REVALUATE HISTORY

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”