The prominent American historian Robert Knapp, who taught the history and culture of Ancient Rome at the University of California at Berkeley for more than 30 years, makes the heroes of his study ordinary, “inconspicuous” inhabitants of the Roman Empire: workers, housewives, beggars, slaves, soldiers, gladiators, robbers , prostitutes, those about whose lives much less is known, unlike emperors, philosophers, senators, that is, prominent representatives of the state. The author covers the period of Roman history from Emperor Octavian Augustus to Emperor Constantine the Great, creating a clearer and more complete picture of the daily life of the lower classes of the empire, its negative sides.