Ancient Rome Jeopardy

Six categories march a class through Rome: Republic, emperors, legions, and engineering. Free to copy, and every phone in the room becomes a buzzer.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

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The Republic

$200
This system of government, in which elected officials represented citizens rather than a single ruling king, governed Rome for roughly 500 years.
What is a republic?
$400
This body of wealthy, elder statesmen advised Roman magistrates and effectively controlled much of Roman policy.
What is the Senate?
$600
These two annually elected officials jointly held the republic's highest executive power and could each veto the other.
Who are the consuls?
$800
This set of laws, inscribed on bronze tablets and displayed in the Forum around 450 BC, was Rome's earliest written legal code.
What is the Twelve Tables?
$1,000
This Roman general and statesman was assassinated by senators on the Ides of March in 44 BC after being named dictator for life.
Who is Julius Caesar?

Emperors

$200
This adopted heir of Julius Caesar became Rome's first emperor and took the title Augustus.
Who is Augustus?
$400
This emperor is infamous for his cruelty and for the great fire that burned much of Rome in 64 AD during his reign.
Who is Nero?
$600
This philosopher-emperor wrote a private journal of Stoic reflections known today as Meditations.
Who is Marcus Aurelius?
$800
This emperor moved the empire's capital east to a city he renamed after himself and later legalized Christianity.
Who is Constantine?
$1,000
This emperor's reign in the early second century AD is often cited as the high-water mark of the empire's territorial size.
Who is Trajan?

The Roman Army

$200
This basic tactical unit of the Roman army, roughly 80 men, was commanded by a centurion.
What is a century?
$400
This large rectangular shield, curved to protect much of a soldier's body, was standard legionary equipment.
What is a scutum?
$600
In this tight defensive formation, legionaries locked their shields overhead and on all sides like the shell of an animal.
What is the testudo?
$800
This term named a Roman army's fortified overnight encampment, built fresh nearly every night on the march.
What is a castrum?
$1,000
After 25 years or more of service, a legionary could expect this reward upon discharge.
What is a land grant?

Daily Life in Rome

$200
This one-piece draped garment, worn by male Roman citizens for formal occasions, is a lasting symbol of Roman identity.
What is a toga?
$400
This large public bathing complex was a center of daily social life for Romans of many classes.
What are the baths?
$600
This free public entertainment, combining chariot racing with political spectacle, distracted the masses alongside free grain.
What are the chariot races?
$800
This large open public space in the heart of Rome served as the center for markets, elections, and public speeches.
What is the Forum?
$1,000
This Roman apartment building, often several stories of cramped, fire-prone housing, was home to most of the city's poorer residents.
What is an insula?

Gods and Myths

$200
This king of the Roman gods ruled the sky and thunder, equivalent to the Greek god Zeus.
Who is Jupiter?
$400
This god of war was, alongside Venus, considered a mythical ancestor of the Roman people through his sons Romulus and Remus.
Who is Mars?
$600
According to legend, these twin brothers, raised by a she-wolf, founded the city of Rome.
Who are Romulus and Remus?
$800
This goddess of love and beauty was claimed as a divine ancestor by Julius Caesar's family.
Who is Venus?
$1,000
This two-faced god of doorways, beginnings, and transitions gives his name to the first month of the year.
Who is Janus?

Engineering and Roads

$200
This massive amphitheater in Rome, opened around 80 AD, hosted gladiator contests and public spectacles for tens of thousands.
What is the Colosseum?
$400
This engineering achievement carried fresh water for miles into Roman cities, often using arched stone channels.
What is an aqueduct?
$600
This saying, referring to Rome's extensive road network, meant that many different paths could reach the same destination.
What is "all roads lead to Rome"?
$800
This dome-roofed temple to all the Roman gods still stands in Rome and features the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.
What is the Pantheon?
$1,000
This building material, a Roman invention using volcanic ash, allowed structures like the great domed temple in Rome to be built.
What is Roman concrete?

Final Jeopardy — Point of No Return

By leading his army across this shallow northern Italian river in 49 BC, Julius Caesar broke Roman law and made civil war inevitable.

What is the Rubicon?

How to run this board

Rome rewards a review game because the content is so concrete: real roads, real laws, real betrayals. This board covers the Republic and its collapse, the emperors good and terrible, the army that built an empire, and the engineering that outlasted it.

The Gods and Myths category deliberately overlaps with Greece - students who notice the borrowed pantheon are making exactly the connection you want.

If the period runs short, retire the two lowest-value rows and play a 6x3 game; the categories still cover the whole unit.

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