Populus

A Time Travellers Guide to Ancient Rome - by one of the best historians of the ancient world

Living in ancient Rome was one of the most intense experiences in human history. It was also superbly and vividly recorded by Rome's historians and poets who were acutely aware of the seething and voluptuous nature of a city that ruled the known world. Populus takes the reader into a world of violent politics, disorder, unspeakably brutal entertainments, extravagance, decadence, eroticism, exotica, and staggering inequality, participated in daily by the Roman people from the hyper-rich elite to the lowliest slaves. All this was presided over by the emperors who ranged from the wise and benign to the murderously insane. This drama was set against the backdrop of the city itself and its startling architectural achievements that overwhelmed contemporaries and still do today.

Guy de la Bédoyère has recreated the great drama of life in Rome in the days of the emperors, from eking out an existence in servitude to luxury in the imperial palaces, enjoying a day at the races, rioting in the streets, making do in a tenement block, plotting to assassinate an emperor, worshipping any one of a multitude of gods, witnessing an imperial triumph, and commemorating the dead. This is the powerful story of the people of Rome, written by the author as his personal homage to a civilization that has absorbed him for half a century.