{"product_id":"9780691273334","title":"Surviving Rome","description":"Author: Kim Bowes\u003cbr\u003eISBN: 9780691273334\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Princeton University Press\u003cbr\u003eYear first published: 01 Mar 2026\u003cbr\u003ePages: 512\u003cbr\u003eFormat: Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes. \u003ci\u003eSurviving Rome\u003c\/i\u003e unearths another history, one of ordinary Romans, who worked with their hands and survived through a combination of grit and grinding labour.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFocusing 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 labourers 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on new archaeological and textual evidence, \u003ci\u003eSurviving Rome\u003c\/i\u003e presents a radical new perspective on the economy of ancient Rome while speaking to the challenges of today's labourers and gig workers surviving in an unforgiving global world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ships in 10 to 15 days","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46680685019294,"sku":"ADS-9780691273334","price":69.78,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0400\/9043\/5742\/files\/9780691273334.jpg?v=1775543834","url":"https:\/\/classicbargains.com.au\/products\/9780691273334","provider":"Classic Bargains Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}