Hello historians! Can you recommend any books that focus on "everyday life" in Ancient Rome (or secondarily Ancient Greece)? I love reading about the period, but over the years I feel like I've become saturated with books about the military and especially political history of the era, and I'm becoming more interested in what everyday life was like in that period: family life, the gymnasium, social life, work/career, religion, etc. I'm interested in the intimate details of ordinary life. :)
Does such a book exist that would be accessible to a non-historian like me?
I read the book list in the FAQ but did not see exactly what I was looking for. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer!
If you have any interest in Roman religion, the two books I would recommend would be Jörg Rüpke’s Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion and Harriet Flower’s The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden.
Rüpke is a prolific writer on Roman religion and one of the most vocal proponents of the lived religion approach, which emerged out of new materialist approaches in the study of religion and essentially advocates for a focus on how religion was done and experienced by ancient people, starting with their actions and perspectives. Pantheon is a full narrative of religious practices at Rome from the Iron Age to Late Antiquity, so the full scope is there, and while it covers quite a lot of material, just by nature of how much it goes through, it’s still accessibly presented and easy to follow.
Flower’s book is a lot more focused on one area of Roman religion (the cult of the Lares) and on a much smaller scope of time. I add it here not as a broader overview like Rüpke’s but just because it’s just really well done, and personally I just enjoyed reading it. It dives into detail without feeling overwhelming, and on a stylistic level it’s a lovely read, which makes it much more generally accessible than its somewhat niche content would lead you to believe. Together they should give you a sense of what religious life was like in ancient Rome, and open up avenues if you want to explore anything further.
I have a recommendation, though it isn't a book, so much as a lecture series from The Great Courses. It's called The Other Side of History:Daily Life in the Ancient World (Audible) and the lecturer, Robert Garland, is a classicist who has written books about everyday life in ancient Greece, for example. I have the course, and consider it one of my favorites. It consists of 48 30-minute lectures. Hopefully the list of the titles below is something that interests you?
The lectures are presented in the second-person; Dr Garland attempts to place you at the center of the scenarios he describes and he is careful to advise when he is moving more in the realm of conjecture than strictly fact. The course comes with the lectures in video form (Great Courses Site) or audio form (Audible/Amazon) and a supplementary pdf containing the syllabus, lecture descriptions, and supplementary reading.