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Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent
A radical revision—and worker’s-eye view—of everything we thought we knew about the ancient Roman economy
The story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes. Surviving Rome unearths another history, one of ordinary Romans, who worked with their hands and survived through a combination of grit and grinding labor.
Focusing on the working majority, Kim Bowes tells the stories of people like the tenant farmer Epimachus, Faustilla the moneylender, and the pimp Philokles. She reveals how the economic changes of the period created a set of bitter challenges and opportunistic hustles for everyone from farmers and craftspeople to day laborers and slaves. She finds working people producing a consumer revolution, making and buying all manner of goods from fine pottery to children’s toys. Many of the poorest working people probably pieced together a living from multiple sources of income, including wages. And she suggests that Romans’ most daunting challenge was the struggle to save. Like many modern people, saving enough to buy land or start a business was a slow, precarious slog. Bowes shows how these economies of survival were shared by a wide swath of the populace, blurring the lines between genders, ages, and legal status.
Drawing on new archaeological and textual evidence, Surviving Rome presents a radical new perspective on the economy of ancient Rome while speaking to the challenges of today’s laborers and gig workers surviving in an unforgiving global world.
The story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes. Surviving Rome unearths another history, one of ordinary Romans, who worked with their hands and survived through a combination of grit and grinding labor.
Focusing on the working majority, Kim Bowes tells the stories of people like the tenant farmer Epimachus, Faustilla the moneylender, and the pimp Philokles. She reveals how the economic changes of the period created a set of bitter challenges and opportunistic hustles for everyone from farmers and craftspeople to day laborers and slaves. She finds working people producing a consumer revolution, making and buying all manner of goods from fine pottery to children’s toys. Many of the poorest working people probably pieced together a living from multiple sources of income, including wages. And she suggests that Romans’ most daunting challenge was the struggle to save. Like many modern people, saving enough to buy land or start a business was a slow, precarious slog. Bowes shows how these economies of survival were shared by a wide swath of the populace, blurring the lines between genders, ages, and legal status.
Drawing on new archaeological and textual evidence, Surviving Rome presents a radical new perspective on the economy of ancient Rome while speaking to the challenges of today’s laborers and gig workers surviving in an unforgiving global world.
512 pages, Hardcover
Published November 4, 2025
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January 4, 20267.5 out of 10.
Surviving Rome is an excellent reassessment of our assumptions about how the working poor and middling classes got by in the Roman world based on new information along with a closer reading of older sources.
What most struck me about Bowes' recreation of daily life 2,000 years ago is how similar were the strategies used by the poor and middling classes to get by then as those used today by people in similar economic and social positions.
Strongly recommended.
Surviving Rome is an excellent reassessment of our assumptions about how the working poor and middling classes got by in the Roman world based on new information along with a closer reading of older sources.
What most struck me about Bowes' recreation of daily life 2,000 years ago is how similar were the strategies used by the poor and middling classes to get by then as those used today by people in similar economic and social positions.
Strongly recommended.
January 31, 2026
My favourite archaeological book ever? For a field where much of traditional education tells you most of the significant work was done in 1970 and before - it is great to be reminded that there is still so much we are yet to fully understand.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews