Walk a day in a Roman's sandals. What was it like to live in one of the ancient world's most powerful and bustling cities - one that was eight times more densely populated than modern day New York?

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 This book takes us through one day in the life of Hadrian’s Rome, with the city seen from the different perspectives of twenty-four of its inhabitants. The people are the city: the buildings and monuments that tourists admire are secondary, important only as the physical echo of the people who built and lived among them. #2 The city of Rome was more than just a collection of buildings and a society of interlocked communities. It was an attitude, and an entrepreneurial spirit that allowed the Romans to believe that, no matter how bad things were, they could always be better. #3 The Roman fire department, the Vigiles, had a special duty to maintain law and order on the streets after dark, but their main function was fire prevention. The city was divided into seven districts for fire prevention purposes, and Brevis and his colleagues were well aware that it was in the district they covered that the worst fire in Roman history began. #4 The Roman watch has the power to break into any premises where they suspect a fire might get out of control. They are not above handing out some basic physical chastisement, and they have long-established protocols for attacking the fire.

During the course of a day we meet 24 ancient Athenians from all levels of society - from the slave-girl to the councilman, the fish-seller to the naval commander, the housewife to the hoplite - and get to know what the real Athens was like by spending an hour in their company.

This voyage of exploration chronicles twenty-four hours in the life of a Roman patrician, beginning at dawn on an ordinary day in the year 115 A.D., with Imperial Rome at the height of its power.

Presents a tourist's guide to the city of Rome as it was around 200 CE.

A time-traveler's guide to sightseeing, shopping, and survival in the city of gods and geniuses. Welcome to Athens in 431 BC! This entertaining guide provides all the information a tourist needs for a journey back in time to ancient Athens at its pinnacle of greatness more than 2000 years ago. Travel via Thermopylae, the Oracle at Delphi, and the site of the epic Battle of Marathon to the city of Athena, goddess of wisdom. Meet Socrates, Thucydides, Phidias, and others who are among the greatest philosophers, writers, and artists who ever lived. Encounter ordinary Athenians in the marketplace and at the theater and learn the true character of one of the most extraordinary cities of any age. Of course, ancient Athens was not all art, intellect, and politics. This well-researched yet irreverently unacademic guide also plunges gleefully into the hedonistic side of Athenian life with wine-sodden symposiums, brothels, and brawls, advising the reader to avoid slatternly prostitutes and inns where the beds are infested with bugs, and warning that both torches and an escort are needed to avoid muggers after an evening on the town. Ancient Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day takes you through the raucous city crowds to the serene heights of the Parthenon and evokes the wonder of a city where the monuments and ideas that form the bedrock of Western culture are as fresh and new as the garlands of flowers on Athena's altar.

One hundred biographies reveal the mightiest civilization of the ancient world through the lives of its citizens. At its peak Rome's empire stretched across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, yet it started as a primitive encampment above a riverside marsh. This book spans the great chronological and geographical sweep of the Roman age and brings the reader face to face with those who helped create the empire, from consuls and commanders to ordinary soldiers, voters, and taxpayers. An extraordinary range of viewpoints is explored in these biographies. A centurion and a plasterer's wife share pages with the orator Cicero and the scholar Pliny the Elder, while a vestal virgin shares a chapter with Antinous, the boy-lover of Hadrian. Augustine, the church patriarch, and Constantine, Rome's first "Christian" emperor, rub shoulders with Julian the Apostate and Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, leader of the pagans. Roman women were the most liberated in the ancient world. They could wield massive power and influence, yet are often overlooked. Meet Servilia, Caesar's lover; Sulpicia, the teenage poet; Amazonia, the sword-swinging gladiator; and Cloelia, the girl who escaped captivity by swimming the Tiber. Lavishly illustrated with magnificent works of art, including portraits, sculptures, and Renaissance paintings of Roman scenes, this book reveals the real-life stories behind the rise and fall of Rome. Philip Matyszak teaches Roman History for the Institute of Continuing Education at Cambridge. He has written extensively on the ancient world. Joanne Berry teaches ancient history at Swansea University and is the author of The Complete Pompeii.