-201), in which Hannibal is famous for marching his forces (including elephants) across the Alps into Italy, where he defeated the Romans in three decisive battles.

He failed to capture the city of Rome and was eventually forced to abandon Italy when the Romans counter-invaded North Africa.

Answer: Crete

In Greek myth Minos was a son of Zeus and the maiden Europa, who became king of the palace at Knossos in Crete. His name is given to the Minoan civilisation, a sophisticated and advanced society and the leading power in the Aegean in the mid-second millennium. In another myth he is appointed as one of the judges of the dead in the Underworld.

Answer: Babylon

Hammurabi was a king of the First Babylonian Dynasty, and ruled in the early eighteenth century BC. He was a good military leader and added to the Babylonian empire. But he is best known for the Code of Hammurabi, which is one of the first formalised law-codes in human history.

Answer: Numidia

Jugurtha was king of Numidia (modern-day Morocco and Algeria) in the late second century BC and a serious military foe of the Roman Republic. We have a good account of the Jugurthine War (112-105 BC) by the historian Sallust, who records how Jugurtha was finally defeated by the general Marius and his quaestor Sulla. Both of these men would go on to be major players in the subsequent history of the Roman Republic.

Answer: Iceni

Boudicca's name is sometimes spelled as "Boadicea". She was a queen of the Celtic tribe of the Iceni in south-east England. She is best known for leading a revolt against the Romans in AD 60-61 during which her forces took and destroyed the major Roman settlements at Colchester, London, and St Albans.

A bronze statue of Boudicca in her horse-drawn war-chariot now stands beside the Houses of Parliament in London.

Answer: Hittites

The Hittite Empire (modern-day Turkey) was a major force in the second millennium BC, rivalling that of the Pharaohs in Egypt. Suppiluliuma I was a great warrior and political leader and the first to challenge the Egyptians' control of the Middle East. In fact the two empires would later collide at the battle of Kadesh in 1270 BC, in which both sides withdrew and each claimed victory.

Answer: Egypt

Hatshepsut is perhaps the first woman in human history that we know something about personally. She was a member of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, ruling from 1478-1458 BC. She was officially ruing for her young son Thutmose III after the death of her husband Thutmose II, but in fact was Pharaoh in her own right.

Her reign was mostly an age of peace, marked by a re-establishment of the profitable trade routes and a very successful building programme.

Answer: Gauls

In 59 BC the Roman Republic gave Julius Caesar a five-year military command in Gaul (modern-day France), to prevent further attacks on Italy by the Gauls and bring the region into the civilising effect of Roman culture. Caesar himself wrote an autobiographical account of his campaigns in Gaul, which came to a climax with the emergence of Vercingetorix of the Averni tribe in 52 BC as the chieftain and military leader of all the Gauls.

His crushing defeat at Alesia ended the Gauls' resistance and led to permanent Roman control of the region.

Answer: Syracuse

Dionysios I overthrew the democracy at Syracuse on the island of Sicily in 405 BC making himself a tyrant (sole leader) for the next thirty-eight years or so. Ancient sources regard him as the archetypal tyrant: cruel, suspicious, avaricious, and surrounded by a personal bodyguard, but he did expand Syracuse's area of influence into southern Italy and even further and kept the warring Carthaginians at bay.

He also surrounded himself with thinkers and artists, himself writing plays and on one occasion winning a prize for tragedy at Athens.