When in Rome Trivia Quiz

Answer: 753 B.C.

The City of Rome was founded by Romulus in 753 B.C. Two legends about Romulus are very famous: one is that he and his twin Remus were suckled by a female wolf in their childhood and the second one is that the brothers were the descendants of the Trojan War refugee Aeneas.
However, Remus was already dead when Rome was founded and that Romulus ruled Rome as its first king for 37 years from 753 B.C to 716 B.C. Also, around this time period, Europe was in the middle of the Iron Age.

Answer: 509 B.C

The Roman Kingdom lasted from 753 B.C to 509 B.C, a period of 244 years.
Altogether, there were 7 kings of Rome, including Romulus.
This period of Roman history is the least well known as very few historical records have surfaced from this era.
However, we do know that the Roman Republic came about in 509 B.C when the last king named Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was deposed by the Republic's First Consuls Lucius Junius Brutus, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus (husband of Lucretia) and two others. Superbus was deposed because he became quite unpopular due to his dictatorial tendencies and by the rape of Lucretia by Tarquinius's son Sextus Tarquinius. Lucretia was related to a few Roman noblemen. She got so ashamed by it that after telling her relatives about it, she committed suicide.

Answer: 264 B.C

After the start of the Roman Republic and for the next two centuries, it expanded considerably in size due to either conquests or alliances with other Italian cities.

Now, we come to the period of the Punic Wars of which there were three between the city of Rome and the Phoenician city of Carthage. The First Punic War started in 264 B.C, lasting till 241 B.C while the third and last Punic War ended in 146 B.C. In all the Punic Wars, Rome was victorious which resulted in the assimilation of Carthage's territories into the Roman Republic.
In the 2nd Punic war, lasting from 218 B.C to 201 B.C, the legendary Punic general Hannibal Barca did give the Romans headaches for some time, though ultimately even he wasn't able to stop the advancing tide of the Romans. The Romans themselves though, admired and feared Hannibal at the same time as a great general.

Answer: 71 B.C

Between the years of 135 B.C and 71 B.C there were a total of three slave rebellions against the Roman state called the Servile Wars. There were actually the bonded peasants rebelling against the upper class Romans for better living and working conditions. We are concerned here about the 3rd Servile War which lasted from 73 to 71 B.C and was led by the famous gladiator turned slave leader Spartacus.

He is believed by most historians to have died towards the end of the 3rd Servile War though his body was never found.

The rebellion ultimately failed to achieve its goals though it did have an unintended affect of contributing to the end of the Roman Republic.

Answer: 44 B.C

Julius Caesar can be considered the last head of the Roman Republic before the beginning of the Roman Empire.
He was assassinated on the Ides of March, which was the 15th of March 44 B.C by a group of senators with Marcus Junius Brutus being one of its leaders. The location was close to the Theatre of Pompey.
Caesar was shocked to see Brutus among the conspirators as he and Brutus had been close friends previously.
Caesar's grand nephew Octavian took vengeance against these traitorous senators in the space of two years i.e 42 B.C. Octavian had formed a 2nd Triumvirate with Mark Antony and Lepidus. Mark Antony and Julius Caesar were both lovers of the Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra but Mark had married Cleopatra while Caesar didn't.
By January 27 B.C, Lepidus had been forced out, Mark Antony had been dealt with in the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C and Octavian became the 1st de facto Roman Emperor and adopted the name Augustus for himself. This marked the end of the Roman Republic and the start of the Roman Empire. Augustus's reign lasted for 40 years until his death in August 14 A.D.

Answer: 64 A.D

Nero was Emperor of Rome from 54 to 68 A.D. In 68 A.D Nero committed suicide in order to escape the shame of being treated like a common criminal.
In the 2nd half of 64 A.D, a raging fire devastated Rome for six days before it was brought under control.
There are legends that Nero 'fiddled while Rome burned' while another account is that Rome was burnt down by Nero himself to make room for Nero's new palace Domus Aurea, though it was constructed over the burnt remains of Rome.
According to the historian Tacitus, Nero was away in the nearby city of Antium when the fire broke out.

However, in reality, Nero helped with relief efforts after returning from Antium and helped to put down the fire.
The fire was bad news for the Christians though, as Nero made Christians the scapegoat for the Great fire of Rome and the first in a series of persecutions to come for the Christians started taking place from the 2nd half of 64 A.D onwards.

Answer: 80 A.D

Work on the largest ever amphitheatre in the Roman Empire began in 72 A.D during the reign of Emperor Vespasian and the Colosseum's construction is finished plus opens to the Roman public in 80 A.D during the time of Titus who was the successor of Vespasian. The Colosseum is made up of Concrete and Sand.

The Colosseum could manage 50,000 to 80,000 spectators and it was used for gladiatorial contests, executions, plays, reenactment of past battles etc.
In the 21st century, the Colosseum still stands and a visit to Rome today is incomplete without seeing the mighty Colosseum as it is one of Rome's most popular tourist attractions. Although, the structure took damage over the years due to earthquakes and stone robbers.

Answer: 330 A.D

In 285 A.D, Emperor Diocletian split the Roman empire into the Western and Eastern half as centuries of conquest made the empire too massive for one person to manage effectively alone.
In 330 A.D, emperor Constantine founded the city of Constantinople on the old site of Byzantium and thus, the Byzantine Empire was born which was still known as the Eastern Roman Empire before the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
Constantine was the first Christian Roman emperor and his Edict of Milan in 313 helped the Romans in tolerating people of Christian faith and by 380 A.D emperor Theodosius adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Answer: 476 A.D

The last Western Roman emperor was Romulus Augustus. Odoacer, a barbarian Germanic soldier in the Roman Army deposed him by capturing the city of Ravenna (capital of the Western Roman Empire since 402 A.D) in 476 A.D and this year is widely accepted as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire.
In the last 80 years, Rome got weakened due to internal wrangling and invasions by ruthless barbarians such as the Huns led by Atilla.
Rome and the rest of Western Europe entered the period called the Dark Ages, also known as the Early Middle Ages for the next 500 years. This period is called the Dark Ages because Europe entered into a stage of cultural and economic regression and very few historical records survive from this time period.

Answer: 1453 A.D

The Byzantine Empire lasted a further 977 years from the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 till the Fall of Constantinople caused by the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mehmed II.
The Ottomans renamed Constantinople to Istanbul and Islam replaced Christianity in the region as the Ottomans were an Islamic Empire.
As for Rome itself, it became a part of the Papal states in the mid 8th century and remained under the rule of the Pope till AD 1870. In the21st century, Istanbul is the largest city of Turkey but the capital is Ankara.