Plebs Romana

A short yet groundbreaking history of Ancient Rome through the eyes of the oft-forgotten people who made up the empire's majority – the Plebs.

You may think about the Roman Empire every day, but I bet you rarely think about the plebs. The plebs were the commoners, the general populace and lower social classes, and as such their feelings, thoughts and voices are seldom captured in the sources. Most books about Ancient Rome treat the plebs as irrelevant 'lowlifes', which is indeed how they were viewed by the patricians at the centre of the existing popular histories.

Plebs Romana is the first history of Ancient Rome to centre the class of people who made up the empire's majority. A 700-year story that begins with the founding of the Roman Republic, celebrated historian Peter Jones traces the rise of the plebs, from being a powerless group to a political match for the 'patrician' elite. Along the way we learn how they conducted the world's first general strike, became the driving force of Rome's rise to power, and that it was the increasing class conflict between the rich and the poor, rather than the rise of Christianity, that destroyed the world's most powerful and consequential empire.