Ancient Rome is often depicted as a glamorous empire of power, sophistication and wealth. Yet for most people, the reality of daily life was precarious. Host Robin Wigglesworth talks to Kim Bowes, author of Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, about how ordinary Romans combined real grit with surprising financial sophistication in order to weather a system that was stacked against them. They uncover a hidden financial world in which women often ran the household finances, families delivered their own children into debt bondage and shepherds might sell wool futures on rented sheep. A far cry from the Rome of popular imagination, this is the ancient Roman empire as most Romans experienced it.
Further reading: Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent by Kim Bowes
Credits: Getty Images
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Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth
Producer: Lulu Smyth
Senior Producer: Michela Tindera
Executive Producer: Manuela Saragosa
Original music and sound design: Breen Turner
Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Giuompasis
Podcast Development: Laura Clarke
FT Global Head of Audio: Flo Phillips
Video editor: Josh Divney and Kristen Kenyon at Podcast Discovery