Roman Mythology Trivia
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This Roman mythology trivia quiz has 118 free questions with answers and covers the gods, goddesses, festivals and founding legends of Rome. It starts with the stories everyone half-knows, Romulus and Remus, the she-wolf, the Sabine women, Aeneas and Dido, and works through the Vestal Virgins, Janus's doors, Saturnalia, Lupercalia and the Sibylline Books. A full round is given over to Roman goddess trivia: Juno and her peafowl, Minerva bursting from Jupiter's head, Venus as Caesar's ancestress, Diana's triple cult at Lake Nemi, Vesta's flame, Ceres and Proserpina on the Aventine, Bellona, Flora, Pomona, Bona Dea's women-only rites and the scandal that ended Caesar's marriage, Victoria, Libertas and her cap, and the black stone that was Cybele. It suits a classics student, a pub quiz history round or anyone who wants to know why the months are named as they are. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
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Q 01Which three deities made up the Capitoline Triad, the centre of official Roman religion?
Jupiter, Juno and Minerva
Jupiter, Juno and Minerva shared one three-chambered temple on the Capitoline Hill, a grouping probably borrowed from the Etruscans; some scholars think it displaced an older triad of Jupiter, Mars and a third god.
Q 02Which god, worshipped on the Roman hill that shares his name, completed the Archaic Triad with Jupiter and Mars?
Quirinus
Quirinus, worshipped on the Quirinal Hill, completed the Archaic Triad; by the late Republic Romans said Romulus had vanished in a storm and become this god, so the founder was honoured under his name.
Q 03Which second king of Rome, a Sabine, is credited with founding Roman religion and its priesthoods?
Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king, is credited with the calendar, the Vestals, the flamens and the pontiffs; legend says the nymph Egeria advised him.
Q 04Who was the mother of Romulus and Remus?
Rhea Silvia, a Vestal
Rhea Silvia, a Vestal, was forced into the priesthood by her usurping uncle Amulius so that she would bear no heirs; she bore twins anyway and named the god Mars as their father.
Q 05Which shepherd found Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf and raised them as his own?
Faustulus
Faustulus, the king's herdsman, took the twins home to his wife Larentia; Roman writers added that some thought her nickname, 'she-wolf', slang for a prostitute, was the real origin of the tale.
Q 06In the augury contest to decide who would found Rome, which birds did Romulus and Remus count?
Vultures
Vultures: Remus saw six first from the Aventine, then Romulus claimed twelve from the Palatine, and in one version the quarrel over which sign counted ended with Remus dead.
Q 07What did modern dating suggest about the Capitoline Wolf, long thought to be Etruscan?
It was cast in medieval times
It was cast in medieval times, radiocarbon tests in the 2000s suggested, though the Capitoline Museums still label the wolf fifth century BC; the suckling twins are a Renaissance addition.
Q 08In the usual Roman telling, how did the war over the abducted Sabine women end?
The women ran between the armies
The women ran between the armies, begging fathers on one side and husbands on the other to stop; the two peoples then merged, with the Sabine king Titus Tatius sharing Romulus's throne.
Q 09Which Roman noblewoman's rape and suicide sparked the revolt that founded the Republic?
Lucretia
Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, killed herself after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius; Lucius Junius Brutus paraded her body and drove out the Tarquins, and Shakespeare retold it in The Rape of Lucrece.
Q 10What did the doors of the Temple of Janus in Rome signify when they were closed?
Peace
Peace: the doors stood open in wartime and were shut only when Rome was at peace everywhere, so rarely that Augustus boasted they had closed just twice before him and three times in his reign.
Q 11Which of these Roman gods had no Greek counterpart?
Janus
Janus, the two-faced god of doorways and beginnings, had no Greek counterpart; Romans invoked him first in every ceremony, and January, the opening month, bears his name.
Q 12What became of a condemned man who chanced to meet a Vestal Virgin?
Pardoned
Pardoned, provided the Vestal swore the meeting was an accident; the six priestesses were held so sacred that anyone who passed under a Vestal's litter was put to death.
Q 13What was the punishment for a Vestal Virgin who broke her vow of chastity?
Burial alive
Burial alive, in a sealed chamber by the Colline Gate, was arranged as a bloodless death: the Vestal was left a lamp, bread, water, milk and oil, as if to clear Rome of starving a consecrated priestess.
Q 21Who wrote the Aeneid?
Virgil
Virgil worked on the Aeneid from 29 BC until his death in 19 BC and asked that the unfinished poem be burned; Augustus overruled his executors and had it published.
Q 22Which Greek epic is the model for the Aeneid's second half?
Iliad
The Iliad shapes the last six of the Aeneid's 12 books, a war for a new homeland, while the first six echo the Odyssey's wanderings: Homer's order reversed, voyage first and war second.
Q 23With which Latin words does the Aeneid begin?
Arma virumque cano
Arma virumque cano, 'I sing of arms and the man', opens the Aeneid with war and a hero in three words; Shaw borrowed the phrase for the title of his comedy Arms and the Man.
Q 14Which legal privilege did a Vestal Virgin gain on entering the priesthood?
Owning property without a male guardian
Owning property without a male guardian: on entering the order a Vestal left her father's legal power, so she could manage her own affairs and make a will while he was still alive.
Q 15Which guardian gods of the Roman household received a prayer each morning at a small shrine in the home?
The Lares
The Lares had their shrine, the lararium, in the house, and their statuettes were set on the table at family meals; a boy coming of age hung up his childhood amulet, the bulla, as a gift to them.
Q 16Which god's stone refused to be moved when the Temple of Jupiter was built on the Capitoline?
Terminus
Terminus, god of boundary stones, refused to yield his place to Jupiter, so his stone was enclosed inside the new temple; his feast, the Terminalia, fell on 23 February.
Q 17Which Roman festival brought gift-giving, legal gambling and a mock king?
The Saturnalia
The Saturnalia began as a single day in mid-December and grew to a week when work stopped, dice came out in public and the mock king gave orders that the other guests had to obey.
Q 18What did Roman citizens, normally bare-headed, wear during the Saturnalia?
A freedman's felt cap
A freedman's felt cap, the pileus, went on every head during the Saturnalia: citizens set aside the toga, and even slaves, normally forbidden the badge of freedom, wore one.
Q 19What did the Luperci priests do at the Lupercalia after sacrificing goats and a dog?
Ran near-naked whipping women with thongs
Ran near-naked whipping women with thongs cut from the sacrificed goats' skins; women put themselves in the way on purpose, believing a blow brought fertility and easy childbirth.
Q 20At the Lupercalia of 44 BC, who offered Julius Caesar a royal diadem that he pushed away?
Mark Antony
Mark Antony, consul that year, held out the diadem; the crowd cheered each time Caesar pushed it away, and a month later Caesar was assassinated.
Q 24Whom does Aeneas carry out of burning Troy on his shoulders?
His father Anchises
His father Anchises, too old and frail to flee on foot, rides on Aeneas's shoulders clutching the household gods while young Ascanius holds his hand; Creusa, following behind, is lost in the escape.
Q 25How does Dido, queen of Carthage, die in the Aeneid?
Stabs herself on a pyre
Stabs herself on a pyre with Aeneas's own sword, her dying curse of eternal hatred between Carthage and the Trojans' descendants foreshadowing Rome's later wars with Carthage.
Q 26According to legend, how did Dido acquire the land for Carthage?
By cutting an oxhide into strips
By cutting an oxhide into strips: offered only as much land as a hide could cover, Dido sliced one so thin that it ringed a whole hill, the Byrsa, whose name echoes the Greek word for hide.
Q 27Who guides Aeneas through the underworld in Book 6 of the Aeneid?
The Cumaean Sibyl
The Cumaean Sibyl, the prophetess of Cumae, leads Aeneas down through the cave by Lake Avernus, with the golden bough as his passport to the dead.
Q 28How does the Aeneid end?
Aeneas kills Turnus
Aeneas kills Turnus in the final lines: he hesitates at Turnus's plea for mercy, then sees the belt of his dead friend Pallas and strikes — the poem stops there.
Q 29What did a Roman king end up buying after an old woman kept burning the prophecy books he refused?
Three, at the full price
Three, at the full price she had asked for all nine: the Sibylline Books were then guarded by a college of priests and opened only on the Senate's order when a crisis struck.
Q 30Which Roman general finally destroyed the Sibylline Books in the early 5th century AD?
Stilicho
Stilicho, the general who ran the western empire for Honorius, had the Sibylline Books burned around 405; they had already been lost once in the Capitoline fire of 83 BC and reassembled from oracles gathered elsewhere.