The Private Life of the Romans

Step into the Roman home and discover the surprisingly human lives behind the empire that shaped the Western world. Johnston's pioneering 1903 study was among the first to ask not what Romans conquered, but how they lived: their family dynamics and marriage customs, their children's education, their relationships between masters and slaves, their dinner parties and bathhouses, their daily routines and their deaths. The sixteen chapters sweep through every corner of Roman domesticity, from the naming of infants to the burning of corpses, from the contents of a Roman kitchen to the architecture of a Roman bedroom. What emerges is not the Rome of politics and war, but the intimate world of mothers and fathers, teachers and students, employers and employees. Johnston demonstrates that understanding these private lives is essential to understanding how Rome exerted its extraordinary influence over the ancient world, an influence that echoes still today. Originally written for high school seniors and college freshmen navigating Roman history, the book retains its clarity and accessibility more than a century later. For anyone curious about what the Romans were like when they weren't busy conquering civilization, this remains a vivid and indispensable guide.