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Table of Contents
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About The Book
From acclaimed author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and historian Emma Southon, a groundbreaking history of Ancient Rome that explores how the empire was built, fueled, and shaped by its enslaved people.
When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul he boasted that he killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. This is the truth about the Roman empire: Rome could not function without slavery as it underpinned every single part of their economy. Without the millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment, or born into it as “home bred slaves”, the Roman empire’s great aqueducts and temples could never have been built. There would be no coins or tiles to find in fields, no limitless manpower for the army and navy that conquered the Mediterranean, no marble palaces or underfloor heating, and certainly no life of unimaginable luxury for the one percent who didn’t even tie their own shoes. For the first time, Not Built in a Day tells their stories.
Not Built in a Day takes readers into the invisible spaces of the Roman empire, where the millions of enslaved lives perpetuated the excesses of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman his daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses; from the guards who kept the streets of Rome safe and the mines which kept Rome a city of gold and marble, to the builders who placed every brick in the Colosseum. It traces how people entered, experienced, and left slavery, covering the little known story of slave revolts and the complex realities of enslaved people who themselves owned enslaved people. Not Built in a Day also explores the lives of those freed from slavery, finally able to choose their own destinies.
With humor, wit, and expertise, Emma Southon invites us into the absurdity of Roman life and completely upends our idea of the Roman empire.
When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul he boasted that he killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. This is the truth about the Roman empire: Rome could not function without slavery as it underpinned every single part of their economy. Without the millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment, or born into it as “home bred slaves”, the Roman empire’s great aqueducts and temples could never have been built. There would be no coins or tiles to find in fields, no limitless manpower for the army and navy that conquered the Mediterranean, no marble palaces or underfloor heating, and certainly no life of unimaginable luxury for the one percent who didn’t even tie their own shoes. For the first time, Not Built in a Day tells their stories.
Not Built in a Day takes readers into the invisible spaces of the Roman empire, where the millions of enslaved lives perpetuated the excesses of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman his daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses; from the guards who kept the streets of Rome safe and the mines which kept Rome a city of gold and marble, to the builders who placed every brick in the Colosseum. It traces how people entered, experienced, and left slavery, covering the little known story of slave revolts and the complex realities of enslaved people who themselves owned enslaved people. Not Built in a Day also explores the lives of those freed from slavery, finally able to choose their own destinies.
With humor, wit, and expertise, Emma Southon invites us into the absurdity of Roman life and completely upends our idea of the Roman empire.
About The Author
Photograph by Jamie Drew
Emma Southon has a PhD in ancient history from the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World; A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome; and A Rome of One’s Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire. Emma also cohosts the podcast History is Sexy, which has 800,000 lifetime listens. She has written for History Today, All About History, Historia, Literary Hub, and British Museum Magazine, and has appeared in documentaries on Channel Four TV and Netflix.
About The Reader
Photograph by Jamie Drew
Emma Southon has a PhD in ancient history from the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World; A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome; and A Rome of One’s Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire. Emma also cohosts the podcast History is Sexy, which has 800,000 lifetime listens. She has written for History Today, All About History, Historia, Literary Hub, and British Museum Magazine, and has appeared in documentaries on Channel Four TV and Netflix.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (June 30, 2026)
- Runtime: 10 hours and 50 minutes
- ISBN13: 9781668129586
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Raves and Reviews
"Electrifying, rousing and flowing with passion, this deeply researched book zips along in a way that defies expectation. What a skill Southon has for maintaining an energetic yet empathetic tone while bringing such dark realities to light."
—Daisy Dunn, author of The Missing Thread
"Excellent... Southon's brilliant scholarship is delivered in a unique and compelling style... Offers a thoughtful and refreshing, intimate and disturbing insight into the workings of the Roman Empire and the psyche of its inhabitants—free and enslaved."
—Sunday Times
"Illuminating revisionist history."
—The i Paper
"A much-needed corrective to centuries of obfuscations and misunderstandings. Not Built in a Day is a challenging read yet a simultaneously sensitive and even entertaining one, striking that peculiar balance that . . . only Emma can fully achieve."
—Jane Draycott, author of Cleopatra's Daughter
"One of several valuable books out this month from female historians."
—The Independent
“A revelatory portrait of ancient Rome from the point of view of the enslaved… It amounts to a bracing and important corrective to more naive visions of the ancient world.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“With an approach both humorous and humanistic, Southon invites those unfamiliar with antiquity to treat it with curiosity while also engaging with the ethical and moral questions that the civilization struggled to resolve. Her work offers a stark, brutal look at the extractive economy Rome used to build itself, with rich detail and approachable language that make it an excellent starting point for learning about the time period. Readers will surely be inspired to read on about the Roman Empire in all of its thorny complexity.”
—Booklist
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