Kim Bowes on the Economic Lives of Rome's Ninety Percent

Key Takeaways

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  Roman elite houses were kitschy business hubs

  “The Roman house, particularly the Roman elite house, is a machine for the production of social status. And that status meant a space to do deals, to meet your clients, to show off things that we would never dream of showing off, right? Members of our family, the most intimate aspects of our daily lives, all of that is literally built into the fabric of a Roman house.”

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  Waste management remained an insurmountable urban problem

  “These are incredibly dense, unprecedentedly dense spaces. And so getting on top of the poop problem is a kind of insurmountable problem. If a visitor, any of your listeners, goes to Pompeii, you will notice that there are stepping stones to get across the street. And this is to keep you out of all of the refuse in the street. And this is a city that has really good public sanitation. It's just not quite good enough.”

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  Christianity conversion took centuries to reach majority

  “I think what would surprise me most and many of my scholarly colleagues is how few Christians there are. We somehow think that Constantine declares his support for this religion and then boom, everyone's Christian. When in fact, of course, most people aren't Christian for a really long time. Especially when you went to the countryside, you went to the countryside, you find very few Christians at all, for at least 200 years.”

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  Roman cities operated without formal addresses

  “Not in the way that we seem to use them, no. You just have to get there somehow. And you know what people use? They use other humans, right? That's how you navigate your way around an ancient city is you ask people. And of course, ancient cities are a lot smaller than our own cities. So the chances are moving around in a city, you know people.”

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  Material remains reveal widespread wealth among ordinary Romans

  “By sifting through the material remains of Roman life — shoes, bricks, ceramics, and the like — she uncovers a picture of ordinary Romans who could evidently afford to buy multiple sets of colorful clothes, use gold coins for daily transactions, and eat peppercorns sourced from thousands of miles away. This vast web of commerce, she argues, both bound the empire together and provided the tax base that kept it running.”

Episode Description

Kim Bowes is an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania whose book, Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, Tyler calls perhaps his favorite economics book of 2025. By sifting through the material remains of Roman life — shoes, bricks, ceramics, and the like — she uncovers a picture of ordinary Romans who could evidently afford to buy multiple sets of colorful clothes, use gold coins for daily transactions, and eat peppercorns sourced from thousands of miles away. This vast web of commerce, she argues, both bound the empire together and provided the tax base that kept it running — and when it unraveled, Rome unraveled with it. Tyler and Kim discuss what would surprise a modern visitor to a Roman elite home, what early Roman Christianity actually looked like on the ground, why Romans never developed formal economic reasoning, what decentralized money-lending reveals about the Roman state, whether there were anything like forward markets, why Romans continued to use coins even as the empire debased them, the economics of Roman slavery, whether Roman recipes taste any good, the Romans as hyper-scalers rather than inventors, what Rome made of China and Egypt, why Kim's not a fan of the Vesuvius challenge, the practicalities of landscape archaeology, how a vast belt of factories along the Tiber Valley went undiscovered until twenty years ago, where to go on a three-week tour of the Roman Empire, what she thinks is ultimately behind Rome's unraveling, and much more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded February 2nd, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:06 - Roman Housing 00:08:28 - What Early Roman Christians Actually Believed 00:16:29 - Roman Economic Thought 00:18:39 - Roman Banking and Money Practices 00:28:48 - The Economics of Roman Slavery 00:31:56 - What Held The Roman Empire Together 00:36:46 - Roman Cookery 00:39:17 - The Romans as Masters of Scale 00:42:05 - Rome's Contact with Asia 0043:59 - The Vesuvius Challenge 00:45:13 - Ancient Carthage and the Fall of Rome 0049:43 - The Realities of Doing Archaeology 00:57:15 - Touring the Roman Empire 01:00:42 - Outro