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Surviving Rome

The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent
By Kim Bowes
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Brief Description
The story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes. Surviving Rome unearths another history, one of ordinary Romans, who worked with their hands and survived through a combination of grit and grinding labour. Focusing on the working majority, Kim Bowes tells... Read More
Format: Hardback
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"A radical new history of the Roman economy focused on the lives and labors of the working people and the poor who made up the 90% percent of the population"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes. Surviving Rome unearths another history, one of ordinary Romans, who worked with their hands and survived through a combination of grit and grinding labour.

Focusing on the working majority, Kim Bowes tells the stories of people like the tenant farmer Epimachus, Faustilla the moneylender, and the pimp Philokles. She reveals how the economic changes of the period created a set of bitter challenges and opportunistic hustles for everyone from farmers and craftspeople to day labourers and slaves. She finds working people producing a consumer revolution, making and buying all manner of goods from fine pottery to children's toys.

Many of the poorest working people probably pieced together a living from multiple sources of income, including wages. And she suggests that Romans' most daunting challenge was the struggle to save. Like many modern people, saving enough to buy land or start a business was a slow, precarious slog. Bowes shows how these economies of survival were shared by a wide swath of the populace, blurring the lines between genders, ages, and legal status.

Drawing on new archaeological and textual evidence, Surviving Rome presents a radical new perspective on the economy of ancient Rome while speaking to the challenges of today's labourers and gig workers surviving in an unforgiving global world.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780691273334

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 04 November 2025

Country: United States

Imprint: Princeton University Press

Illustration: 69 b/w illus. 4 b/w maps. 16 tables.

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Width: 156.0mm

Height: 235.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 512

Collections

Ancient & Classical History Finance & Economics Finance & Investment History & Archaeology History & Military Kim Bowes Non-Fiction

About the Author

Kim Bowes is professor of archaeology and ancient history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Houses and Society in the Later Roman Empire and Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity.

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