Daily Life in Ancient Rome, Street by Street

You have seen the emperors and the legions a hundred times. What you really want to know is what it felt like to bake bread at dawn, do a rich woman's hair, or deliver a baby in a crowded Roman apartment.

This audiobook walks you down one Roman street and introduces you to eight real people known from their tombstones, graffiti, papyri and court records. You spend a vivid scene with each of them: a freedman baker, an enslaved hairdresser, a midwife, a gladiator, a tavern keeper, a schoolboy and more. Along the way you hear exactly what the evidence shows and where historians are making an educated guess, all explained in plain, human-scale pictures instead of academic jargon.

By the end, ancient Rome stops being marble and starts being a neighborhood full of people you remember by name. Press play and step onto the street.