Are they, and welcome to Emperors of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrib University.

I'm your host, Matt Smith, and with me today is Associate Professor Rianne Evans, Head

of the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Latrib University.

This is episode C-L-X-X, Roman Luxury and Wealth.

If archeological digs are anything to go by, Rome was a society of fantastic luxury,

impressive buildings, exotic foods, obedient slaves, and more marble than you could shake

a toga rat.

But when you read ancient sources, there were those who felt uncomfortable with all this

opulence, and the thought that it could be making the Romans soft.

Here's Rianne Evans.

So we think of the Romans, I suppose, in popular culture as living an opulent lifestyle.

It's decadent.

Yeah, it's absolutely decadent.

They're having orgies in these decadent surroundings where grapes are being fed to them,

and they're on golden couches, and there's water features and beautiful gardens.

And it's true that they did have these beautiful gardens, and there was luxury.

They had the ability to import luxury goods, gems and metals and beautiful marbles from

the east, but a very, very small percentage, as you might guess, of the Roman population

had that kind of wealth and that ability to kind of navigate the Roman world in that

way.

We're probably talking the senatorially wealthy, maybe the equestrians.

So the Senate, at its biggest, is 900 men and their families.

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