Mythology
Poseidon has his trident; this affluent god carries a bident.
Who is Hades?
This massive sports arena, visible from the emperor's palace, would have featured primarily chariot races, but also some public executions.
What is the Circus Maximus?
Rome’s founding year.
What is 753 BC?
This famous pair of lovers were defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium.
Who are Antony and Cleopatra?
You might find this phrase, meaning “it is” in a parenthetical explanation.
What is id est?
This mythological creature was half man half horse.
What is a Centaur?
Respond in Latin. Plebian Roman city-dwellers typically lived in this type of dwelling.
What are insulae?
This year follows the year 1 BC (1 B.C.E).
A.D. 1 (1 C.E.)
This brave Roman defended the Pons Sublicius single-handedly as it was being destroyed behind him, and then swam back to safety in his armor.
Who is Horatius Cocles?
This motto of North Carolina encourages being rather than seeming.
What is esse quam videri?
Hercules is the the Hydra as this hero is to Medusa.
The hill on which you would find the homes of the wealthiest Romans was also the first hill on which Romulus began building his city.
What is the Palatine hill?
Both Greece and Carthage fell under the Roman yoke in this important year.
What is 146 BC?
This curly haired dictator of Rome who gives his name to a city in Ohio promptly returned to his farm after saving the Roman army surrounded by a hostile tribe.
Who is Cincinnatus?
Cato the Censor uttered this phrase at the end of every senate meeting encouraging them to take action against the enemy state, Carthage.
What is Carthago delenda est?
This child of the titaness Rhea was replaced with a stone wrapped in swaddling cloths to prevent her husband Cronos from eating him.
Who is Zeus?
These large halls were centers of business and legal transactions. Christians later used the architectural design for their churches.
What are basilicae?
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar himself jokes that this day has come to which an anonymous soothsayer ominously replies, “Aye Caesar, but not gone.”
What is the Ides of March?
This assault and eventual suicide of this pious matron led to the end of the Monarchy.
Who is Lucretia?
Caesar allegedly used these three, famous, alliterative words to describe his quick defeat of the king of Pontus at the battle of Zela.
What is veni, vidi, vici?
This pastor raised two babies whom he found being nursed by a wolf on the banks of the Tiber.
Perhaps the poorest district of ancient Rome, this area was so fire prone that the emperor Augustus build a massive wall behind his temple to Mars Ultor in order to protect it.
What is the Suburra?
Although the Eastern half continues on, this is the traditional date for the fall of the Western Roman Empire, marked by the death of the aptly named emperor Romulus Augustulus.
What is A.D. 476?
This wife of the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, ran over her own father’s body with her chariot?
Who is Tullia?
John Wilkes Booth shouted this Latin phrase and motto of Virginia as he assassinated Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s theater.
What is sic semper tyrannis?