Would you survive a week in Ancient Rome? | Mary Beard: Full Interview

What did it really mean to live in Ancient Rome? Not as an emperor, but as an ordinary person navigating daily life? Classicist Mary Beard says that the truth would surprise us, challenging our myths about the empire. Ancient Rome emerges as a complex, uneven, often uncomfortable prototype of globalization. Roads were designed for conquest more than convenience. Sex, trade, and culture operated under systems of inequality. And yet, across the Ancient Roman empire, ideas and identities moved faster than we might think.