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47 free The Punic Wars trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Punic Wars trivia quiz covers all three wars between Rome and Carthage, from the scrap over Messana in 264 BC to the six-day sack of Carthage in 146 BC. It begins with the basics: why the wars are called Punic, who the main source is, what a quinquereme carried and how the Romans, who had no navy, built one from a wrecked Carthaginian ship and bolted a boarding bridge to the front. It follows the first war through Mylae, Ecnomus, the disaster in Africa, the storms that sank whole fleets and the loans that paid for the last one. The second half is Hannibal's war and its aftermath: Saguntum, the Alps, the eye lost to conjunctivitis, the ambush at Trasimene, the double envelopment at Cannae, Fabius the Delayer, the Metaurus, Scipio in Spain and Africa, the elephants at Zama and the peace that left Carthage with ten warships. Then the third war: Cato's catchphrase, Masinissa's provocations, Scipio Aemilianus's mole, and the 19th-century myth about salt. For the general himself, see our separate Hannibal quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Punic Wars and their battles and commanders, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
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Q 01Between which years were the three Punic Wars fought?
264-146 BC
The three Punic Wars were fought between 264 and 146 BC: the First in 264-241, the Second in 218-201 and the Third in 149-146, about 43 years of actual fighting spread over more than a century.
Q 02The word 'Punic' comes from a Latin adjective meaning what?
Phoenician
Carthage began as a Phoenician colony and grew into an empire.
Q 03Who is the most reliable ancient source for the Punic Wars?
Polybius
Polybius, a Greek brought to Rome as a hostage in 167 BC, knew the Scipios and questioned veterans of Hannibal's war; later writers such as Livy leaned heavily on his history.
Q 04At the start of the First Punic War, what did Rome conspicuously lack?
A navy
Rome had no real navy in 264 BC and borrowed allied ships to ferry troops to Sicily; Carthage, by contrast, was the dominant maritime power of the western Mediterranean.
Q 05Control of which Sicilian city-state sparked the First Punic War in 264 BC?
Messana
The Mamertines holding Messana (modern Messina) appealed to Rome in 264 BC; the Romans gained a foothold there and then forced Syracuse into alliance.
Q 06What did the Romans use as a blueprint for their first fleet of quinqueremes in 260 BC?
A shipwrecked Carthaginian quinquereme
Their early copies were heavier, slower and less manoeuvrable than the originals.
Q 07What was the corvus?
A spiked boarding bridge
The 11-metre bridge let legionaries board enemy ships instead of ramming, but made ships top-heavy in rough seas.
Q 08Excluding marines, how many oarsmen and sailors crewed a quinquereme?
300
A quinquereme's crew was about 300: 280 oarsmen and 20 deck crew and officers. It also carried around 40 marines, raised to as many as 120 when battle loomed.
Q 09The Romans' first major naval victory, using the corvus, came at which battle in 260 BC?
Mylae
At Mylae, off Sicily's north coast, consul Gaius Duilius used the corvus to capture or sink dozens of Carthaginian ships; Rome then seized a base on Corsica but was repulsed from Sardinia.
Q 10Which 256 BC battle is possibly the largest naval battle in history by number of combatants?
Cape Ecnomus
Cape Ecnomus, on Sicily's south coast, saw nearly 300,000 men on about 680 ships as the Carthaginian fleet tried to intercept the Roman invasion force bound for Africa.
Q 11Which Spartan mercenary led the Carthaginian force that crushed the Romans at Tunis in 255 BC?
Xanthippus
Xanthippus, hired to retrain the Carthaginian army, used infantry, cavalry and elephants on open ground near Tunis to rout the invading consul Regulus, who was taken prisoner.
Q 12How many men did Rome lose when a storm wrecked its fleet returning from Africa in 255 BC?
More than 100,000
More than 100,000 men drowned when only about 80 of 364 ships survived the storm off Camarina; the top-heavy corvus may have made the ships unseaworthy and is not recorded in use again.
Q 13Why did the Romans avoid battle on the island in 252 and 251 BC, according to the main source?
Q 21Which river did the 226 BC treaty set as the northern limit of Carthaginian Iberia?
Ebro
The Ebro Treaty of 226 BC barred Carthage from crossing the river in arms; Rome then made a separate deal with a city well south of the line, which Hannibal attacked in 219 BC.
Q 22Hannibal's capture of which city in 219 BC led Rome to declare war?
Saguntum
Hannibal besieged Saguntum, a Roman ally south of the Ebro, for about eight months in 219 BC and sacked it; Rome declared war the following spring.
Q 23Which Roman consul did Hannibal defeat at the River Trebia in December 218 BC?
Tiberius Sempronius Longus
They feared the Carthaginian war elephants
In 250 BC they drove the elephants off with javelins outside Panormus and the beasts routed through their own infantry.
Q 14Which battle was Carthage's greatest naval victory of the First Punic War?
Drepana
At Drepana in 249 BC Adherbal captured 93 of Claudius Pulcher's ships; after it and the loss of the second fleet at Phintias, Rome was all but swept from the sea for seven years.
Q 15How did Rome finance the fleet that won the First Punic War in 243 BC?
Loans from wealthy citizens for one ship each
The loans were repayable from the reparations Carthage would owe once the war was won.
Q 16The First Punic War ended with a Carthaginian naval defeat where in 241 BC?
The Aegates Islands
Off the Aegates Islands, west of Sicily, Lutatius Catulus's new fleet destroyed Hanno's supply convoy; the Treaty of Lutatius followed, costing Carthage 3,200 talents of silver and Sicily.
Q 17What became Rome's first province under the treaty ending the First Punic War?
Sicily
Sicily, minus Hiero's kingdom of Syracuse, became Rome's first province; Polybius called the 23-year war the longest, most continuous and most severely contested he knew of.
Q 18By how much had Rome's adult male citizen population fallen during the First Punic War?
17 percent
Census figures fell from about 292,000 adult male citizens in 265 BC to 241,000 in 247 BC, a drop of roughly 17 percent that reflects appalling losses at sea.
Q 19Which two islands did Rome seize from Carthage in 237 BC, an act called 'contrary to all justice'?
Sardinia and Corsica
Rome annexed Sardinia and Corsica while Carthage was exhausted by the Mercenary War and demanded a further 1,200 talents; Polybius called it contrary to all justice, and the grievance fed the Second Punic War.
Q 20Which Carthaginian general built a new power base in Iberia from 237 BC?
Hamilcar Barca
Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal's father, landed at Gades in 237 BC and won silver mines, manpower and ports; his son-in-law Hasdrubal and then Hannibal succeeded him.
Hannibal lured the consul Tiberius Sempronius Longus across the icy Trebia at dawn in December 218 BC, then sprang Mago's hidden ambush; only about 10,000 Romans cut their way out to Placentia.
Q 24How many elephants did Hannibal set out from Iberia with?
37
Hannibal left Iberia with 37 elephants; most survived the Alps but nearly all died in the hard winter after the Trebia, leaving him a single beast by the spring of 217 BC.
Q 25Which river did Hannibal's army cross on rafts, elephants included, in autumn 218 BC?
Rhône
Hannibal crossed the Rhône in 218 BC, ferrying his elephants on earth-covered rafts towed across the river, while Hanno's detachment forded upstream to ambush the hostile Gauls on the far bank.
Q 26At which lake did Hannibal ambush and destroy a Roman army in 217 BC?
Trasimene
At Lake Trasimene Hannibal hid his army in the hills above the shore road and fell on Flaminius' column in morning fog; some 15,000 Romans died, including the consul, and 15,000 were captured.
Q 27Whom did Rome appoint dictator in 217 BC, with a strategy of avoiding battle?
Fabius Maximus
Quintus Fabius Maximus, named dictator after Trasimene, shadowed Hannibal and refused pitched battle; his agnomen Cunctator means the Delayer, and the strategy was unpopular while Italy was devastated.
Q 28How large was the Roman force raised for the Cannae campaign in 216 BC?
86,000
Rome fielded about 86,000 men at Cannae, eight legions of some 5,000 infantry each plus a matching allied contingent, the largest army in its history to that point.
Q 29At Cannae, how did Hannibal trap the Roman legions?
A deliberately weak centre and wings that swung around them
The cavalry under another Hasdrubal then hit the legions from behind; at least 67,500 Romans were killed or captured.
Q 30At least how many Romans were killed or captured at Cannae?
67,500
Livy's count of some 48,200 killed and 19,300 captured puts Roman losses at Cannae at least 67,500, the republic's greatest military disaster.