Rome's invisible inhabitants
- prostitutes innkeepers housewives priests freedmen slaves soldiers & gladiators
- brought back to life. Robert Knapp seeks out the ordinary people who formed the fabric of everyday life in ancient Rome & the outlaws & pirates who lay beyond it. They are the housewives prostitutes freedmen slaves soldiers & gladiators who lived commonplace lives & left almost no trace in history
- until now. But their words are preserved in literature letters inscriptions & graffiti & their traces can be found in the histories treatises plays & poetry created by the elite. A world lost from view for two millennia is recreated through these & other tell-tale bits of evidence cast off by the visible mass of Roman history & culture. Invisible Romans" reveals how everyday Romans sought to survive & thrive under the afflictions of disease war & violence & to control their fates under powers that both oppressed & ignored them. Their lives
- both familiar & foreign to ours today
- are shown against the tumult of a great empire that shaped their worlds as it forged the wider world around them."