This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

This is CBS, I on the World.

I'm John Batchelor.

A Rome of one's own, the forgotten women of the Roman Empire.

I welcome Emma Southert, the author of an extremely witty and careful explication of what I've

never read, the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic, the Roman monarchy from the point of

view of the women who lived and died in it. This book presents a

completely new version of everything you've assumed about where did Julius Caesar come from?

What was the decline and fall of the Roman Empire? Why did it divide into Constantinople and allow

Rome to attenuate so that there were less

than 10,000 people there at one point around 1,000 years ago?

Emma, congratulations and a very good evening to you.

We begin in the monarchy, the kingdom, somewhere in the mid-8th century BCE, ending somewhere in the sixth century BCE, as told by

the historian Livy, chiefly, there are other voices, but Livy is a major driver here.

When did Livy write this and who was the audience Livy had in mind? Good evening to you, Emma.

Good evening. Thank you so much for having me audience Livy had in mind? Good evening. Good evening.

Thank you so much for having me.

Livy is writing a very long time after the period that he's writing about.

He's writing in the first century CE.

So he's writing it in the reign of the first emperor, Augustus,

and he is writing for an audience of people who are being forced to come to terms with the return to monarchy essentially to the having one man who is

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