Plebs Romana by Peter Jones

‘Jones has an eagle’s high eye for the history of Rome’ – The Times
‘Jones makes the classical world feel both beguiling and fresh’ – Sunday Times

You may think about the Roman Empire every day, but I bet you rarely think about the plebs. The plebs were the commoners, the general populace and lower social classes, and as such their feelings, thoughts and voices are seldom captured in the sources. Most books about Ancient Rome treat the plebs as irrelevant ‘lowlifes’, which is indeed how they were viewed by the patricians at the centre of the existing popular histories.

Plebs Romana is the first history of Ancient Rome to centre the class of people who made up the empire’s majority. A 700-year story that begins with the founding of the Roman Republic, celebrated historian Peter Jones traces the rise of the plebs, from being a powerless group to a political match for the ‘patrician’ elite. Along the way we learn how they conducted the world’s first general strike, became the driving force of Rome’s rise to power, and that it was the increasing class conflict between the rich and the poor, rather than the rise of Christianity, that destroyed the world’s most powerful and consequential empire.

A short yet groundbreaking history of Ancient Rome through the eyes of the oft-forgotten people who made up the empire’s majority – the Plebs.

About the Author: Peter Jones was educated at Cambridge University and taught Classics at Cambridge and at Newcastle University, before retiring in 1997. He has written a regular column, ‘Ancient & Modern’, in the Spectator for many years and is the author of various books on the Classics, including the bestselling Learn Latin and Learn Ancient Greek, as well as Vote for Caesar and Reading Virgil’s Aeneid I and II.

06 Nov 2025
 

Plebs Romana: People, Power and Politics in Ancient Rome by Peter Jones ISBN 9781805465102