Miniseries

Prof Mary Beard takes the Via Appia to Rome to show the lives of ordinary citizens in imperial times.

Mary heads into the streets to discover the dirt, crime, sex, and slum conditions in the world's first high-rise city. Oddly enough, the poorer you were, the higher you lived, with little space, light, or sanitation.

To learn about their family life, Beard looks at the thousands of tombstones of ordinary Romans, their children and slaves.