Meet Servilia, Caesar's lover Sulpicia, the teenage poet Amazonia, the sword-swinging gladiator and Cloelia, the girl who escaped captivity by swimming the Tiber. They could wield massive power and influence, yet are often overlooked. Roman women were the most liberated in the ancient world. Augustine, the church patriarch, and Constantine, Rome's first 'Christian' emperor, rub shoulders with Julian the Apostate and Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, leader of the pagans. A centurion and a plasterer's wife share pages with the orator Cicero and the scholar Pliny the Elder, while a vestal virgin shares a chapter with Antinous, the boy-lover of Hadrian. An extraordinary range of viewpoints is explored in these biographies. This book spans the great chronological and geographical sweep of the Roman age and brings the reader face to face with those who helped create the empire, from consuls and commanders to ordinary soldiers, voters, and taxpayers. At its peak Rome's empire stretched across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, yet it started as a primitive encampment above a riverside marsh. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.One hundred biographies reveal the mightiest civilization of the ancient world through the lives of its citizens. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.

Lives of the Romans by Philip Matyszak