Roman People — Olivia Coolidge

Olivia Coolidge brings the Roman Empire to life through ten vibrant short stories highlighting the various peoples of that era. You are there in the amphitheater witnessing gladiatorial spectacles; you share with the poverty-stricken poet in the tense moments before a murder in the baths; you cringe before the hatchet-faced gangsters managing the charioteers; you stream out of the city with the Roman populace to pay honor to its dead on the Feast of Roses; and you realize that the time is ripe for Jesus Christ, born in the Roman world of Caesar Augustus.Under Augustus, there really came to be a golden age. If we really want to study what the people of Rome-in the broader sense-were like, we should look for them there. Olivia Coolidge