The hidden financial world of ancient Rome

Ancient Rome is often depicted as a glamorous empire of power, sophistication and wealth. Yet for most people, the reality of daily life was precarious. Host Robin Wigglesworth talks to Kim Bowes, author of Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, about how ordinary Romans combined real grit with surprising financial sophistication in order to weather a system that was stacked against them. They uncover a hidden financial world in which women often ran the household finances, families delivered their own children into debt bondage and shepherds might sell wool futures on rented sheep. A far cry from the Rome of popular imagination, this is the ancient Roman empire as most Romans experienced it.

Further reading: Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent by Kim Bowes 

Credits: Getty Images

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Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth

Producer: Lulu Smyth

Senior Producer: Michela Tindera 

Executive Producer: Manuela Saragosa

Original music and sound design: Breen Turner

Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Giuompasis

Podcast Development: Laura Clarke

FT Global Head of Audio: Flo Phillips 

Video editor: Josh Divney and Kristen Kenyon at Podcast Discovery

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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