Life in the Ancient City
A Social History of Rome from Street to Senate
James Coverley · 2023 · 294 pages
Rome at its height held a million people in an area smaller than Manhattan. They lived on top of one another in six-storey tenements, ate in taverns because their apartments had no kitchens, and used the same water source that their neighbours used as a sewer.
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This is a history of that city from the ground up: the bakeries and bathhouses, the gangs and the grain dole, the freedmen who became millionaires and the senators who gambled their fortunes away. It is also a history of how Romans thought about the city — what they loved about it, what terrified them, and what they would have given anything to escape.
An essential companion for anyone who wants to understand Rome not as a set of dates and battles but as a place where real human beings actually lived.
Available formats
The Cych Press