Invisible Romans

 Robert Knapp seeks out the ordinary people who formed the fabric of everyday life in ancient Rome and the outlaws and pirates who lay beyond it. They are the housewives, prostitutes, freedmen, slaves, soldiers, and gladiators who lived commonplace lives and left almost no trace in history - until now. But their words are preserved in literature, letters, inscriptions and graffiti and their traces can be found in the histories, treatises, plays and poetry created by the elite. A world lost from view for two millennia is recreated through these, and other, tell-tale bits of evidence cast off by the visible mass of Roman history and culture. Invisible Romans reveals how everyday Romans sought to survive and thrive under the afflictions of disease, war, and violence, and to control their fates under powers that both oppressed and ignored them. Their lives - both familiar and foreign to ours today - are shown against the tumult of a great empire that shaped their worlds as it forged the wider world around them.

Review: The task Knapp set himself was hugely ambitious, and it is a tribute that not only did he succeed, but that he managed to make the telling of it entertaining as well as informative * Scotsman *
Prof Knapp does an exemplary job of seeking his subjects in obscure papyri and places that will reward researchers and historians for years to come * Country Life *
Knapp finds ways of making the lives of the non-elite ... more than visible ... he makes us feel what it was like * Times Education Supplement *
One certainly cannot complain about the sheer richness of the fare spread out before us * BBC History Magazine *
Everything ... in this unusual and scholarly book is rich with revelation * Daily Express *