Sulla
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50 free Sulla trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sulla was the first Roman general to turn his legions on Rome itself, and the example he set hung over the Republic for the rest of its life. He began as a nobleman without money, made his name as a daring junior officer, and ended as the most feared man in the Mediterranean world. He called himself Felix, and he believed the name. This quiz follows the whole career. There are questions on his early life and his long feud with Gaius Marius, his campaigns against the king of Pontus, the civil war he fought on his return, the terror and the reforms that followed, and the way writers and composers have pictured him since. It suits students of ancient history, readers of novels set in the late Republic, and anyone who has met the name Sulla Felix and wondered who he was. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess leaves you knowing more.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does Felix mean, the Latin name Sulla added to his own after winning Rome's civil war?
Lucky
Lucky is how Sulla saw himself, trusting his good fortune more than his own achievements. He even named his twin children Faustus and Fausta, from the Latin for auspicious.
Q 02Which famous Roman went into hiding as a young man after refusing Sulla's order to divorce his wife?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar had married the daughter of one of Sulla's chief opponents and would not give her up. He was spared only after his relatives and allies among the Vestal Virgins interceded for him.
Q 03Which Greek festival is said to have shrunk to one footrace because Sulla summoned its athletes to Rome?
Olympic Games
Olympic Games athletes were called to Italy to help celebrate Sulla's eastern victories. Only one sprint is said to have been run at the usual site that year.
Q 04Which composer was only sixteen when he wrote Lucio Silla, an Italian opera about Sulla?
Mozart
Mozart composed it for Milan, where it opened on 26 December 1772. Its plot takes considerable liberties with history.
Q 05A rival said fighting Sulla meant facing a lion and which other animal, the more troublesome of the two?
A fox
A fox was the beast the enemy leader Carbo said troubled him more. He said it after Sulla's men had talked an enemy army of forty cohorts into changing sides without a fight.
Q 06Sulla wrote his own epitaph, boasting that he had always repaid in full which two groups of people?
Friends and enemies
Friends and enemies alike got what they were owed, the inscription claimed: nobody had outdone him in kindness or in harm. It was carved on his tomb in the Campus Martius.
Q 07Which Greek city did Sulla sack after its tyrant Aristion sided with the king of Pontus?
Athens
Athens held out for five months while its starving people were reduced to eating shoe leather. Sulla's troops finally broke in at midnight on 1 March 86 BC.
Q 08Which young general, who raised a private army for Sulla, did Sulla honour with the surname Magnus?
Pompey
Pompey was in his twenties when Sulla gave him a name meaning the Great. Refused a triumph, he is said to have reminded Sulla that more people worship the rising sun than the setting one.
Q 09What did Sulla do with his unlimited power once he had finished rewriting Rome's laws?
Gave it all up
Gave it all up is the short answer: he dismissed his bodyguards and walked the Forum unprotected, offering to account for his actions to any citizen. He then withdrew to a country villa.
Q 10Sulla shipped to Rome a library of manuscripts, long hidden in a cellar, by which Greek philosopher?
Aristotle
Aristotle's manuscripts had been hidden underground to keep them from royal book collectors, and were badly decayed. Scholars in Rome copied them, and a new edition of his works was built on those copies.
Q 11Which office, unused in Rome for more than a century, did Sulla revive and hold with no fixed time limit?
Dictator
Dictator had been a short emergency post, last filled during the Second Punic War. Sulla's version let him make laws and remodel the state for as long as he chose.
Q 12Which Roman goddess did Sulla claim as his divine protector, taking a Greek title that named him her favourite?
Venus
Venus was his chosen patron: he used the Greek title Epaphroditos, favourite of Aphrodite, her Greek counterpart, in official letters and had it carved on his victory trophies in Greece.
Q 13Which oracle sanctuary in central Greece did Sulla strip of its treasures to pay for his war against Pontus?
Delphi
Q 21Which Numidian king was betrayed by his own father-in-law and handed over to Sulla, ending a long war?
Jugurtha
Jugurtha was seized by King Bocchus of Mauretania and delivered to the Romans. Sulla had the scene engraved on his signet ring, which annoyed his commander Marius, who took the credit for the victory.
Q 22What name was given to Sulla's lists, posted in the Forum, of enemies whom anyone could kill for a reward?
Proscriptions
Proscriptions started with a list of about 80 names, and hundreds more followed. Victims lost their property to the state, and their sons and grandsons were barred from public office.
Q 23Which officials did Sulla bar from proposing laws or holding later office, turning the post into a dead end?
Tribunes
Delphi had to send him the offerings of centuries. One royal gift, an enormous jar, was too heavy for any pack animal and had to be cut into pieces first.
Q 14Which future conqueror of Spartacus grew rich buying the confiscated estates of Sulla's victims at auction?
Crassus
Crassus bought the seized property at discount prices and came to be called the richest man in Rome. Sulla encouraged such buyers, wanting to spread the blame among his supporters.
Q 15Which young orator made his name defending Sextus Roscius in a murder trial that exposed Sulla's freedman Chrysogonus?
Cicero
Cicero was only 26 and had never taken a public case, but nobody else dared face a favourite of Sulla. He won an acquittal and, by his own account, instant fame as an advocate.
Q 16Which king of Pontus, said to be immune to poison, did Sulla defeat in Greece but leave on his throne?
Mithridates
Mithridates VI kept his kingdom under the peace agreed at Dardanus, giving up his conquests, a fleet of ships and a war fine. He went on to fight Rome in two more wars.
Q 17When the Senate's envoys asked why Sulla was marching legions on Rome, what did he say he had come to do?
Free it from tyrants
Free it from tyrants was his bold reply. All but one of his senior officers had already abandoned him rather than lead an army against their own city.
Q 18Which town still shows in its walls the missile scars of Sulla's siege, and later housed his veterans?
Pompeii
Pompeii's wall near the Herculaneum Gate is pitted with the craters of thousands of catapult shots. The town surrendered, became a Roman colony and gave land to many of the general's old soldiers.
Q 19On the banks of the Euphrates, Sulla became the first Roman official to meet an envoy of which eastern empire?
Parthia
Parthia's envoy Orobazus was put to death by his own king afterwards for letting Sulla take the seat of honour at their meeting.
Q 20The penniless young Sulla spent his days among which group of people, then held in low esteem in Rome?
Actors
Actors, comedians and dancers were his companions, and he is said to have written comic plays for the stage himself. He kept such company even when he ruled Rome.
Tribunes of the plebs had started most of the political crises of his lifetime, so he cut the office down. Their powers were restored within ten years of his death, under two of his own former officers.
Q 24Which rare decoration, Rome's highest military honour, did Sulla's own soldiers award him outside Nola?
Grass Crown
Grass Crown was the name for a wreath woven from plants growing on the battlefield, given by an army to the commander who had saved it. Sulla recorded the honour in his own memoirs.
Q 25At which entrance to Rome did Sulla win the last great battle of his civil war, fought on into the night?
Colline Gate
Colline Gate was nearly a disaster for him: his own wing was driven back to the walls and found the way into the city shut. Forced to stand and fight, his men won during the night.
Q 26Sulla had thousands of prisoners from which Italian people killed within earshot of the Senate?
Samnites
Samnites were Rome's traditional enemies in Italy. As the screams reached the senators, Sulla told them calmly to attend to his speech, since some criminals were merely being punished.
Q 27Which conflict between Rome and its rebellious Italian allies won Sulla the fame that made him consul?
Social War
Social War comes from socii, the Latin for allies. Sulla took over the southern front, captured the rebel capital at Bovianum and was then elected consul with ease.
Q 28Sulla served under Marius and Catulus against which migrating northern tribes that had destroyed Roman armies?
Cimbri and Teutons
Cimbri and Teutons had beaten Roman legions several times before Marius took command. Sulla's job in the final campaign was supply, and he kept two armies fed before the victory at the Raudian Field.
Q 29Which officer, later a byword for luxury, did Sulla make guardian of his children and dedicate his memoirs to?
Lucullus
Lucullus is thought to be the one senior officer who stayed with Sulla when he first led his army against Rome. He later brought up Sulla's twins, Faustus and Fausta.
Q 30At what kind of public event did Sulla meet his last wife, Valeria, who plucked a thread from his cloak?
A gladiator show
A gladiator show still seated men and women together. Valeria passed behind Sulla and pulled a thread from his cloak, saying she wanted a share of his success, and they were soon married.