Chapter 1: A Day in the Life of Three Roman Teens: Meet Your Guides to 117 CE Rome

The smell of burnt barley, fermented fish sauce, and donkey dung hits you before you even fully surface from sleep. It’s 117 CE, the height of the Roman Empire, and the city of Rome is already roaring to life at dawn, even in the insulae—the cramped, multi-story apartment blocks where 90% of the city’s 1 million residents live. You’re about to follow three 15-year-olds through this messy, vibrant, wildly unequal world: Lucius, a poor freeborn boy who lives on the third floor of a rickety insula near the Tiber; Livia, the daughter of a senator who grows up in a marble domus on the Palatine Hill; and Marcus, a freeborn teen who sold himself into gladiator training to pay off his family’s debts. By the end of this chapter, you’ll have a front-row seat to the rules, routines, and hidden dramas of everyday Roman life—and a cliffhanger that will leave you desperate to turn the page.

Let’s start with Lucius, whose alarm clock is the distant clang of a baker’s oven door slamming shut three floors down. He wakes up on a straw mattress stuffed with dried weeds, covered by a thin wool blanket that’s been mended so many times the patches are more fabric than the original. His feet are cold—Roman insulae have no central heating, even in winter, and the wooden floorboards are warped from years of rain seeping through the roof. His 5-year-old sister Lupa is curled up next to him, her small hand wrapped around a clay doll her grandmother made before she died. Their mother is already up, kneading dough at the rickety wooden table by the window, her fingers dusted white with flour, a deep frown line between her brows. Their father hasn’t come home yet; he works the docks unloading grain ships from Egypt, and last night he came home coughing so hard his ribs ached, so he’s sleeping in for a few hours before heading back.

Lucius rolls off the mattress quietly, not wanting to wake Lupa. He pulls on a frayed wool tunic that’s too short for his growing legs, his big toe poking out of a hole in his single pair of leather shoes. His mother hands him two copper coins—asses—before he can even ask. “Bread for breakfast,” she says, her voice rough from the wood smoke in the air. “And take this thick wool cloak to your father at

the docks. Don’t let him walk home without it—last week his cough was so bad he could barely breathe by the time he got back.” The cloak is scratchy, woven from rough homespun wool that still smells like the sheep it came from, but it’s the warmest thing the family owns. Lucius tucks it under one arm, grabs the two asses his mother pressed into his palm, and tiptoes past Lupa, who’s now sucking her thumb in her sleep, the clay doll still clutched in her fist. The stairs down the insula creak so loud under his bare feet he’s sure they’ll collapse any second—he’s counted 17 cracks in the banister already, and last month the landlord said he’d fix them “next week” if they paid their rent on time, which they haven’t, because his father’s wages from the docks got cut when the last grain shipment from Egypt was delayed by a storm.

The street outside the insula is already chaos. It’s 6:15 a.m., and the sun hasn’t even fully cleared the seven hills yet, but the cobblestones are already slick with spilled wine, rotten fish guts, and the slop that every household dumps into the gutter. A water carrier shouts as he hauls two full leather skins on his shoulders, splashing a little bit on Lucius’s already dirty tunic. A group of teenage boys from the next insula are playing a game of trigon—bouncing three leather balls off a wall without dropping them—and one of them almost hits Lucius in the head. “Watch it, Lucius!” the boy yells, laughing. “Your head’s so big it’s gonna block the sun when it comes up!” Lucius sticks his tongue out at him and keeps walking. His friend Gnaeus is supposed to meet him at the docks today to help unload the grain ships, but Gnaeus is still mad at him for losing his favorite knucklebone game last week, so he’s not sure if he’ll show up.

The bakery is three blocks away, on the corner of the vicus that leads to the Tiber. The sign above the door is a stone loaf of bread, carved so many times the edges are worn smooth. The baker, a fat plebeian named Marcus—no relation to your gladiator guide, though he has the same name—is already yelling at his two enslaved bakers to knead faster. One of them is a Gaulish man with a scar across his cheek, and he’s barefoot, stomping the dough in a wooden trough with his calloused feet. Lucius has always thought that’s gross, but his mom says the bread tastes better that way, so he doesn’t complain. “Two loaves, same as always?” the baker asks, wiping his floury hands on his tunic. Lucius nods, and the baker hands him two warm, round loaves, still steaming, the crust cracked and dusted with more flour. He even throws in a small honey cake, free, because Lucius helped him carry a sack of barley last week after his delivery boy got sick. “Tell your father to take it easy on the docks,” the baker says. “I heard they’re cutting wages again next month. All because the emperor wants to build another stupid temple to himself.” Lucius nods, tucks the honey cake into his tunic next to the two asses he didn’t spend, and keeps walking.

He passes the public fountain on the next corner, where a group of women are filling their clay jugs, gossiping about the latest gladiator fight at the Colosseum last week. “The retiarius won!” one of them says, waving her hands. “He netted the secutor so fast the crowd went wild!” Another woman shakes her head. “I don’t like those fights. Too much blood. I’d rather watch the chariot races at the Circus Maximus.” Lucius stops for a second to listen—he’s never been to the Colosseum, his father says it’s too expensive, a single ticket costs a whole sestertius, which is four times what he just spent on bread—but then he remembers he has to get to the docks before the sun gets too high, so he keeps walking.

The road to the Tiber is crowded with donkeys carrying baskets of vegetables, ox carts full of wine barrels, and a group of soldiers in polished bronze armor marching to the barracks on the Aventine Hill. The soldiers are laughing, shoving each other, and one of them tosses a copper coin to a group of street kids who are begging for food. Lucius watches the coin spin through the air, and one of the kids catches it, yelling “gratias!” at the soldier. He’s never had a copper coin to spare for street kids before, but he makes a mental note: if he gets any extra money this month, he’ll bring a loaf of bread to the kids on his corner. His mom always says “the gods smile on those who share what little they have,” and he believes her, even if the gods don’t always seem to be listening.

When he gets to the docks, the smell hits him first: salt water, rotting fish, grain dust, and the sharp, sour smell of the Egyptian donkeys that haul the grain sacks from the ships to the warehouses. The docks are a mess of wooden planks, some of them rotting, some of them covered in slime, and hundreds of men are shouting, hauling sacks of grain that weigh 100 pounds each up the ramps from the ships. His father is there, bent over a sack of grain, his back covered in sweat even though it’s still early, his tunic tied around his waist, his scarred arms bulging as he heaves the sack onto his shoulder. Lucius walks up to him, taps him on the shoulder, and his father jumps, then smiles when he sees it’s him. “Hey, kid,” he says, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Did your mom send you with food?” Lucius hands him the two loaves of bread and the wool cloak, and his father’s smile fades a little when he feels how thin the cloak is. “Thanks, kid,” he says, his voice rough. “I’ll be home before dark, okay? Tell Lupa I brought her a honey cake next week, if the shipment comes in on time.” Lucius nods, watches his father heave another sack of grain onto his shoulder, then turns to