On the rare occasion that I am invited to parties, having failed to find an inventive excuse to avoid such terrifying public events, I find myself in conversation with people who ask me what I do.

People who were forced to watch Nero go through one of his infamously awful public musical performances, performances for which he was always awarded first prize, even if there wasn’t a prize and sometimes even if he didn’t even turn up, sometimes feigned death in order to escape having to sit through the entire recital. I have yet to feign death as a way of avoiding parties or petty conversation, and so I normally respond to this question with the not inconsiderable flirtatious charm I can put on like an overcoat.

”I’m a writer”, I say.

”Oh!” Will come, almost universally, a pleasantly surprised reply. “And what do you write about?”

”Roman history”. I’m acutely aware of how this conversation then goes, and at this point, I might just drop in a particularly juicy factoid into the mix, like the olive that turns a Martini into a Gibson. “Did you know that Romans used to feign death to avoid having to turn up to parties like this one?” It’s not entirely true, but it’s fun.

”Wow. Roman history!? Hey, can I ask you a question….?”

And I will say yes. And I will answer their question if I can.

In between more academic work and writing books about the Roman world (books you may be able to purchase via these pages), I answer people’s questions about Roman history. Almost all of the time, people won’t ask about which Emperor won which battle or when because those things aren’t fun. Even I don’t think they’re fun I write about them!

Instead, most questions I get are seemingly more trivial, but instead offer everyone a glimpse into what Roman life was really like. Often, we think of ancient people as being fundamentally apart from who we are as modern humans. But they, like us, had weird foibles, told each other jokes, fell madly in love and rolled about on the floor in fits of the giggles. The po-faced, Shakesperean-voiced people we see represented in films and TV are not representative of people who were, essentially, just like us but with a slightly different lifestyle.

Have you ever wondered if the Romans wore underwear? What they had for breakfast? Did they keep pets? Did gladiators really ride about on rhinos in the arena? Did they believe in ghosts? Did they go to the temple on a Sunday? How much did a slave cost? How could a slave be freed?

These are all questions I get asked a lot, and I’m delighted to answer them. And that’s what this space is for. To answer all your questions about the Roman World. You can contact me through the social media pages linked on the welcome page, leave a comment on a post or message me directly. I check messages every day.

Just leave a question if you have one, and I will do my best to answer it. Even if the answer cannot be clearly found, we can still explore together the wider implications of that research. The answer is almost never ‘I don’t know’.

If you subscribe for free, I will give your questions priority, so you can almost certainly expect an answer at some point. If you take out a paid subscription, not only do you get access to some exclusive content, help support my work and the full back catalogue of over 200 posts, but I promise (within reason) to give you an answer as soon as is humanly possible.

I hope you enjoy it and please remember, there is no such thing as a bad question.

Thank you!