Summary

Wealthy Romans lived luxurious lifestyles and paraded their wealth, though rich and poor lived side by side. Diseases struck everyone, regardless of wealth, though those rich enough to have country estates may have been able to escape epidemics that struck worse in cities. Status divides existed among the wealthy, with ideas that one should be supported by the profits of one's estates, not through wage labor. Those who rose to wealth were equally derided.

There were degrees of wealth and poverty in Rome, with a middle class between the elite and the poor and slave populations. The majority of the Roman population would have been peasant farmers. There was extreme urban poverty as well as a merchant, trade, and laboring classes. Large multistory apartment blocks demonstrate the various classes of the average Roman citizens, with the very poor living on...